Real hope combined with real action has always pulled me through difficult times.

Connect with supportive people who empower you. The more you jump into your life, the further away from Ed you can get. Don't have a backup plan for living. Live today. [...] Trust in God. Believe in yourself. Get friends and family members to stand behind you. That's the only backup you'll need.

Oftentimes, especially during my recovery, I didn't need to think about everything I was doing wrong; instead, I needed to focus more on what I was doing right-and then do more of the right stuff. I needed to live more in the solution.

Recovery is about making room for the real me to exist.

Replace perfectionism with persistence. After all, in recovery and life, it's persistence that really pays off. Forget about perfection.

Intense pain often pushed me to make changes. The pain of the eating disorder pushed me into recovering from eating-disordered behaviors, and then the emotional turmoil I experienced without those behaviors (not knowing how to cope with perfectionism, feelings, and life in general) took me even further, so that I ultimately found serenity.

I would not encourage you to go through the sweat, blood, and tears of the recovery process only to reach some kind of mediocre state where you were just 'managing' the illness. It is possible to live without Ed.