Hi Lottie,
Firstly, yes, you certainly belong. You have a fairly typical and serious eating disorder.
Secondly, I am so sorry to hear your story and I can so, so relate. I started my anorexic journey at the age of 23 and prior to that weight wasnt an issue. I also was a bit surprised to see the weight come off quickly and then I felt trapped to maintain it as well as all my control around food and the timing of it.
That was 11 years ago.
Shortly after my family’s first OMG you look like death freakout I also got back up to 100 pounds-ish and stayed there for years. Like you I told myself I looked normal-thin, like a model. But I knew it wasnt at all a healthy weight for me. Still, I felt trapped. I felt like the only thing I had was the food I allowed myself in the later part of the day, and I didn’t want to give that up-even if that food was the same thing daily.
I have been through umpteen iterations at this point. I am probably at a similar BMI as you, at this point. We both know it isn’t healthy but we call it ‘healthy’ and tell ourselves that since we are already healthy we cannot possibly tolerate or allow ourselves to gain more. Yet we are still living in the SAME prison as before. We play whack-a-mole with the exercise and we turn the recommendations on their head so they become daily minimum requirements. Or at least, I am assuming I can include you in my “we”.
This is no way to live. You are in the earlier stages of this. I can only tell you my perspective on this, which is that I lost my 20s to this and I totally regret it. Now approaching mid-30s and still in the trap, I cannot believe that this has been the main theme of my life for so, so long. I promise you that if you had asked the 24 year old me, or 26, or 29, or 31 year old me, I never would have expected (or wanted to admit) that it was possible that this is the sad course my life would take. I had so much potential back then.
Obviously I haven’t figured out the easy solution, but I think my point is that I hope you will learn from my story and fully push forward into recovery NOW. If you continue with this half-life you may very well end up with wasted decades too. Lingering in the prison of what the YE boards call quasi-recovery is probably the worst of all worlds. You don’t get the support and concern of emaciation, yet you still get all the mental fog and depression of restriction.
As you well know at this point, eating more broccoli and watered down oats and exercising daily is a miserable existence whether you weigh 20 pounds or 200 pounds. So don’t fall into the trap of thinking the number on the scale is any indicator of your recoveredness. It isn’t. (And therefore, it also isn’t useful information so you should just skip it entirely.)