Tonight I feel abundant with blessings because another reader has given me permission to post her inspirational message of recovery — It Can Be Done! As you read these words, feel them raise your energy — we all have the power to tap into the inspiration in J’s words. We all have the power to create recovery in our lives!

Healing Words
J is a member of my coaching group of readers from this blog. The women are amazing, beautiful souls. J has dubbed the group “inspiring women” and I agree. She offered us the gift of her written experience and I asked her to share it here because her words have the power to heal.

Notice how J reached out to others to come back to herself. Sometimes, being with people who are aligned with us energetically can be just what we need to create a shift in our lives — to see and know ourselves better. Especially when we tap into unconditional love.

Thank you J, for your healing words!

Nutritionist
Helped me realize that I wasn’t eating enough during the day. Enabled me to add carbs to lunch and dinner without guilt. At first it was hard to eat more during the day because I was used to compensating for night binges by trying to eat less during the day. But I just told myself that wasn’t working anymore and even though it was uncomfortable (physically and mentally because I was gaining weight) I ate more during the day even when bingeing at night. Eventually this enabled me to get my body satiated with enough food during the day so that I was physically satisfied at night and did not want to eat.

Another thing that the nutritionist helped with was slowing down and savoring each meal. Normally I hadn’t given much thought to how I ate breakfast, lunch and dinner because these weren’t meals where I binged. But by slowing down and savoring each bite at these meals it changed the way I ate which I was able to carry over into first by slowing down the binges and then by not even desiring to stuff myself with food.

I also now use hunger as a guide to when I and how much I eat. This has helped eliminate the stress associated with an ED. Beforehand I used to stress over whether I should have dessert for example – should I eat dessert to try and prevent a binge? Should I not eat dessert so I don’t start bingeing? Should I not eat dessert to try and save calories? Now I don’t deal with that – I just listen to how my body feels – if I’m hungry – I eat! If I’m not, then I don’t. But I do always make sure that I’ve had enough during the day and that I have eaten wholesome meals, etc.

Opening Up To Those Close to Me
I used to hide any “problems” or negative feelings because I thought people would only like me or would like me more if they thought I lived the perfect life. I found out that this wasn’t true – people weren’t fooled thinking I led the perfect life. They knew I must have problems but just thought I choose not to talk about them. This actually hindered me having deeper relationships. Opening up to my best friend really helped me feel supported and loved plus really made our relationship much stronger.

I also opened up to my 2 roommates. The pressure of hiding my night eating from them was like I was hiding a demon. It was a lot of stress and I felt ashamed. Then when I finally opened up to them it actually wasn’t a big deal. They recognized that people eat to deal with stress and didn’t act at all like I was a freak or had a big problem. I gained support here too and also strengthened relationships.

Realizing My Internal Reality is NOT External Reality
I was constantly berating myself and thinking things like – look at these fat arms I have now – gross! I thought everyone must think less of me and what’s wrong with me since my arms aren’t as thin as they used to be. But I was wrong – many close friends were not thinking anything was wrong with my arms and even if they did notice I gained some weight – they still loved me and were not judging me all. Plus outside people still came up and talked to me and didn’t know (nor did they care) that I used to have thinner arms. So I realized that I am the only one beating up myself for having bigger arms – absolutely no one in my external environment is. And this helped with my fear that people wouldn’t like me anymore if I was bigger than I used to be. They all still liked me and it was just ME who was concerned with things like “bigger arms”.

I also found comfort in the research performed by Dr. Masaru Emoto (check out his book – The Hidden Messages in Water or images can also be seen in the movie – What the Bleep). He scientifically proved that thoughts and feeling affect physical reality. He tested frozen water samples some labeled with loving words like “gratitude” and “I love you” and others labeled with negative thoughts like “I hate you” and “You make me sick.” The water with loving words had beautiful, symmetrical, colorful molecular patterns. The water with negative words had distorted, asymmetrical, and muddied molecular patterns. Since 75% of our bodies are composed with water – I decided that I’d much rather be filling my cells with positive loving molecules!

Confidence
I don’t know if this is a good idea for everyone of if possible but here’s what I did which really helped…I had my roommates put a lock on the pantry at night. This way I was completely unable to get food at night. And basically just knowing the lock was there really eased my anxiety about bingeing because I knew I couldn’t binge. This enabled me to sleep through the night. I was so calm I didn’t even wake up which had been very different from all the other nights when I would wake up multiple times. Or if I did wake up I knew that getting food was out of the question so I just turned over and went back to bed. After doing this for a few nights I gained the confidence knowing that I really CAN sleep through the night without eating. I no longer felt like I needed to eat to sleep because I saw that I could sleep without eating. Plus I really started feeling so much better during the day which also boosted my confidence. We were able to remove the lock after about 5 days and since then I have been sleeping through every night without bingeing. I also credit my boosted confidence to this group and all the love and support I feel (and hopefully provide – I am wishing all of you the best and really want to help!).

Note- all of these things took TIME to realize. I often looked for a quick fix – something to just break the habit immediately. I now see it doesn’t work like that but you just need to stay positive and keep working on developing yourself and then all of a sudden it definitely will come together.

With love and great confidence in all of you,
J

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