I have understood for some time that my behaviours around food and exercise have served as coping strategies during times of challenge, providing me with a sense of control and achievement.  I spoke about this in my previous post ‘WHY?’ and about how through treatment, I have come to better understand how these behaviours, alongside personality traits, genetics and life experiences have served as key ingredients in the development and maintenance of anorexia.

But what happened last year specifically to trigger this most recent episode where I fell deeper into the pit of anorexia than I ever have before?  No one single event.  This is the conclusion that I have come to after much reflection.  Another combination of circumstances which together gradually saw previously healthy (ish) behaviours become compulsive and increasingly restrictive.

My dad died in early 2025.  Having figured out that I have long found emotions difficult to identify, recognise and manage, I now reflect on this loss and realise that I literally ran away from my feelings.  Having spent an entire night by his bedside whilst he slowly slipped away, I came home in the morning, laced up my running trainers and off I went with Queen songs playing in my ears.  I went back to work the next day and only took a day off for his funeral.

I love my job.  When workload saw a significant increase in early 2025, I embraced it and had no hesitation in putting in extra hours in the evenings and at weekends.  I didn’t consider myself ‘stressed’ by either the workload, the pressure of the risk I was responsible for, or the increasing scrutiny of my role. Rest made me feel anxious.  I needed to be busy all the time, so it actually suited me for any uncomfortable spare minutes to be occupied with extra work.  It also distracted me from having to figure out and deal with emotions following the loss of my dad.  Whilst I may not have been ‘stressed’ by work in the sense of feeling overwhelmed or worrying about it, there were no pleasurable activities in my life to provide balance.  Of course, I had running which I insisted was a hobby and made me feel better thanks to the endorphins working their magic.  Or maybe they numbed the pain? Gradually over time, the impact of these neurotransmitters didn’t quite hit the spot and so I engaged in a little bit more exercise.  And then a bit more than that.  I worked from home one day a week and decided to see if, with the extra time that otherwise would be spent commuting, I could fit in a 10-mile run or a 16-mile cycle before I started my working day.  Of course I could!  It wasn’t long before I realised that actually if I got up earlier (3:20am to be precise), I could also fit it in before my commute. And what an amazing mood boost to start the day.  Or at least it was to begin with before it soon became something I had to do: a compulsion.  I would experience feelings of guilt, failure, agitation and panic if not able to exercise.  Fatigue, injury, special occasion or social life; none of these would stand in my way.

The insane amounts of exercise of course made me hungry.  And so I did eat, and eat a lot.  Apart from snacking which has long been a no, no.  Big portion sizes resulted in digestive discomfort and bloating. Whilst on holiday over the summer, I got up a little later before heading out to run.  Yes, I still ran every day on holiday and ‘later’ was 6am.  This meant that by the time I got back and had a shower, breakfast would be late morning.  Having breakfast later meant a big lunch wasn’t required.  I noticed that by consuming less food during the day, I felt ‘lighter’ and less bloated and I liked it.  On returning home and to work, I continued to not eat breakfast until later in the morning despite getting up at 03:20am.  Later in the morning soon became a rigid rule of no food before 11am.  The light snack instead of lunch soon became nothing at all.  My ‘energy in’ became significantly less than my ‘energy out’.  BAM!  I fell into energy deficit. What happens when we go into energy deficit?  I fully support the theory that, in those with predisposed genetics, this triggers a survival reaction, from our caveman era, where our body prepares to flee the famine and migrate to find food elsewhere by eating less and moving more to get there as quickly as possible.   Except I didn’t migrate to bountiful lands and so I didn’t reverse my energy deficit by feasting.   Instead, I continued restricting food and so my brain decided that my avoidance of food must mean that food and weight gain was a threat and to be feared.  I developed a fear of food.  A fear that during treatment and beyond, I am facing by running head on into it.  Yep, you guessed it – bring on the chocolate digestives.

On top of this of course, I learned that I could gain a great sense of achievement when I got on the scales and saw a loss. YES!  I can do it.  I can be successful.  I can be worth something.  And then I set myself targets so I could continue feeling successful: 7.5 stone, 7 stone, less than 7 stone…..

And guess what?  I also felt in control.  I felt in control when workload was perhaps a little out of control (despite me not feeling ‘stressed’ about it).  I felt in control after losing dad and the sense of uncertainty that accompanies such an experience.

I gained a sense of identity as ‘skinny’ and liked my body more like this because it was meeting the ridiculously high standards that I set of it as a perfectionist.

I was ticking every box! 

And so you see how these circumstances, behaviours and traits all became intertwined and fed off each other?  One size does not fit all with anorexia (in more ways than one!) and therefore any recovery requires serious commitment from the individual themselves due to the amount of reflection and self-enquiry required.  But I have worked incredibly hard and I’m pretty happy that the conclusions I have drawn make sense.  I have made fantastic headway in detangling the jumbled knots during treatment, and I feel well equipped for the continued work I need to do.