Food is mood...all the voices in my mind....

Food affects mood so skipping meals causes low and irritable moods. But so does eating when you have a "voice" telling you off for eating, telling you you are a fat failure. Recovered anorexics and bulimics who are weight restored so physically look "normal" mentally still have a constant battle in their head. ( this is alot of the problem with eating disorders treatment...it is rarely available until sufferers reach very low BMI and then are refed with little headwork...and then most of the headwork is focused only on thinking about food and body image which are half of the problem but doesn't deal with the underlying causes such as low self confidence, social anxiety, life problems which all triggered the eating disorder and then patients are classed as recovered based on weight.. meaning mentally you become more tormented then when you were smaller and so mentally aren't recovered). My main mental health problem i now deal with is the eating disorder voice and fighting it daily. I don't make myself sick any more but then I end up in a cycle of restricting eating to low calorie or days when the "voice" is really loud I avoid eating all day by going out for the day with no food or money....because of course that solves the problem...of course not. You then end up feeling physically unwell so then of course have to eat. So the rational Tracy is trying to fight it and have 3 meals and 3 snacks but I'm finding it so hard. (It was heart failure and mental health medication that made me put on 6 stone) and I hated myself for being fat even when I was lower weights....but I carried on working for 17 years despite it and would generally get told I was too high functioning for mental health help despite asking for help. This blog post was triggered today by me trying to explain to some other patients at the group therapy that I go to how I was struggling. People who don't have an eating disorder and non specialist staff don't understand what it's like to live with an intrusive voice in your head constantly telling you your fat, your useless, you upset everybody and whatever other negative things it decides to add in that day. (Which is why I enjoy singing, swimming and spending time with my horse Warwick because they are distractions and uplifting) Like I keep saying I am doing alot better than 4 years ago as I used to also self harm to punish myself for eating and I also tried explaining this to someone today. I self harmed a couple of times as a teenager and first made myself sick when I was 13 but mostly restricted food until I was 21 and got a job away from home looking after rescue horses.  I told myself I had to eat enough to look after the horses well so i ate i don't know if i binged or ate normal but because I had at its worst lived on a tin of soup a day or a bread bun a day at college and uni i put on weight quite quickly and the manager asked me one day to get on a horse to make sure he was safe for a work experience kid to get on, but then he shouted at me to get off it saying I was hurting it's back...I wasn't big at the time...about 12 stone...had gone up from about 8 stone but I told myself I wasnt allowed to eat anymore so I wouldn't eat all day at work but ended up bingeing and purging on a night and got into alot of debt so moved home. That's when I asked gp for help for bulimia....which I never got then. Anyway a few years later and still no help I can remember one day I wanted to eat I had an "anorexic voice" telling me I couldn't eat all food was bad, a "bulimic voice" telling me I could eat if I got rid of it" the anorexic voice" arguing with the bulimic one that if you eat anything even if you make yourself sick there will be evil calories left in your body to make you fat" and my rational self that was trying to tell me I needed to eat to work, to horse ride, to enjoy life and I was just crying on the kitchen floor. I threw a mug in frustration and automatically cut myself with the mug. I then ended up in a cycle of eating, making myself sick then cutting to punish myself for giving in to bulimia instead of anorexia so the voices were constantly telling me I deserved to punish myself...crazy I know and seriously I wouldn't wish it on anyone else. As the years went on the "voice got louder" and became a mantra in my head "your a fat failure and you deserve to die" and that led to many suicide attempts that my rational self didn't want to do that's the part that asked for help. And those thoughts are still there alot of the time but I can tell myself "a thought is just a thought and you don't have to act on it". My life is so much better now, the group therapy I go to helps with some things but I get frustrated that my eating disorder still causes barriers to me moving on with my life in so many ways. The staff I think are trying to understand my problem but I cant get any specific help so I will muddle on ....every day is a new day......if I fail one day I will try again the next day. I'm trying to accept myself how I am.....hopefully one day I will fully believe I'm good enough.