The Messy, Raw, and Real Reality of Eating Disorder Recovery

Welcome back to the Bite by Bite Podcast.

Recovery isn’t linear and it doesn’t always look inspiring. Sometimes it’s a mix of “look how far I’ve come” and “the dumpster is still on fire”. In this honest episode of the Bite by Bite Podcast, Kait shares a raw, unfiltered look at what eating disorder recovery feels like in real time.

From emotional setbacks to small victories, she opens up about symptoms she’s still managing, why recovery can still feel exhausting, daily tools and coping strategies that keep her grounded, and how she stays committed even when motivation is low.

Whether you're in recovery yourself or supporting someone who is, this episode is a reminder that progress can be messy, but still meaningful and so worth it.

Episode Topics

• Kait’s current state of symptoms (2:25)
• Struggles that still exist for Kait  (13:55)
• Habits & tools Kait uses daily (18:39)

Content Warning: This episode contains brief mentions of eating disorder behaviors that Kait has previously engaged in. Please listen in a way that feels safe for you and your recovery. 

Connect with Kait

@bitebybiterecovery

bitebybiterecovery@gmail.com

RELATED EPISODES:

TRAILER

FROM HIDDEN TO HEARD: Reclaiming My Voice in Eating Disorder Recovery

THE SECRET THAT ATE ME ALIVE: My 10-Year Eating Disorder Recovery Timeline 

Affiliate Links

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FIND THE GOOD 

Chapters

• 2:25 Kait's current state of symptoms
• 13:55 Struggles that still exist for Kait
• 18:39 Habits & tools Kait uses daily

Transcript

UNKNOWN: 0:02

Thank you.

SPEAKER_00: 0:34

Hey everyone, and welcome to Bite by Bite. the podcast that takes you step-by-step through the messy, beautiful, and real journey of my struggle with an eating disorder and my recovery. I'm Kate, and I'm here to share my experiences, lessons, and the wisdom that I've gathered along the way. Here, I share it all, the raw, the real, and the uncensored, so those who can relate know they're not alone in the tough moments. And for those of you who haven't battled an eating disorder, your attention is just as important in helping to edge Before we dive in, please remember that while I hope my story and reflections can be helpful, this podcast is not a substitute for professional treatment. If you are struggling or need extra support, please reach out to a qualified mental health professional. In today's episode, I'll be sharing my current recovery status. I'll be talking about how I take recovery day by day, how I stay committed, my recovery wins, and even the things I still struggle with. For those of you who follow me on Instagram, you may remember my post from April 28th where I shared some of the symptoms that I've experienced from my eating disorder. In this episode, I will be sharing updates in regard to some of those symptoms. This episode is pretty cool because I enjoy reflecting on how far I've come and I'm most excited about sharing it with you. And one more thing, this podcast is explicit because if I'm going to do something, there's no way in hell I'm going to leave my personality out of it. So let's dive in.

UNKNOWN: 2:07

Thank you.

SPEAKER_00: 2:12

Okay, so one of the symptoms that I referenced on my Instagram post on April 28th was that I lost my menstrual cycle for years. I lost my menstrual cycle because of my eating disorder. And to females who are listening, some of you may be thinking that sounds amazing, but it is a very big sign that something is wrong. It is a very big sign that your body does not have the capacity to do what it needs to do. So I lost my menstrual cycle for years because my body was trying to conserve any amount of energy that it could because it was so malnourished. About a year ago, my cycle returned. To this day, it is still very irregular and unpredictable. But the symptoms that I experience in regard to my menstrual cycle are the same as they were prior to me losing my menstrual cycle years ago. So for example, I noticed a shift in mood. I'm more irritable the week before that my menstrual cycle was coming. I'm more hungry. I'm more tired. And then I noticed a decrease in appetite the week my menstrual cycle arrived. So where I'm at in recovery, I really need to be cautious of the menstrual cycle symptoms and being sure that I'm listening to my body and giving my body what it needs. Another symptom that I experienced was a significant amount of hair loss from my scalp. So when I'm in the shower and I wash my hair, I shampoo it, I condition it. Every time that I'm rinsing, I am losing handfuls of hair each time, each run through to get the soap out. Every time I brush my hair, I could take the hair out of my brush and ball it off into a softball size and I know that that's not very appeasing to hear but it's true if I style it I have to vacuum my bathroom floor after because there's a significant amount of hair that just needs to be cleaned up so over the past six months I have noticed that there have been drastic improvements in this I'm not losing as much hair as I once used to but unfortunately I have noticed some bald spots in my scalp from years of this symptom occurring so I'm just hoping hopeful that the more I stay committed to recovery and the more I'm consistent with what I need to do, that those bald spots will soon be no longer. All right, hunger cues. Hunger cues are very tricky, both when you're entrenched in your eating disorder and then when you're trying to recover from it. Over the years, my hunger cues have ebbed and flowed. They have come, they have gone, come again. I lost them again. It's never really been consistent when I was with my eating disorder. When I went to treatment in At that point, I hadn't had a hunger cue in probably over a year. And that's scary because when you're entrenched in your eating disorder, there is no argument anymore of ignoring your hunger cue or going against what your body needs. There's really no decision anymore because you're physically not feeling hungry. So you just don't eat when you're not hungry. And when I was entrenched in my ed, it was difficult for me to actually admit or even realize that I was restrained. because I genuinely didn't feel hungry at times. And then on the flip side of that, when I was in recovery, it's difficult to eat because you are not hungry. So it feels abnormal in the sense that you are eating when you're not hungry. And it is tough to commit to eating when your hunger cues are not there. And I have learned that the hunger cues really mean that your body no longer trusts you. My body learned that if it sent a hunger cue I was not going to respond. So again, in order to conserve any amount of energy that I could, it stopped using energy to send me hunger cues because I showed it that I wasn't going to respond. Coincidentally, my hunger cues are in full swing and they're pretty normal. I'm hungry in the morning, afternoon, dinnertime, and in between for snacks. They're pretty normal hunger cues. But when I first committed to recovery again the second time around, I did have to go back to mechanical eating because my hunger cues were not there. And if they were, they were very inconsistent. So for those of you who don't know, mechanical eating is pretty much when you have designated times that you're going to eat. So there was a designated time that I would eat breakfast, snack, lunch, snack, dinner. And I had to do that for a long time because my body still didn't trust me. So it wasn't setting those hunger cues. And over time, once you refeed yourself, your body will naturally begin to trust you again, and it will start setting those hunger cues. So once the hunger cues came back, I was able to listen to them again, get rid of the mechanical eating. And presently, as I'm recording this, my hunger cues are fully present and I listen to them. Sometimes my body wants a little less, sometimes my body wants a little more, and I'm okay with that. My biggest thing right now is listening to the hunger cues, but also listening to what my body needs. What is my body craving? One of the symptoms that I didn't experience until the second time around when I committed to was reactive hypoglycemia, which is when someone eats and their blood sugar drops. And it is common with people with restrictive eating disorders because they have been restricting and malnourished and not eating enough for so long that when they start eating normal amounts again, it's almost like their body doesn't know what to do with the amount of food and insulin that it's getting. So the body reacts by dropping the sugar. And I could be a professional. This is just through work with my nutritionist and my personal experience, but essentially when someone eats, their blood sugar drops and you experience the symptoms of dizziness, weakness, lightheadedness, and all of the symptoms that occur when someone's blood sugar drops regardless of the reason. This is something that is newer and when I first started committing to recovery again the second time around, it happened all the time. It didn't really happen as drastically after snacks, but it happened pretty significantly after every meal I ate because those are obviously bigger amounts. And it got to the point where I was carrying juice with me, fruit snacks, candy, things just loaded with sugar just in case because there were times that I didn't have those on me and I would be on a walk with Keela and trying not to fall over. And it was just a mess. But since my body began to trust me again and I'm eating consistently, I haven't experienced that in a couple of months. So that is a very good sign that my body is kind of getting back to normal. It's starting to trust me again and yeah i still carry this fruit snacks around though because i enjoy them another symptom that was really hard to manage and work through when committing to recovery again was delayed gastric emptying which is simply a fancy way of saying feeling very very full very very quickly when your body is restricted for a long period of time it hangs on to any amount of food that it does get longer so it delays the digestion process so that it is slower a to can energy, but B, because it really doesn't know when the next food is coming. So when I committed to recovery again and was committing to eating what I should be eating, it would be very hard to finish meals because I would not even be halfway through and I was feeling full to the point of almost wanting to throw up because it was so uncomfortable. And it's not fun, but over time, the more consistent that I was, that went away. And now there are times that I I feel that after a meal or there are times when I finish a meal and I want seconds. So it feels really good to be back to normal and to not have to feel like I'm force feeding myself when my body is telling me, holy cow, I'm so full. But that is something that needs to be worked through in recovery. And it's very hard and it's very uncomfortable because it feels abnormal because the whole goal is to listen to your body and give it what it needs. And when your body is telling you that, I'm way too full and you're going against it. It feels very not normal. So I'm happy that I made it through that process and now I just listen to those hunger cues and there isn't a point that I'm ever really overly full like that anymore. The next three symptoms I'm going to touch on are pretty small symptoms in the grand scheme of things. So one of them is I was always cold when I was entrenched in my eating disorder. This one is still probably the one that's the most present, but it is not as bad as it used to be. I'm really not sure if this symptom is directly related or caused only by my eating disorder because I always remember as a kid being cold a lot, or I don't know if it's just because I'm older and my body temperature is running higher, but for as long as I can remember, I was always freezing, no matter what the temperature was. It could be 85 degrees outside and I'm wearing a hoodie and I'm not dying. But presently, there are times I'm still cold in situations where I feel like I shouldn't but now that I'm committing to recovery and slash or getting older, I do feel too warm a lot of the time. So I guess that's a good sign. When I was entrenched in my eating disorder, I could not get any sleep whatsoever. And that kind of seems weird because you would think, oh, someone who's malnourished and not eating and not energizing themselves should have no problem sleeping because they have no energy. But there would be times that I would be so tired that I just like fall asleep take a little nap but I could sleep for like an hour and then I would be up and not I would still be tired I would still want to go to sleep but I had such bad insomnia that the entire night would be tossing and turning tossing and turning tossing and turning and it wasn't fun because a lot of that time spent was thinking about food was thinking about oh I should eat something or oh I'm kind of hungry or oh I didn't eat much today maybe I shouldn't Maybe I shouldn't. Just having that eating disorder internal argument when you're trying to sleep and you couldn't get any sleep. And then on top of that, and because of that, when I was entrenched in eating disorder, I was an irritable bitch all of the time because I was hungry. I was hangry, actually. I wasn't sleeping. Your eating disorder makes you miserable. So add that on top of it. I was just probably not pleasant to be around. I didn't feel pleasant myself. I was miserable. And now I sleep like a baby. Holy shit, do I sleep like a baby. I am so happy. There are times I'm like, okay, I can't wait to go to bed just because my sleep is so good now that I'm so thankful for it. And yeah, I'm a female. There are probably times I'm a little bitchy or a little irritable, but overall, I'm happy. I feel back to myself. So I'm very glad that those two symptoms have subsided because holy shit, I briefly mentioned this before but I really just want to jump in here quickly and say that yes I experienced all of these symptoms but I am not a medical professional and I am not saying that everyone with an eating disorder experiences these symptoms nor am I saying that if you experience these symptoms you have an eating disorder. What I am trying to convey here is that as you know I struggled with an eating disorder for over 10 years and these are the main symptoms that I have experienced. My My experience can be very different than anyone else's. And I am not a medical professional, as I have stated a couple of times now. So please just know that everything that I just shared is my experience and my experience only. All right, my current struggles and what is still hard for me. Yes, I have committed to recovery. Yes, the progress I have made is tremendous, but there are still things I have to stay on top of and there are still things that I still struggle with day to day. So because my eating disorder served as a coping mechanism for my emotions for so long, the emotions that I do experience now are very overwhelming and intense because I have never allowed myself to fully feel them before. Positive emotions are fine. They are still intense, but I'm happy about that. You know, being really happy or being really excited makes things better in a lot of ways. It makes life better. The negative emotions are what sucks. The anxiety is sometimes overwhelming because I have always avoided it or coped with it through my eating disorder, and I never really let myself feel the anxiety aside from identifying it and then using my eating disorder as a coping mechanism. So presently, I'm spending a lot of time making sure that I take the time to feel my feelings and not avoid them. And that is hard and it sucks and it's not always fun, but it is something that I have to do because I need to find new ways to cope and deal with shit that is not related to my eating disorder. The second thing is going to sound a little weird to people who do not understand or can't relate to this experience, but there are times that I'm still afraid of how to be someone or live my life and what I will do without my eating disorder. There are times that I, well, there are not times, I think I just overall still am grieving my eating disorder. You know, and grieving the eating disorder is very important, and it's a common part of recovery for everyone, and that's what I'm currently facing pretty much daily. So through the anorexia, my behaviors were more than just an eating disorder. They were a coping mechanism. They were a sense of control. They were a a friend in a chaotic world. It provided me with a sense of structure, a sense of safety. And when I committed to recovery, I had to no longer abide by the rules and rigidity of my eating disorder. I had to let that all go. And that feels like losing something that helped me survive in many ways. Yes, my coping mechanism of my eating disorder was and is very unhealthy, but at the end of the day, it served its purpose. Recovery includes identifying what the eating disorder did for me and replacing those behaviors of my disorder with other healthier alternatives. I have to find more appropriate and effective coping skills. I have to let go of the fact that I cannot control everything that happens in my life. And I have to separate my eating disorder from my identity. And I have to provide myself with a sense of structure and safety without my eating disorder. I have to get back in the driver's seat myself. I have to start living my life for me the way that I want to without even considering my eating disorder. Grooving the eating disorder allows people in recovery to A, acknowledge that, yes, okay, it did something for us. Great. But more importantly, B, letting it go and saying, yes, you did this for me, but your time is up. So now I need to make room for something better. Since I've become pretty public through this podcast and through the Instagram, I'm very more hyper aware of people around me. Are they looking at me differently? Are they wondering or thinking differently of me? Are they watching me eat to make sure that I eat an adequate amount? Not necessarily in a bad way, but I just know there are a lot of people who may have been shocked to learn about my eating disorder. And it makes me wonder, oh, like, do they look at me differently? And I want to be clear, this isn't necessarily about what people think about me in general, but more so, is she actually recovered? Is she actually eating? Et cetera, et cetera. And this is something that I am slowly learning to let go of because None of that shit matters. All that matters is that I'm doing what I need to do for myself and that I know that that is true. Choosing recovery daily. Yes, this is something that I do every day, but it is hard. When you combine it with all of the common stressors of life and adult responsibilities and all of that nonsense, having to make a choice every second of every day is tough. So I don't wake up and say, okay, recovery today, I just say, okay, what is going to be my recovery choice right now? I just take it step by step, moment to moment, and literally bite by bite. So I'm going to end this episode on a positive note, and I'm going to share with you the current things I do daily to stay on track and to stay committed to my recovery. I don't know if there's any A Court of Thorns and Roses fans listening, but if there are, I'm so excited that you're here. But if you aren't there is a quote in one of the books i think it's um I don't even remember which book it is, but it's in the series. And there's a quote in the book that says, only you can decide what breaks you. And I remember reading that and just, it hit me. I remember like rereading that quote like 10 times right in a row. I have that page on my Kindle highlighted and bookmarked because it was just a kind of like a revelation. Like, am I going to let my eating disorder break me? No, I'm not. So I just wanted to share that because That quote was kind of a big pivot point in my recovery and also a big pivot point in how I looked at recovery in general. So prior to my second time committing to recovery, I used to think of as recovery as the end goal. That's that destination. That's where we're going. That's where the one way ticket is. And that I feel like that thought process, that mindset was really a big part of why I failed at recovery, among other things. But I think that this played a huge role because I think the end goal of recovery is daunting like that shit's hard so it didn't work for me so what I do now is I don't focus on the end goal of being recovered or recovery as a destination I don't focus on fighting my eating disorder every day and like kicking it out I just focus on recovery day by day hour by hour a minute by minute and I really don't fight with my eating disorder to go away anymore because either that takes a lot of energy and I'd rather put the energy towards my recovery, but I just pretty much focus on learning to live with it as I work towards recovery and acknowledging that it's going to take some time to go away. So every day I set small daily goals. I don't write them down or really elaborate on them because I don't really have the time, but I do internally ask myself questions. What is recovery going to look like today? What is my one thing that I want to do pro-recovery today before I go to bed? What can I do to support my recovery? And that could be, what can I do to support my recovery this morning or right now or later on or at dinner, whatever the context may be. I just ask myself what can I do to make sure that I stay on track and that can be a big solution or it could be tiny for example it's bike park season so a big thing for me now is knowing that when I go to the bike park I'm going to be there all day I'm going to be there like eight nine ten hours a day and that doesn't mean I'm biking the whole time it just means I am going to be away from home and not immediately around food if I need it so what I do now is I pack a cooler I pack a cooler of Well, I do eat breakfast at home, but I pack a cooler of a shit ton of snacks. I pack a cooler of lunch, and I make sure that I have enough fuel to get me through the day to keep me nourished, to keep me on the track of recovery. During the work week, I make sure that I pack breakfast, lunch, and snacks every single day. And there may be times when a coworker says, oh, do you want to get lunch? And I will. Even if I have a lunch packed, I will still get lunch if I want to. and just save that lunch I packed for the next day because, again, it's all about flexibility. So I make sure that I take steps to already be ready for recovery choices by having meals packed, snacks packed, drinks packed, etc. But I'm also open to being flexible if the opportunity arises and I am in the mood for it. I still go to weekly support groups through the National Alliance of Eating Disorders weekly. A big mistake that I've made in the past is that when I start getting on a good path again, I started feeling better, I stopped doing the shit that helped me. And a big thing that helped me this past time around was going to support groups virtually with the National Alliance of Eating Disorders, and I still attend them. They have about six support groups a week for pro-recovery, and I try to get to at least two or three of them a week. And there are times that I don't participate in terms of sharing or speaking, but I do listen. I do make it a point to attend those support groups because because it is a sense of community and it's so nice to hear and know other people's experiences and opinions and thoughts and things they're dealing with because it helps you feel less alone and also is very motivating. Now I also hold myself accountable and I advocate for myself, which that doesn't sound like a very big thing because I should be doing that anyway. But when you have an eating disorder, it's part of the personality traits that you have that predispose you to the eating disorder that you are or can be a people pleaser. And that is not everyone with an eating disorder. And that doesn't mean that every people pleaser has an eating disorder. It just means that for me, that is the case. So I don't, brush it under the rug anymore. I hold myself accountable. If I have a slip up, I call myself out, but I don't dwell on it to the point that I ruin the track that I'm on. I advocate for myself. I tell people what I need. I no longer hope and wait. And now I'm just not afraid of making it known what I need and what I want. For example, a couple weeks ago, I went to a concert with a friend and we were planning our travel plans. And she was like, well, I can get to your house this time. We'll be here for this time. I was like, okay, perfect. solid but i need to eat dinner so i think my plan is to pick up a sub from big y and bring it with us she was all in and she was like well yeah we need to figure something out i need to eat dinner too and that sounds so silly and so simple but it's just really huge for me to say that because in the past i probably would have just not said anything and just hoped that we got food at some point somewhere um and if we didn't well not good pick Backing off of number three, a big trigger to my eating disorder is making sure that my needs emotionally are not met. So I no longer give energy to things that make me anxious because my anxiety has been and probably always will be a catalyst to engaging in eating disorder behaviors. So if something makes me anxious, I stay away from it if I can or I communicate about it. I really try to identify what is causing the anxiety when that's necessary, and I will communicate the thoughts and the feelings and the needs if it's another person or whatever the context may be. Even though this relates to day-to-day things, it has potential to adversely impact my eating disorder if I do not set boundaries and instead put my needs on the back burner. I used to think that putting my needs first or even having my needs met was very selfish, and I have learned that that was actually a mindset that was being caused by the eating disorder and again my eating disorder was the coping skill for a long time because I would just brush it under the rug and now I just say it if I have something I need to bring up to you I'll say it if I don't like something I'll say it if I don't want to do something I'll let you know and sometimes people can take that as being blunt or mean or rude or whatever but I've also learned that that's not really my problem because it becomes my problem when I don't get my message across because then I'm anxious and I'm uncomfortable and that's where the eating disorder thrives. Yeah, exactly. Perfectionism made me believe that my process to recovery or my journey to recovery had to be perfect. There was no margin of error. There was no room to make mistakes. So I had to learn to let that go. And now... If a slip-up happens, I accept it. I identify it, I call it out, and I move on. I go back to asking myself the questions of, okay, this happened, but what can I do now? What can I do next for recovery? And I make sure that my next move is not impacted off of the slip-up. I make sure that my next move is 100% pro-recovery. And I don't have a lot of slip-ups anymore. They're not happening often, but if and when they do, I try my best to be compassionate with myself while still holding myself accountable and remind myself to focus on the goal and not my mood because a lot of the times i would just say oh i'm pissed off or oh i don't have the energy for recovery right now and that is so easy for the eating disorder to come right back in swoop in so i try my best not to do that and so far so good um i have to be on my a game a lot but it's worth the work because i can't even say that i'm 100 recovered yet and i already feel so much better. So that's where I'm at now, 10 plus years in, still navigating recovery one moment at a time. And what I've shared today is not a checklist of all the things I have conquered. It's a reflection of how recovery continues to ask for my attention, my honesty, and my effort every single day. Some days I feel proud, some days I still feel scared, but I'm learning that both can exist together and that letting go of my eating disorder does not mean forgetting what it gave me. It means choosing something more life-giving in its place. If anything from today's episode resonated with you, whether you're in your own recovery journey, supporting someone else's, or just listening to learn, I hope this reminded you that this process is not about perfection. It's about presence and persistence and giving yourself permission to show up honestly, bite by bite. Thank you so much for joining me for this episode of Bite by Bite. I'm so grateful to be able to share this space with you and I hope today's conversation brought you some insight, comfort, or maybe even a sense of community. Remember, no matter what you're healing from, healing isn't perfect and every step you take does matter. If you enjoyed this episode, consider sharing it with someone who might need it, leaving a review or subscribing on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts so you never miss an episode. And if you want to connect more, you can find me on Instagram at Bite by Bite Recovery. I'd love Love to hear your thoughts. Your stories are just to say hi. Until next time, let's keep taking life by bite. See you later.