lunatic wrote:Luckily, during my stay in hospital due to my low weight, I had an epiphany that I couldn't go on living as a personifacation of my eating disorder and dared myself to explore who I really was beneath anorexia's safety blanket.
...Only recently I've begun compulsively overeating, which makes my self esteem incredibly low. However, I think I can tackle the problem by watching how much I eat for a month of so (apparently this is how long it takes to break a bad habit) and, with your support, hopefully lose a couple of kilos that I gained stuffing myself with junk.
Hi Lunatic! Welcome to the forum.
You seem to have great self awareness and can be bluntly honest with yourself. Very good qualities to have when dealing with an eating disorder.
My concern is that you feel you need to lose those "couple of kilos" you gained binge eating. One of the trademarks of an eating disorder is to swing from one extreme to the other; not eating at all, to eating all the time. I feel it's quite possible you're on the cusp of a relapse into anorexic behavior. You've learened that you have the will power to not eat at all and that it seemed to have great benefits with losing lots of weight and getting positive attention for it. Now you're back to square one of needing to lose weight, again, which was the precursor for your anorexia.
This is where you have the opportunity to break the eating disorder cycle. To do this you need to
accept these extra kilos. I know that's a LOT easier said than done!

Your body craving carbs and sweets is just it's effort to make up for that period of starvation. It's normal for it to go a little overboard. The "cave woman" part of your brain is preparing for another derth in food supply. It's saying- "OMG- there was NO FOOD for a
long time so I need to get all the extra energy I can in case it happens again!" You know? It's striving for a sort of homeostasis for the long term. The reptillian part of your brain isn't thinking about HOW the starvation occured, it just knows you need food to survive and will always fight for that. Do you know what I mean? So by accepting your weight as it is, your metabolism can chill out. Right now it's pretty freaked out! Just give it some time to realize you don't need to store extra energy.
That means no starvation diets!

In time, (most likely longer than a month- give yourself more like six months) by adding healthy foods and normal activity, your cravings will diminish. You just need to believe this and hang in tthere.
Do you know what your BMI is?