You weren’t happier when you were actively engaging with your eating disorder. If you were, you wouldn’t even consider recovery.
You didn’t love your body more when you were engaging with your eating disorder. You deprived it of nutrients, of rest, you forced it to do things it didn’t want or need to do, you actively damaged it on a daily basis.
You weren’t more confident and comfortable in your own skin while you were engaging with your eating disorder. Every day you were trying to manipulate you intake, body, weight, shape, or behavior in some way. You were perpetually self critical and self destructive. You isolated, you numbed out. You were anxious/depressed/angry/alone.
You weren’t in control when you were engaging with your eating disorder. You were being controlled every moment by impulses and obsessions that whittled your life and cognitive scope down to food and weight and calories and exercise. You had given up all control yo your ED. You were not making the choices you wanted to make, doing the things you wanted to do.
You weren’t safer when you were engaging with your eating disorder. You were in danger of countless, dangerous health problems, some irreversible, some life threatening. Your ED did not protect you from abuse, negative emotions, or change. The feeling that it did is an illusion that traps you in a dangerous place. It does not strengthen you, it does not protect you.