I would like to know from both you and @Peatful how this affected your children and husband / SO and your career?
thank you Momma for the thread recommendation and for your kind words, to answer your question:
I have two teenage children, both of them lived through my eating disordered years at close quarters but are now living away from home. I have my husband to thank for his stability and wisdom and quite frankly, I think my children would have grown up completely different had he not been there. They were quite used to experiencing 'mum's new eating fad' that obviously went on continuously. They are totally well-rounded and have no food obsessions or issues. They are, dare I say it, completely normal.
My husband to this day, one year in, still thinks this is another phase I will eventually grow out of. He is the personality type who gets bored very quickly with facts and figures and so wants to see real life evidence. I think it has been very difficult for him to see me eat next to nothing for all these years and have all those rules and special requirements and then suddenly see me eat whatever is put in front of me and gain all this weight. I take solace in the fact that he has also stopped all exercise and is eating much more than he used to. He too has gained weight and so I do believe that he is tacitly supporting me physically rather than psychologically, which is his way.
re: my career - well let's just say that after college I never really had a career apart from homeschooling my children. I trained as a fashion designer and was totally caught up in the glamour of it all but soon saw it for what it was and jumped ship. I was well into my eating disorder by then. I have had a gazillion projects over the years, all of them could have been viable businesses but I always lost interest before they came to fruition. Six months ago I picked up one of those projects again and decided to run with it - I, at last have the stamina to see it through.
There is a theory that those who are under-nourished seek to be continually on the move as their bodies search for new feeding grounds. It's called the migration theory. I know now that this was what was happening to me, I could never settle or see anything through to completion, when I was anxious I would plan my next business project at the same time as I was dropping the old one, always looking to the future. Funny enough, nowadays I know when I have not eaten enough on a particular day as this wanderlust/unsettled feeling returns and I become dissatisfied with what I am working on. Fortunately, after a day or two of eating extra amounts, I am back on track again.