My blog posts started fairly autobiographical and grew gradually less so as recovery stopped being so all-consuming and I also grew more interested in tackling questions that went beyond my own experience. Looking back, I can see that about a year after I’d written my first post back in August 2009, I started writing posts about topics rather than incidents. Around this point, the ambition I still have for the blog now began to crystallise: I wanted it to draw together the research and the personal experience, to make better sense of both. The only problem with that (apart from it being hard) is the problem all blogs have when they stop being the old ‘dear diary’ weblog kind of thing and start being ad hoc musings scaffolded by a broad theme: the problem of navigation.
My posts tend (more and more as time goes on) to be fairly extensive attempts to cover a given sub-theme comprehensively, whether it’s sleep and dreaming in anorexia, or just how dangerous ‘clean eating’ really is. But sometimes I circle back to an old topic from a new angle, and of course my choice of topics doesn’t follow any particular grand logic: I write about what occurs to me that month, or what someone asks me a question about, or what I read something about, or what I happen to fancy from an old document called ‘blog ideas’. For you, my reader, this can make finding your way around pretty difficult.
So here they all are, grouped into thematic categories that may help you find what you’re looking for more easily than the reverse-chronological list on Psychology Today. I’ve included some posts in more than one category. Each category begins with the more general thematically structured posts, and ends with the more personal ones.
Some fundamentals
- Five anorexia myths exploded
- The six seductions of anorexia
- Anorexia is a physical illness of starvation
- Treating eating: New research [my best attempt at a theory of what makes recovery really happen]
- You are not your genes: Menstruation in anorexia and recovery
- Recovery from anorexia: Why the rules do apply to you
- Is anorexia a disease, or a series of bad decisions, or both?
- Fussy eating or an eating disorder: What’s the difference?
- Seeing and (not) believing in anorexia
- Hunger
Starting recovery
- The gap between insight and action
- The gap between insight and action: Causes and responses
- Closing the gap between insight and action
- Recovering from anorexia: How and why to start
- “I’m not sick enough to get better” (and Part 2)
- Pros and cons of taking time out for recovery from anorexia
- 12 reasons to use a meal plan in recovery from anorexia
- How to make the decision to get better
- 10 steps to making and following your recovery plan
- Early intervention as panacea: Reality or myth?
- Escaping from anorexia, Part II
- Defying my own conventions: The day I started eating again
- How it feels to eat again
- After a decade of starvation…
- Escaping from anorexia
- Eating, continued
Continuing recovery
- Recovering from anorexia: How and why not to stop halfway
- Is 100% recovery from an eating disorder possible?
- Questioning medical authority by accident
- Having the strength to cope with what life throws at you
- Bumps in the road to recovery
- The end of feeling my hunger becoming nausea?
- My mission statement for keeping on recovering
- Not only stopping starving, but starting living again
- Not being the thinnest any more – how to adjust
- Fully recovered, but not quite: The long post-anorexic road
- The road long past recovery… called life?
Recovery: physical and practical aspects
- Anorexia is a physical illness of starvation
- The physical effects of weight gain after starvation
- How does metabolic rate really change after anorexia? Part I
- How does metabolic rate really change after anorexia? Part II
- You are not your genes: Menstruation in anorexia and recovery
- The complicated relationship between anorexia and sex
- 12 reasons to use a meal plan in recovery from anorexia
- How to make the decision to get better
- 10 steps to making and following your recovery plan
- Pros and cons of taking time out for recovery from anorexia
- 8 ways of responding to stress
- Coping with stress during and after recovery from anorexia
- What does the Mando method mean for independent recovery?
- Questioning medical authority by accident
- To weigh or not to weigh?
- Anorexia on Prozac
- Anorexics and Bulimics Anonymous: Does it make sense?
- Hospitalisation and recovery from anorexia
- Biscuits before breakfast: Recovery in microcosm
- Anorexia and the diet delusion: Healthy eating post-recovery
- Anorexia and dietary fat: A relationship of estrangement
- Anorexia and dietary fat: Brain function, hunger and satiety
- Anorexia and dietary fat: To ditch one, embrace the other
- Eating meat to recover from anorexia: The ethics trick
- Eating meat to recover from anorexia: Correlation and cause
- Eating meat to recover from anorexia: Asking who benefits
- Eating meat to recover from anorexia: How much do you really care?
- Eating meat to recover from anorexia: Acting on appetites
- Eating meat to recover from anorexia: Life tradeoffs
- Eating meat to recover from anorexia: Nothing is forever
- Eating meat to recover from anorexia: 6 things to try today
- Dietary self-regulation: The all-inclusive resort analogy
- Dietary self-regulation: Milkshakes and dietary restraint
- Dietary self-regulation, plus or minus feedback
- Dietary self-regulation: Rendering your limits irrelevant
Treatment methods
- Hospitalisation and recovery from anorexia
- CBT for eating disorders: A not-yet-success story
- A simple eating disorder treatment no one ever talks about
- What does the Mando method mean for independent recovery?
- Questioning medical authority by accident
The psychology of control
- Wasting time: Symptom and enemy of anorexia
- Why your mistakes matter less than you think
- Taking, losing, and letting go of control in anorexia
- Why control won’t bring you happiness
- Having the strength to cope with what life throws at you
- Anorexia and the invisible changes to its immovable rules
- The road long past recovery… called life?
Recovery: other psychological and social aspects
- The restaurant game and free will
- Free will, restaurants, and eating disorders
- One thing that makes anorexia recovery hard
- How to make recovery from anorexia more enjoyable
- How and whether to make recovery more enjoyable: The whether
- 26 ways to be happy about getting fatter
- Are you more than your body? Self-objectification
- Are you more than your body? Free will
- The things no one tells you about anorexia and recovery
- Constructing a character after anorexia
- Am I really this selfish, or is it just the anorexia?
- Not being the thinnest any more – how to adjust
- You don’t deserve this cake – nor do you not deserve it
- Is thin beautiful?
- Is thin beautiful? Looking and seeing
- Cognitive dissonance and anorexia nervosa: The basics
- Cognitive dissonance and anorexia nervosa: Existing evidence
- Cognitive dissonance and anorexia nervosa: How they play out
- Cognitive dissonance and anorexia: Optimizing for tolerable
- Cognitive dissonance and anorexia: Optimizing differently
- The basics of optimization in anorexia recovery
- The mathematics of optimization in recovery
- Applied optimization in eating disorder recovery
- Sleep and dreaming in anorexia
- The complicated relationship between anorexia and sex
- The forking paths of children and no children
- Pregnancy and early motherhood after anorexia
- This autumn and last: From student to tutor
- A night with friends, overshadowed by food
- In my father’s house: A weekend of food and memories
- Who wants to be normal?
- Zooming out and back in: A cognitive foundation for recovery
Work
- Seeing through academia’s academic charade
- Wasting time: Symptom and enemy of anorexia
- To failure
- How to reunite life and work after anorexia
- This autumn and last: From student to tutor
- Learning how to relax after anorexia
Sport, exercise, and fun
- Should you exercise during recovery from anorexia? Part 1
- Should you exercise during recovery from anorexia? Part 2
- Make an exercise obsession healthier by eating more
- What powerlifting can do for a former anorexic
- Making space for the exceptional
- A history of anorexia while skiing: Part 1
- A history of anorexia while skiing: Part 2
- A history of anorexia while skiing: Part 3
- Twelve hours a world champion, one more lesson learnt
Culture, the arts, the media, and technology
- Anorexia and today’s world
- Eating disorders in the online world
- Watching a play about anorexia
- Facts and fictions: Stories of a hunger artist, and lettuce
- Consuming fictions: Reading and eating disorders
- How much does a blog title matter?
- Traveling, fighting, dancing: Illness and recovery metaphors
- The Fast Diet: A fast route to disordered eating?
- Dissecting the clean-eating meme
- Lose your phone, find your body
- An app for recovery from anorexia
You and other people: other perspectives (including guest posts)
- How to help someone with an eating disorder
- A partner’s perspective on anorexia
- A mathematician’s education in mental health
- Pregnancy and early motherhood after anorexia
- Raising children after anorexia
- My mother and I: A radio interview on anorexia
- An article on my anorexia in today’s Daily Mail
- You can’t save your child from their anorexia
- Anorexia and the dangers of blog post titles
- Anorexia and friendship: The science of their reciprocity
- Anorexia and friendship: What eating disorders do to friends
- Anorexia and friendship: How friendship can affect anorexia
- Anorexia and friendship: Can friends galvanise recovery?
Life and death
- Where next after anorexia: Death, recovery, or another eating disorder?
- Anorexia and the right to die
- In my father’s house: A weekend of food and memories
- Not leaving recovery ’til it’s too late
Christmas