How am I feeling? Well…

Today was one of those really hard ED days.
Everything felt difficult. Every meal was a struggle.

And here’s the part I hate: it feels harder to have a bad day when I look “healthy” now. Like the moment you gain enough weight, everyone assumes it’s fixed and at the same time I wish that was true too. Haven’t I worked hard enough? Haven’t I gained enough? Why does it feel like I’m suddenly going backwards?

On good days, I pretend I don’t have an ED, and try to make choices as if I never had one. Clippy – what I call my ED voice – still yells, but I don’t listen. I’ll eat past my meal plan because I’m still hungry, and this pretence almost works. Sure, I’ll still worry about weight gain from eating one extra thing, but I can push through. I have even had a few good days where I don’t exactly hate my body – although I’m still very far from loving it. On those days, Clippy’s just some annoying background grunt. A low level enemy in a game on casual difficulty.

But then a bad day hits, and suddenly Clippy isn’t just background noise anymore – he’s the final boss on insanity mode. Every bite becomes a fight. Eating enough takes everything I have, and I’m drained before the day is even half over. I want to skip meals entirely, so I delay them for as long as I can. And when I finally sit down, I notice small restrictions creeping back in – halving the higher-calorie parts of my meal, or cutting them out without even realising. It doesn’t feel like a conscious decision, it just… happens.

On bad days, I also find myself hyper-aware of my body – its size, how much it’s changed, how quickly. It triggers a wave of anxiety that feels impossible to contain. I become acutely aware of bones, muscle, fat, the sheer weight of it all. My knees ache under the load, and every step reminds me: I have a completely different body. Anorexia made me feel lighter, like I was floating somewhere just above myself. Recovery is like crashing back to Earth after two years on the International Space Station, suddenly aware of gravity pressing on every part of me.

Today, was that kind of bad day.

I know eating disorders aren’t weight disorders – they’re mental illnesses that affect people of all sizes. I’ve said that a million times. But I’ve still gained over 22 lbs. I’ve shown up every single day. So why is it still not enough? Why do I still have to have bad days? People say, “just eat.” I have eaten. I look healthy. And yet my brain still reminds me on bad days: you’re still struggling.

Even meals I’ve eaten every day in recovery suddenly turn into battles. I’ve been consistent – same meal for three months. And then, out of nowhere, I’m crying over a burrito because it was easy yesterday but feels impossible today. Not because “oh no, burrito bad,” but because the whiplash wrecks me. I’ve worked so hard, and here I am, undone by the same food I ate happily 24 hours ago.

That’s not how eating disorders work, though I wish it was. I wish consistency cured it. But the struggle doesn’t vanish. It didn’t after 12 years of recovery last time, and people still tell me, “maybe it’ll be different this time.” Why would it be? I’ve had Clippy in my head since I was 7. I’m 41. Why would this recovery magically erase him?

Brains don’t work like that. Maybe the truth is I’ll always have him – like a more deranged Johnny Silverhand, permanently installed in my head, while everyone else insists he’ll eventually pack up and leave. And if he doesn’t, what then? Did I “do recovery wrong”? Am I broken? Or is it just that my story doesn’t fit the pretty montage people want to see? The “look at me now” aesthetic. Some mental illnesses don’t end. But it’s easier to blame people for not doing enough mindfulness, or yoga, or whatever the new cure-all is.

And here’s the other thing no one tells you: food doesn’t cure your other mental illnesses either. If it did, with how much Biscoff I’ve eaten, I’d be the sanest person alive. Instead, recovery just hands me back all my emotions. The ones I numbed. Now I feel them – raw, loud, overwhelming.

Recovery is whack-a-mole. Beat back one mental illness, and the others pop up. Anxiety, bipolar, trauma – they were never gone. Just muffled under hunger. Now they’re here, louder than ever.

And grief. God, grief. Not eating let me live in a kind of emotional delusion. I still cried over losing my best friend, but I wasn’t devastated or so intensely angry. Now I am. Food ripped the numbness away, and underneath it was the full weight of her absence. And that hurts in a way no meal plan can fix.

Of course, there are good days. Days where I laugh, care, find passion again. I love those days. I’ve been playing Cyberpunk 2077 again, my son has been enjoying watching me play it too. But I always seem to pay for them with days like this where even escaping to Night City doesn’t help. I’m too exhausted to even pick up the controller let alone concentrate on the game.

If you feel this way too, here’s what I did today: I showed up for food, and nothing else. That was all the strength I had. And that’s enough to bring the good days back eventually. But today? Today I cried over a pain au raisin… and still ate it.