Missing your eating disorder when you are in recovery is a really common experience. It served a purpose, whatever that was for you, and was likely to be a significant part of your life.

That can make it really tempting to go back, to a place that felt safe and familiar. But there are lots of reasons not to, and lots of positives about recovery that make it worth the fight.

In the long run, it didn’t make you happy
You might look back with nostalgia and think about how much better you felt in a smaller body or being comforted by food in some way. But overall, eating disorders bring misery upon people’s lives, and there’s a reason why you started recovery.

Socialising was difficult
Having an active and flexible social life can be impossible when you have an eating disorder. You might not be able to go out eating and drinking – which lets face it are a huge part of socialising. Or, you might manage to go but suffer overwhelming anxiety as a result. You might cancel plans to exercise or binge, or be constantly distracted from the conversations going on around you because you’re focused on food and calories. Some people end up hiding away because socialising is too exhausting or they are too ashamed of their bodies to go out. Ultimately, eating disorders can be very lonely.

They bring huge amounts of anxiety
I was anxious every minute of the day when my life was controlled by anorexia, and in the first few months of recovery. I was constantly worried about weight gain, food, calories, how much I had exercised, if my clothes looked okay, if people were judging me, if I was bigger than other people. I also, despite putting myself in dangerous situations, worried that I was going to die, that I’d permanently harmed myself and that I’d never get better. Whatever the reasons behind it are, anxiety is often a primary emotion when you live with an eating disorder.

Life revolves around food
Whether it’s avoiding food, setting strict routines around it, bingeing (either planned or spontaneously), shopping, preparing, planning…the list goes on. It’s very hard to be an active participant in your own life when everything you do has to be centred around what you feel you can and can’t eat.

Concentration is ruined
It’s really hard to focus when you have an eating disorder. This is not just because your mind is elsewhere, whether thinking about food or your body in some way shape or form, but also because starved brains do not function in the same way as healthy and nourished brains. Concentration is usually affected very early on when struggled with restrictive behaviours, and that can affect all areas of life including work, studying and leisure.

Sleeping is difficult
Getting a full nights sleep can be really hard, and never feeling rested is likely to have a knock on effect on things like mood and anxiety, as well as resilience. Ironically for a lot of people, the more nutrient starved they are, the more difficult sleep gets. Often people will experience disrupted sleep, nightmares and dreams about food, and anxiety making it very difficult to fall asleep and stay asleep. Other factors might also make this difficult, for example people who struggle with laxative or diuretic abuse are likely to be up and down a lot in the night which is not conducive to restful sleep.

Life felt like hard work
Getting through even just the next hour with an eating disorder can feel impossible, let alone the day or week. Everything about life can feel challenging for different reasons depending on what type of eating disorder or behaviours you struggle with, but rarely does life feel easy for any prolonged period of time.

It made the people around you sad and worried
Many people live with eating disorders in secret. But for those of us who didn’t always have that experience, where our eating disorders disrupted the lives of the people around us too, the impact of that can be devastating. This is especially true because they can significantly impact relationships and cause friction and arguments, leading to everybody feeling upset and guilty.

The goal posts moved every day
Particularly with restrictive eating disorders, life can often feel like chasing whatever the next goal is to satisfy it. That never lasts though – every new weight, lowest BMI, extra steps taken, less calories eaten, becomes immediately not good enough. There is always a little bit further to go, and this is how they can end up being deadly.

They numb emotions
Although this can seem like a positive, and for many people this is the function their eating disorder serves, it applies to positive emotions too. Whilst it can be a relief to not experience feelings like anger, it also becomes almost impossible to feel happy and relaxed and excited. And really, there are still negative emotions that often get amplified, like guilt and anxiety. It’s not worth numbing the bad feelings at the expense of feeling the good ones.

If you’re feeling nostalgic for being sick, or the pull of your eating disorder is getting overwhelming, I hope this list is helpful in reminding you why backwards steps aren’t the way to go. You will likely have your own reasons too – I recommend sitting down to find them. Write them down, stick them around your house, put them in your phone. Whatever you need to do to remind yourself to keep going.

You can do this, life is so much better on the other side.