Recovery Sucks—Until It Doesn’t: A Letter to My Younger Self

Hi hun,

I know. Recovery sucks.

But I promise – one day, it doesn’t anymore.

One day, everything will click, and eating without fear or guilt won’t feel like so much work – but that day won’t come if you give up.

I know you feel like you’re failing because your body is changing. I know you feel like the weight gain is proof that you’ve lost control, that you’ve let yourself go, that people will stop loving you or admiring you because you don’t look the way you used to. 

But let me ask you this—did that version of you, the one who was starving herself of food and joy, actually feel loved? Did she actually feel happy?

I know you think you did. I know you loved the attention, the admiration, the way people asked you for your “secrets” to weight loss. 

But you also need to remember that you were exhausted. You were terrified. You were scared to eat, scared to rest, scared to lose the one thing that you thought made people notice you. 

I know that your body was running on empty, that your mind was consumed with numbers and rules and guilt. 

And I know that even though you had moments of pride in what you had achieved, you also had nights where you felt completely alone, where the fear of losing control kept you up, where the hunger gnawed at you but the fear of food was stronger.

So, let me remind you: Recovery sucks – until it doesn’t. One day, everything will click, and you won’t put so much worth into the size of your body – but that day won’t come if you give up.

I know you don’t believe this now, but you are allowed to take up space. You are allowed to nourish yourself. You are allowed to let go of the illusion of control that was never actually making you happy. You are allowed to just be—without constantly trying to shrink yourself, without constantly trying to earn your worth through discipline and deprivation.

I won’t lie to you—letting go is terrifying, and you have to do a lot of hard work. Recovery is not a linear path. 

There will be times when you question everything, when you feel like you’re “doing it wrong,” when you miss the comfort of restriction and the sense of achievement it gave you, when you just don’t want to put in the work anymore. 

But you are not failing. You are growing. The journaling exercises, therapy sessions, food challenges – it all works eventually. It will all click one day. But it won’t if you don’t keep going.

Recovery sucks – until it doesn’t. On the other side of this battle, there is freedom. 

There is joy in eating a meal without overanalyzing every bite. 

There is peace in moving your body because you want to, not because you feel like you have to. 

There is happiness in living a life that is full—of memories, of laughter, of love—not just a life that is small enough to fit into someone else’s ideal of beauty.

Stop trying to be perfect. What is perfection anyway? Who is defining that for you?

Stop waiting until you look a certain way to let yourself be happy, or you’ll never truly be happy.

The people who truly love you do not love you because of your weight. And if there are people who do? They are not your people.

Recovery sucks, until it doesn’t. One day, it will all click, and you’ll be able to eat the cake and go out to dinner without overthinking it – but that day won’t come if you give up, so…

…eat the damn cake; NOT eating it won’t make you less scared of it. 

…go out to dinner with your friends; NOT going won’t help you learn to worry less about the calories. 

…get rid of the clothes that don’t fit anymore; NOT getting rid of them will just keep you stuck wasting your life worrying about whether your jeans fit the same way they did last year. 

When you look back, you’re going to regretfully remember moments when you skipped meals or punished yourself at the gym; when you said no to plans because you were too anxious about your body; when you were mean to people who care about you because you were anxious, afraid, and starving. 

But you’ll also remember the times you laughed so hard you cried, the nights you stayed up late talking about life with the people who matter, the mornings when you woke up feeling alive instead of drained and hungry. These memories will become more plentiful the less you focus on food and your body, which will only happen if you face your fears and get more comfortable with being uncomfortable.

So, to my younger self, and to anyone who is in the thick of recovery and feeling like it’s not worth it: Recovery sucks – until it doesn’t. One day, it will all click – but that day won’t come if you give up.

So keep going. You are not failing. You are learning. You are healing. You are stepping into the life that you deserve. 

And even on the hardest days, that is always, always worth it.

Love, 

Your Future Self