muddy, I'm proud of you for trying to rest your body. And keep working on eating those bites and not purging. You do not actually need an IP ED treatment center to recover (unless you are at the feeding tube point). I did it pretty much on my own, and quite frankly, I think that may have been the reason my recovery stuck so well. I am extremely proud of my grit and determination to get through it. I've been thru a lot of crap in my life - physical, mental, sexual abuse, gunshots fired into my apartment, a pdoc telling me I would commit suicide if I got off meds, bad psychosis/hospitalizations, misdiagnoses. My last psych hospitalization was so bad, I was psychotic, lost my voice from screaming, blanked out like 5 days with nearly zero memory of them & woke up in full restraints and even worse a diaper & no voice to communicate with anyone, a perforated ulcer surgery with a h*llish recovery, PTSD & even more crap. But I'll tell you recovering from the ED was harder to get thru all those things combined for me. It is no cakewalk but in my mind it is tantamount to climbing Mt. Everest.

And @Autumn88 It is never too late to turn over a new leaf and rewrite the rest of your life story. Just out of curiousity, what is your age? I am sorry you have battled the ED for so long. It is helpful to me to have a family - a teenaged daughter I do not want to have to turn out with body issues & a husband who cares & lets me know he feels I am starting to slip. I cook meals for my family as my H works, and it would be questionable to everyone if I did not eat them. I never could effect vomiting well as a way of purging (definitely a blessing) but I always purged thru excessive exercise when my ED got bad (before I got married). Keep fighting; believe it or not, there is a good life you can live for. Do you have any hobbies you can embrace to take your mind off food & eating? I had to start a lot of them when I recovered - bought a lot of kits at the hobby store, did jigsaw puzzles, colored, worked on reading, did crosswords, word searches, etc. Basically used CBT to get my mind off things (how bad I felt for actually eating & my weight) and stopping the exercise until I was well enough for moderate walking. Now to help my anxiety/bipolar I draw a lot & have started watercolor painting (I have threads in the Creative Corner forum with my sketches & paintings). It pretty much clears my mind of everything but the art which is such a blessing. (I didn't sleep well with the malnutrition from the ED either. I still wouldn't sleep well if I weren't on Seroquel & sometimes using melatonin too for sleep. Sleep has been a struggle for me for as long as I can remember, and my mom says I didn't sleep well as a baby & toddler either.) I'd recommend watercolor painting to everyone even if you do not feel you are very artistic. I bought a 4 step instruction book and a set of around 36 watercolors in a tray and am loving it. Even if you are not artistic, just putting the paint down on paper (watercolor paper so it doesn't leak thru) is so, so so satisfying. You can paint abstractly of your emotions, it is very cathartic. Well, all this is more about hobbies than the ED but also ways to relax & get your mind off food. I don't know about you but in the worst of my ED all I could think about was food, calories, burning calories, my awful "heavy" weight, watching the food network a ton, exercise, God it was awful. Pretty much constantly on my mind.