Finding My Way Back To Myself Through Anorexia Recovery

Welcome back to the Bite by Bite Podcast.

Sometimes relapse is part of the process - and that’s okay because we can learn from it. In today’s episode, Kait shares the story of her two very different experiences with eating disorder recovery. The first time, formal treatment. The second time, messy but honest.

Through this conversation, Kait explores what eating disorder recovery really asks of us, why relapse isn't failure, and how to stop performing healing and start truly doing the work.

Episode topics:

• Intro to Kait's 2 recovery chapters (2:39)
• Attempt #1: Kait goes to formal treatment (3:19)
• Treatment structure (6:18)
• Kait's progress externally versus internally (7:00)
• Kait shares the main lessons learned from formal eating disorder treatment (8:00)
• Discharge from treatment (9:29)
• Attempt#2: Honest, messy, and freeing (11:48)
• Strategies/tools Kait continues to use to help her work through her eating disorder recovery (16:07)
• Kait reflects on the journey (21:03) 

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. 

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 

WHERE I'M REALLY AT: The Messy Reality of Eating Disorder Recovery

UNEXPECTED LESSONS: Lessons My Eating Disorder Taught Me About Healing & Self-Worth

THE EATING DISORDER KNOCKED BUT I DIDN'T ANSWER: Choosing Recovery or Relapse

Connect with Kait

@bitebybiterecovery

bitebybiterecovery@gmail.com

Affiliate Links

COMFRT 

FIND THE GOOD 

Chapters

• 2:39 Introduction to Kait's two recovery chapters
• 3:19 Attempt #1: Kait goes to formal treatment
• 6:18 Treatment structure
• 7:00 Kait's progress externally versus internally
• 8:00 Kait shares what she took from treatment
• 9:29 Discharge from formal treatment
• 11:48 Attempt #2: Honest, messy, and freeing
• 16:07 Strategies/tools Kait used and still uses
• 21:03 Kait reflects on the journey

Transcript

SPEAKER_00: 0:00

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 educate and break the societal stigma. 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. Today I'm diving deep into my two very different attempts at recovery and the relapse that happened in between. The first time around, I did everything right. I went to therapy, I followed the rules, and I checked the boxes. And from the outside in, it looked like I was healing. But under the surface, so much was still hidden. Years later, When old patterns returned, I found myself starting over. This time, though, it's slower, messier, and more honest. And in a lot of ways, more real. If you're in recovery, starting again, or just feeling stuck... I hope this conversation speaks to you. In episode 2, which I released back in July, I shared my full eating disorder timeline. In that episode, I briefly mentioned that I went to formal treatment in 2016 and 2017. Flash forward to now, I'm in such a stronger place in my recovery, but getting here, then starting over after a brutal relapse. I've talked a bit about going back to weekly sessions with my nutritionist and therapist, but what I haven't fully shared yet is just how real the second attempt at recovery has been. The commitment is deeper, the work is harder, and at one point, I almost needed to return to formal treatment. I also mentioned how different these two recovery chapters have been, and honestly, I don't think I would be in the second chapter, the one I'm still walking through, if I hadn't hit rock bottom. For a long time, I shamed myself for not recovering the first time, for relapsing, for even having an eating disorder, but I've learned that that kind of talk, it does not help. It does not heal. So I've been rewriting the way I speak to myself. I replaced negative self-talk with compassion. I've replaced self-judgment with honesty. And because of that, I'm stronger mentally, emotionally than I've ever been. As I've previously mentioned in episodes, I went to a partial hospitalization treatment program in October of 2016. This was an intensive five days a week program that was hard, freeing, challenging, frustrating, awful, and healing at the same time. I had no idea what to expect. I had never been to a program for treatment before in my life. I was terrified and I felt helpless. I do remember my first day vividly. My dad drove me. He walked me in. I was standing there at the front desk with my backpack looking like a deer in the headlights. I remember many people walking around the area. The first room I saw was the kitchen. My dad left. I'm still standing there. This woman comes towards me. She was shorter than me and had a big smile on her face. She introduces herself and we walk into the kitchen where there is a whiteboard with names. My name happens to actually be next to hers. This woman is going to be my clinician. I felt like I was her assignment. I was one of the people she was supposed to fix. I saw my name on that board and was in full-blown tears within four seconds. Off to a great fucking start. Right after that, it was time for breakfast. There was many clinicians in the kitchen with us and they were way too cheery for me. Annoying, actually. All of the other people there for the same reason were preparing their breakfast, and I'm just sitting there as if I've never seen a kitchen before. I finally got the courage to put my lunch bag on the table and open it. What was inside? Not much. I remember this lady, I don't even know who she was, say to me, that's all you have? You didn't follow the example meal plan we gave you at your intake? I just stared at her until she left me alone, but what I truly wanted to say was, yes, this is all I brought, and it's more than I wanted to bring. And no, the very reason why I didn't follow my fucking meal plan this weekend is why I'm here. That's all I remember about breakfast. It was a blur. On my first day, though, I do remember lunch. That was awful. They had to supplement me with some food because I did not pack a full meal. For anyone who ever had to go through the refeeding stage of nutritional rehabilitation, you know the feeling of extreme fullness extremely quickly, even after a few bites. Well, this happened to me, and I remember being the last one at the lunch table sitting with one of the counselors while everyone else went back to group. I had to sit at the table and finish my lunch. I remember saying multiple times that I couldn't because I was too full and my stomach was in pain. So instead of eating my meal, I had to drink a boost. What a better option. Looking back, that really pisses me off so badly because how can we expect someone who hasn't eaten a meal in God knows how long to be able to physically handle one all of a heard with what they've been trying to communicate doesn't really sound like the best approach. Anyway, I got through the day and my dad picked me up and we drove home. Rinse, wash, repeat for the next four or so months. formal treatment was very structured. Go to breakfast, go to therapy group, have individual therapy, go to snack, more groups, more therapy, lunch, more therapy, yoga, another snack, more therapy, and then you go home. The groups rotated, and the clinicians, but unfortunately, so did not all of my peers. The rigidity of therapy felt very robotic to me. It was hard to really dive deep into the therapy groups because by the time you're in it, it was time to wrap up. I had to set goals each day. I had to have a challenge meal and a challenge snack each week. But those goals only went so far. Externally, it probably appeared that I was doing much better. I was doing what I was supposed to. I was following my meal plan. I was being honest with my clinician, and I was staying on top of things when I was home and not at program. Internally, I was frustrated. I was annoyed, and I felt like I was someone who needed to be fixed, a puzzle to be solved. I was making a lot of progress nutritionally, but mentally, barely. Not really at all. Looking back, I don't feel like I was hiding this, but I definitely didn't make it known. I think primarily because I wasn't really asked about it. The focus was always on my weight restoration and my nutritional intake. So, I wasn't aware enough to really realize that there were more layers to recovery than following your meal plan. I didn't start to feel frustrated until this past year or so when I really fully committed to recovery and started doing the work. I did learn lots of tools that I could use in treatment, but once I was discharged, I didn't know how to apply them to my real life. I learned quickly that I was not alone and that a lot of people of all ages, genders, and ethnicities struggle with eating disorders of various types and intensities. I took an aversion to Gatorade. There still are days that I can't even look at a Gatorade bottle and cringe. This is because in my treatment environment if my vitals were off, I had to drink a cup of Gatorade. I specifically remember my first day this happened and I didn't want to. One of the counselors said, don't be worried about the minuscule amount of calories in this Gatorade. You'll be fine. Oh, sweetheart. I wish I could not worry. I did develop an interest in yoga, which I continued for about a year after treatment. That was the only type of movement I participated in for a while. And I did learn some things about myself. Overall, I don't think I was there as long as I should have been or as long as I needed to be. I specifically remember the day my clinician said to me, so your weight has increased enough to where insurance won't cover treatment anymore, so we need to plan for your discharge. There was no talk about how I was feeling. There was no talk about what I thought, what I needed, or if I even fully felt better. It was all about the physical weight I restored and the fact that insurance was going to be done because I reached that appropriate medical weight I quickly learned that this is the model. This was the way the system worked. How shitty is that? Just another way the treatment system is broken. In 2017, I was discharged from formal treatment and I took it as a good sign because what else are you supposed to do? There were times I did feel better and there were times everything felt great. I was being discharged so that had to mean that I was better. After discharged, I stayed working with my outpatient nutritionist for about two years. But looking back, there's one consistent thing that irritated me throughout treatment and still with my outpatient nutritionist. I had to be weighed every day. Now, let me be clear. I do understand the importance of weight when you are in weight restoration, but that irritates me because in treatment, numbers aren't important. They don't matter. That is what they preach to us and help us learn when we are in recovery. So if that's the case and that is true, why are we measuring our worth or our progress towards recovery only by our weight? Sure, you can argue it's pertinent information for the refeeding phase to ensure nutritional rehab is happening, but why are we also measuring our mental state, our emotional state? How hypocritical. I remember having a set weight that I had to reach. I don't remember what I thought about it at the time and I don't remember what that weight was. If I had to guess, I'm sure my perfection tendencies were working hard to hit that goal. But looking back now, it feels as if as once I hit my set weight, I was deemed recovered. Again, another focus on the weight only and not the other important aspects. I truly feel the reason why I relapsed so quickly after discharge from formal treatment is because I wasn't fully healed. Because the system focuses way too much on weight and not enough on the mental health part of an eating disorder. In 2018, I was discharged from my nutritionist. I will admit, I did feel a lot better. I ended a relationship I didn't want to be in and I did get back into grad school. Life started to feel normal again. I didn't know it then, but I do know it now. I was not fully recovered. I was secretly always telling myself, I'll gain the weight back now and hit that set weight, but I know what I need to do to get rid of it. Now, I've shared before that I experienced a relapse shortly after I was discharged from formal treatment and And while I won't go into all of the details here, I will say this. It was that relapse that ultimately pushed me toward a deeper, more honest version of recovery. And that's what I will share next, how the two recovery chapters are very different and what changed between them. In episode two, I share my full timeline, so I will not go into all of that here. But in January of 2024, that is when I reached out to my nutritionist again. This is what triggered the way into my recovery journey. When I reached out to my nutritionist, I was looking for help, but I still wasn't fully committed. I didn't become fully committed until about the fall of 24. From January to September of 2024, I truly was trying my best. I was doing the work, I was going to my appointments, I was answering the hard questions and being truthful, or at least I thought I was. Then in September, I hit a wall. There wasn't a day, there wasn't a time, and there was wasn't a specific thing that happened that ultimately triggered my decision to commit to recovery. I think I was just done. I was done battling. I was done being sick. I was done being tired. I was done with it all. I was exhausted. I was frustrated. I was angry. So from September to March, I continued to try my best, but looking back, I still only had one foot in and one foot out. I knew what I needed to do, and I knew what I wanted to do, but I was still holding on to my eating disorder in a lot of ways. March 2025 was the month I was like, I'm truly fucking done. I wrote myself a behavior contract, I signed it, and to this day, I still haven't looked back. I finally told my dad the truth about where I was with everything, and that made moving forward and committing a little easier because I felt like when I spoke it out loud, I let it go in a sense. I had told him that I might try to go back to treatment, but this time I want to find a place I can offer for me something that doesn't result in me taking time away from life. Why did I want that? Because I was able to identify that in my first run of treatment, I had stopped everything. I had withdrawn from my graduate school semester, and I left my job to commit to recovery. It's not that I regret that, because I think it's what I needed in the state I was in. I knew I wasn't going to be able to juggle all three. But where I crumbled was when I went back to the normal routine of life, after I was discharged. I struggled to transition back into the life from treatment and I didn't want that to happen again. I knew at this time I would be able to do both and I wanted to be able to do both because that was what my normal environment would be set up like. So I continued to meet my nutritionist and therapist and we all agreed that a virtual IOP may be beneficial. It took a while to find an in-network place and when I did, I will admit, it did not go well. I didn't even make it through 30 minutes of the first group session because it was not a good environment for me. Most of the people People who were in the group were in high school, and it did not feel right to me. This was frustrating to me because during my intake, I had thought I made it clear in regard to where I was at in life, and at the very least, the intake knew how old I was. After that, I did not go back, but I continued to meet my nutritionist and my therapist. Even though formal treatment did not work out this time, it does not mean that I was giving up. I just knew that I had to step up my game and really dig my heels in if I was going to do this. The second time at recovery is much more successful for many reasons. However, I do think that going to formal treatment about 10 years ago did help because I already had an idea of what this took and I knew I didn't want to go back to the place I was once in. That in itself was motivation for me. At the beginning, the second recovery chapter was frustrating, but looking back, I think it all needed to play out the way it did because it forced me to find it within myself with the help of my team to do this. I knew what I wanted. I just had to act on it. There was a time when I thought that I may never recover. Not only some people could, and unfortunately I was not one of them. My thoughts now? I truly believe I can, and I truly believe anyone can, recover from an eating disorder if they truly commit, have a solid treatment team, and remember their why. Currently, I am not in the place I am now simply because I see my regular team on a regular basis. There are many, many factors. I started telling the truth to myself. When When I was hiding the fact that I was struggling again, it wasn't necessarily that I didn't want anyone else to know. It was more so that I didn't or couldn't admit it to myself. Once I did, I broke through a major barrier that allowed me to take many, many steps forward. I went back to scheduled eating to make sure I stayed on top of things. I set alarms for all meal and snack times. And I chose to do this because I know it is very easy for me to keep myself busy to avoid eating. So by setting alarms, I at least gave myself a choice when it sounded. Am I going to choose recovery today or my eating disorder? This is something that I sometimes still do, specifically during the work week, because I know that my day can get busy very easily and very quickly. I still have those alarms set, and more often than not, when they go off, I had already consumed that meal or snack. I highly recommend this strategy for anyone who uses busyness as a way to avoid or excuse not eating. I started framing my eating disorder thoughts in positive ways, one being to create of this podcast. The second being really looking inward and labeling the purposes is served for me. I learned that my eating disorder was a coping mechanism and I needed to find new ones. I learned that my eating disorder was a way that I could control things and I needed to let go of my need to control because that is impossible. My perfectionism took over when my eating disorder was around and perfectionist does not exist. numbing of my emotions. I needed to start feeling my emotions and processing my thoughts and situations that I am presented with if I no longer wanted to use my eating disorder as an unhealthy coping mechanism. Once I stopped fighting against the disorder and I surrendered and said thank you for your time but I'm moving on, I feel like I separated myself from it which allowed me to finally see myself separate from the eating disorder for the first time in a very long time. I intellectualized the eating disorder. I taught myself about it. I read books. I read peer-reviewed articles. I started learning about it from a perspective as if I didn't even have an eating disorder. By giving my brain factual thoughts around eating disorders and the process of recovery, it took away the power struggle of not believing or arguing that something doesn't apply to me. I am not a unicorn. Science is science and facts are facts. I stopped focusing on the long-term goal of recovery and focused on recovery moment to moment. I literally take it step by step. and bite by bite when it comes to recovery. I ask myself, probably a million times a day, what am I going to do in this very moment that supports my recovery? I stop giving my attention to my eating disorder thoughts. Yes, there are times they still creep in, but instead of labeling them as eating disorder thoughts, I simply take the label away and say something to myself like, oh, it's back. What can we do to support recovery? And I make sure that I say recovery so that my brain rewires its thoughts from the eating disorder label. I reframe every single negative thought that I have. I actually apply this to everything in life, especially the eating disorder, because I know that my eating disorder will try to infiltrate itself into other aspects if I focus on just the eating disorder too much. Even if I cannot reframe the thought in the exact moment, I make sure to jot it down and focus on it later, simply because some thoughts are harder to reframe than others. Once I reframe thoughts, I keep a running note on my phone to be sure I always have access to them. I do my best to journal daily. Even if it's not eating disorder related, I make sure that I get all of my thoughts out because I know that my anxiety is a trigger for my eating disorder. If I cope with my anxiety, I am ultimately preventing my eating disorder from creeping back in. As part of my daily journaling, I journal daily gratitude in the morning and the evening. This allows me to be able to objectively see that there are more important things in life that deserve my attention more than my eating disorder. I listen to my body and I give it what it needs. Oh, I'm still hungry or I'm hungry again? Let's eat. Oh, I'm more tired than usual? Let's go to bed a little earlier, take a nap, or sleep a little later in the morning. Oh, I don't really feel like doing that or going there? I say no without an excessive reason and apology. Insert any feeling and I honor it. I put myself first to protect my recovery which in turn allows me to put all of my energy into the things I care about the most. Letting go of all or nothing thinking If I slip up, I acknowledge it and I move on. If I don't feel like journaling once in a while, it's okay. By letting go of my all or nothing thinking, my perfectionism, and my need to control, I am learning to be more free, more flexible, and ultimately less stressed and less anxious. Throughout the years, throughout the entire journey, my definition and perception of recovery has changed. It started with a rigid perception. Recovery is doing everything perfectly all of the time when it comes to eating. Now, recovery is a process, a journey that is both frustrating and beautiful at the same time. I stopped looking at recovery as the destination and started looking at it in moment-to-moment actions. There were many times in the past where I quote-unquote performed at recovery. What I mean by that is, I was improving my eating disorder behaviors and such, but I was still controlling it in ways that allowed the eating disorder to hang on a little bit. What I have learned is that the biggest danger of this is that you are not only prolonging your recovery process, but you are letting the eating disorder know that it can still hang around. Overall, there are a few key things I have learned. One, recovery is not a straight line, and it definitely is not a performance. What mattered most for me was not doing recovery perfectly, but just showing up honestly and learning from mistakes, especially when it got hard. I am incredibly thankful for my place in recovery, and I'm proud of myself. I have never once said I was proud of myself for any sort of progress that I have made in regard to eating disorder recovery, so not only was that the first time that I just admitted that out loud, but it was the first time I ever said it. Thank you for tuning in. 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 to hear your thoughts. Your stories are just to say hi. Until next time, time, let's keep taking life by bite. See you later.