How not to give up

This is a very important topic, in my oppinion.
Recovery isn't easy. It doesn't depend whether you're recovering from an eating disorder, from depression, anxiety or any other illness. You HAVE TO stay strong and you have to push yourself to the limit, more than once. It could be hurtful and difficult, but in the end you will be proud of yourself and happy that you didn't give up.

I can tell from my own experience that it's not easy to always keep going. There will be times where you just want to give up, where you feel like you aren't strong enough.
I felt this way, too. I still do sometimes, but see where I am now? In comparison to like two years ago, I've come such a long way. I was mentally extremely sick, anorexia had my whole body and mind in control. I wasn't even myself anymore. Chiara had dissappeared, she shrank away, faded away, eaten by a monster called anorexia.

But it's different now. I, Chiara, grew again, thanks to nourishing my body and giving it again what it needed, I could take control over myself again and control over my illness. It's still here, but never as strong as it used to be.

Many people ask me how I did that. How I motivated myself, how I didn't give up.
It's actually really difficult to say what exactly motivated me the most, and how exactly I could convince myself to fight harder.
Everyone is different, keep that in mind. What worked for me doesn't mean will work for you, too. But it COULD, and maybe it helps you.

First of all, I think it's important that you have to realise you're too skinny. You have to see that you're only skin and bones. Yes, that's not really possible if you're way to underweighed because then your mind can't work properly and you actually see yourself as "normal" or you know you're skinny but you don't really see it. It was the same in my case. I knew I was too skinny, I felt my bones and I knew it wasn't normal. At the beginning I even felt ashamed when I had to wear short pants or skirts because I knew people were staring at me and looking shocked. But I couldn't really see that I was THAT skinny.. This probably doesn't make any sense to some of you, but maybe you know what I mean :) But I then realised I needed to gain weight, I realised I couldn't continue living like the way I did.

Once you've realised you're too skinny, you have to think about what you can't do now, think about all the things you can only do when you're healthy!
Think about sports, school, having children, having a boyfriend or beeing married, going out with friends and having fun, looking good (not skinny, I mean looking sexy which means having curves and some muscles) and so on.
There are a lot of things you can only do when you're healhy.
For me, my biggest motivations were:
-I wanted to be able to play squash again! I loved playing squash and not being allowed to play squash or exercise in general was terrible for me. Not because I wanted to exercise to lose weight, but I just loved to move and I loved squash!
-I finally wanted to be allowed to go back to school. I wasn't allowed to go to school anymore because the school couldn't take the responsibility for my health.. It was too dangerous.
-I wanted to look good, I was sick of boys looking at me with disgust. I wanted to be pretty and I knew I wasn't pretty when I was only a skeleton. Who likes to hold bones in their hands?
-I wanted to buy nice clothes, not children's clothes! No clothes fit me anymore and that sucked so much.
-I wanted to be able to have children. My biggest fear is not to be able to have children one day. I reall want to have children when I'm older and that's not possible when being underweight. And as I've been underweighed for such a long time (6 years) my body couldn't grow anymore. That's why I still look like 12.
-That leads me to another point: I really really want to finally look older!!! It really depresses me that I look like 12. Honestly, you can't imagine how it feels like when everyone tells you you look wayy younger. I'm 18 but I really do look way younger, that's all because of this illness. I might be able to grow a bit more and my body could maybe recover a bit from the damage. but no one knows if that happens or not.
-I wanted to be happy again! Anorexia took away all my happiness, humour and emotion in general. I felt empty.

These are a few things that motivated me. Another motivation though was, that I actually wanted to be an example for YOU guys. I wanted to share my story with you and be able to say "I've come a far way and I know if I could do it, you can do it, too!" I always wanted to help other people with my story and experience.

What is really important though, and what I really recommend you to do is to write a list or something like that where you write down goals for yourself. Goals you want to achieve by gaining weight. Trust me, you are so much stronger and more energetic once you've gained weight! So if you think you're strong now and you're still exercising even though you shouldn't, you will be surprised how much more energy you have when you gained weight!
Reward yourself with something with every kilo you gained! For example, I was really happy when I finally could wear my favourite clothes again! Or when I was allowed to go out on 30min walks everyday! And when I was allowed to play squash again and go to school and see my friends, I was the happiest person ever :) I didn't even care about my weight anymore!!

Maybe this helps you a bit, I really hope it does!
These are just some examples though, of course there're many other things you can do when you're healthy, but these worked for me, so maybe there's something that will work for you, too!

Lots of love,

Chiara x

And I got my fav bike when I got out of hospital!
I was sooo happy to be allowed to cycle because I looove that so much =)