cw: mentions of weight, dieting, and eating disorders
TLDR; I want to eat better and lose weight, but my girlfriend is recovering from anorexia and we eat most of our meals together. I’m scared that my diet change will affect the way she eats and cause a relapse.
I’m (20F) currently dating my wonderful girlfriend (21F), and we’ve been together for almost a year. Having been together all throughout various lockdowns, she’s been an amazing support and we’ve grown very close very quickly. One thing we have bonded over is our shared experience of dealing with EDs (anorexia mostly) in our teenage years and ongoing. I was very ill around the ages of 15/16, but have been in recovery since about 17. As of now, I consider myself to be doing really well in my recovery; I’m no longer punishing myself for eating or obsessing over calories etc, I feel like I’m back on track. My girlfriend hasn’t been so lucky; her ED took hold in her later teen years and she has only started recovering since a little before we met. In the last year she has made incredible strides and I am so proud, the difference is incredible and she looks healthy and happy. However, over lockdown, I’ve put on a bit of weight (as I’m sure many of us have). I’m not punishing myself for it - it’s natural and understandable to gain weight when you’re in a global crisis - but I’ve gotten to the point where I’m quite unhappy. My body has been many shapes and sizes over my life, and in its current state I don’t feel as good or healthy, and I want to get back to a place where I’m happy, which involves losing a bit of weight from eating better.
Now here’s my conundrum: my girlfriend is not as far in her recovery journey as I am. I feel very capable of improving my diet in healthy and sustainable ways without triggering a relapse; however, my girlfriend is not quite there yet. I’m terrified that if I mention my want to get fitter she will follow along with it for the wrong reasons. We eat almost every meal together, and split our time between my house and hers. When we’re together, we eat great food (she’s a fantastic chef) but it’s not exactly the healthiest meals and that’s contributed a lot to my weight gain. I’m not quite sure how to handle this; I don’t want to eat completely separately from her and make her feel like she’s eating the ‘wrong’ thing, but I don’t want to force her to cook healthier meals when she is still pretty underweight and doing really well eating how we are currently. She also has a habit of adjusting her eating schedule to mine, eg, she won’t eat unless I’m eating, she’ll change her portions to match mine, etc. For these reasons I’m really scared she will match what I’m doing and relapse hard. Sorry this is so long. Any advice!? I’m really determined to get back to a physical fitness I’m happy with but I’m terrified of risking my girlfriend’s health and happiness.
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source https://www.reddit.com/r/loseit/comments/lw18ln/losing_weight_with_an_ed_recovering_partner/
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