Since I last wrote about my anorexia relapse recovery, I’ve mostly been pretending I don’t have a corrupted Clippy in my brain (my name for the ever-annoying ED voice). Weirdly, this method has been quite effective. By ignoring it, I’ve been better able to focus on what I want, rather than what Clippy wants.

That shift has triggered a cascade of changes in my body – not all of which I’m thrilled about. Chief among them? Rapid weight gain.

Rapid Weight Gain (and No, It’s Not Cute)

I mentioned an extreme hunger episode in my last post. It took real courage to face, and it pushed me forward on this strange, fraying rope bridge I keep finding myself on – just like Astrid, the character I play in The Long Dark, when we’re in Ash Canyon. One side is recovery, the other my ED, and I’m dangling in the middle, trying not to look down.

So when I did take that next step toward recovery, my body apparently decided to reward me with yet another 3kg (6.6lbs) of overnight weight gain. Yes. Overnight. On top of the previous 3kg gain which was also overnight. No idea why my body is so obsessed with doing it in 3kg instalments, but here we are – now 6kg (13lbs) heavier.

That morning, when I got on my fancy scale and it read 3kg more than the day before it actually asked me if I was the same person – because the numbers had changed so much, it didn’t recognise me.

And well, that was a loaded question.

Because no – I didn’t feel like the same person I was yesterday either.
I felt heavier physically, yes, but also mentally. Like I’d crossed some invisible line in recovery, and now I was someone else – someone swollen, someone unrecognisable, someone uncomfortable, someone who had to carry more than just body weight.

I know a good chunk of this second gain is water. I have visible oedema: my knees are missing in action and painful, my ankles have ballooned, and my abdomen looks 7 months pregnant. It’s uncomfortable. My skin is stretched beyond belief and incredibly painful. It’s distracting. I hate it.

But some of this is real weight, too. And before anyone starts chirping “calories in, calories out” and tells me how overnight weight gain is impossible – please stop. First of all, I did gain the exact same amount overnight once already, and it never left despite trying to get rid of it. Second, I have visible fat where I didn’t before, and new lean mass too. My body is round. Dense. And very, very uncomfortable. It’s now been almost a week since that gain and all of it is still there, it’s actually gaining more, just like last time.

Clothes that fit one day don’t fit the next. My thighs are suddenly massive, VERY hard, and sore. My knees feel like they’re going to buckle. The sensory impact of being suddenly heavier and puffier overnight is intense. You can’t prepare for waking up and finding your body feels like a weighted vest strapped to a water balloon.

There’s a very common and frankly infuriating myth in the recovery community that oedema means your body is “healing.” That the swelling and puffiness is all part of the magical repair journey.

Let me be clear: it’s not. Oedema is a stress response, not a sign of flourishing health. It means your body is overburdened and trying to survive, not repair. If your body is leaking water into surrounding tissue at this scale, it’s struggling.

Right now, the swelling above my left knee is so severe that I’m fairly certain it’s triggered bursitis. My knee is killing me. If I were Astrid, I’d drink rose hip tea and limp dramatically across the snow. Unfortunately, I tried that in real life and… yeah. Didn’t work.

Rapid weight gain sucks. There’s no poetic framing for it, no softly-lit recovery story to dress it up. I don’t know if it’s over yet – I still have around 10kg (22lbs) to go until I’m “healthy.” And honestly? At this rate, I could be there in two weeks. Yay, I guess. “Healing.”

That said – some things are shifting. I’m seeing the return of hormones little clues that my body is waking up again in more ways that infuriate me.

The Return of Shark Week

Around the same time the oedema started (which, yes, is still present and still awful), my hormones decided to flip the switch from off to on.
And in what universe does that make sense?

I’m still underweight. I haven’t followed any of the supposed rules:
I haven’t been eating 2500+ calories a day, I haven’t been sedentary. I’ve had a couple of intense extreme hunger days, and somehow gained 3kg overnight, twice, just to spite the laws of physics

And yet – my period came back.

It looks like progress. It even is progress. But it’s not the kind of progress I’m celebrating. Because along with it came every lovely feature of perimenopause that I thought I’d escaped for a while: Brain fog, anxiety, insomnia, mood swings, utter hormonal chaos.

All those recovery promises about feeling calmer and clearer and more stable once your body starts regulating again? Yeah. Those don’t apply when perimenopause is the thing regulating you now.

I’m back to barely sleeping. Waking up with a sense of dread type of anxiety and unease that doesn’t shift with coping skills or calming strategies. The only thing that cuts through it is my Quetiapine at night – and that’s not recovery. That’s chemical sedation.

It’s just another recovery “benefit” to make me feel completely uncomfortable in my own skin.

Pretending I Don’t Have an Eating Disorder

Everything I’ve written so far has been triggering – and honestly, at times, devastating. I’m pretty sure perimenopause was one of the reasons I relapsed. Rapid weight gain didn’t help either, especially when you’ve developed a pathological fear of weight gain thanks to having anorexia.

I’ve cried a lot. For the pain. For the exhaustion. For how much effort it takes to even exist in this body. I wake up everyday, feel the full weight of my body as I try to sit up, and physically struggle to lift myself on knees that feel like they’re splintering under the pressure. Then I have to do recovery all over again.

Strangely, pretending I don’t have an eating disorder actually helps with food choices. I’ll ask myself, what would I do if I didn’t have this voice in my head?
“Oh – I’d have milk and biscuits right now, not rice cakes.”
It even helps when I’m trying to figure out if I’m hungry. I often try to talk myself out of it, especially if I’ve just eaten. But hunger after eating is normal in recovery. It’s my body trying to gain weight. It’s not a trick. It’s not me being “bad.”

I’m also working on letting go of “eating for function.” I used to say: this meal has the same calories but is more satiating – so I’ll eat that instead of the thing I actually want. Now I’m trying to unlearn that. Trying to trust that wanting milk and biscuits is not a flaw. It’s a signal.

But this trick – pretending I don’t have an ED – falls apart when reality shoves me back into it. When my leggings that I wore YESTERDAY suddenly don’t fit today. When my hormones come flooding back and make my brain feel like it’s short-circuiting. That’s when the truth hits hard: I do have an eating disorder. I am in recovery. And it sucks. And it sucks even more, knowing I’m not even eating enough to cause a 6kg weight gain.

I keep wishing it was over.
And not wishing it was over.
Because I don’t know if I can survive another overnight 3kg gain.
And I don’t know if I can survive not recovering, either.

Sorry, Not Sorry.

I’m sorry this isn’t the aesthetic healing journey. This isn’t a polished, soft-focus blog about how I lovingly restored my relationship with food, journalled in the sun, and “got my period back” by eating cake and smiling through it.

Yes, I got my period back.
No, I didn’t do any of the things they tell you to do to make that happen.
No, my relationship with food is still a work in progress and I have to pretend I don’t have an ED to make better food choices.
No, I haven’t even eaten cake or pizza yet.
And yes – rapid weight gain sucks.

But this is recovery. And I’m not going to apologise for being honest about it.
I’m not going to slap an Instagram-friendly “my body is healing” caption on top of oedema that’s crippling my knees and crushing my joints just to make it easier to look at.

I haven’t even been able to blog properly, because my brain is running on mental hunger 24/7. I think about food all the time – so much more than I ever did before. It is absolutely maddening.

I can’t even focus on the fact that I’ve had swollen glands for weeks, or that I’m waiting on blood test results, or that I’m still not okay in so many other ways.
All my attention is swallowed by recovery. By food. By planning. By fighting myself.

When can I eat next?
What should I eat next?
Can I eat now? Should I wait?
Is this mental hunger? Should I honour it?
Let’s inventory every food in the cupboard again.
What should I buy next time I go out? Will they have the yoghurt I like? What if they don’t?
What other meals can I make? Maybe I should plan out my food for the week?
Maybe I need to research more foods
What if I eat and my weight rapidly shifts again, maybe I should try and distract myself?
I NEED CEREAL, BISCUITS, ICE CREAM ALL OF IT RIGHT NOW

I live in a brain that won’t shut up, in a body that hurts constantly, and in a recovery process that is so loud it drowns out everything else.

Right now, most of the time, I am simply waiting until I can eat again

• while being in pain
• while feeling heavy
• while utterly exhausted
• while pretending, somehow, that this is what healing is supposed to look like.

But still – I continue to walk across the bridge.

I keep walking, crying my eyes out, with a swollen knee that screams with every step.
I carry this 6kg overburdened backpack – this body I can’t take off and leave behind – and I drag it forward anyway.

Why?

Because one day, I’ll eat pizza with my son and just be in the moment.
Because one day, I’ll play video games again without calculating how many calories I’ve burned by sitting still and thinking too much about the lore of Biscoff and not the lore of Cyberware.
Because one day, I’ll blog again without it being a distraction to not eat, and wont continually think about food while writing like I am now.
Because one day, I’ll be able to read New Scientist and be able to read about space without it reminding me of chocolate bars and then making me hungry again.

Because one day, this part will be over.
Recovery sucks, but I continue to do it anyway.

Shared this song before, but it’s my current on repeat song, because you just gotta keep on keeping on. :-