This is the 6th article in my Eating Disorder Recovery Q&A blog series! In case you missed the first 5, I’ll link them below:
Eating disorder recovery Q&A: How do I stay hopeful in recovery? Is full recovery even possible? Eating disorder recovery Q&A: How do I stay committed to recovery? What do I do when I’m triggered? Eating disorder recovery Q&A: Intuitive Eating in postpartum and for digestion concerns Eating disorder recovery Q&A: recovering from diet culture, and building a healthy relationship with exercise
Eating Disorder Recovery Q&A: how to seek support and give support in recovery
Let’s get to it!
Question 1: “How do I get started? Prioritize me? Find time?”
I think you are answering your own question! 🙂
Healing your relationship with food will not happen passively. Recovery has to be a (the) priority. There are a lot of things that compete for your attention each day, and it’s super easy to put off making the changes you need to make. So yes, getting started will include prioritizing it and making time for it.
From there, you’ll want some sort of meal and snack eating structure, ideally designed by a Registered Dietitian. Don’t underestimate how helpful it will be to have a plan when you struggle with food. However, a recovery meal plan is very different than a rigid set of rules. It’s designed to make sure you are eating adequately and regularly. I also like to think of it as a tool to reteach clients how, when and what to eat, especially when they have so many eating disorder rules floating through their head that need to be challenged and reframed. Without a plan, the eating disorder has too much influence on food decisions.
If you don’t have access to an RD, here’s a resource I created that could help you get started. It’s much looser than an ED recovery meal plan, but it will give you a general idea of a supportive meal and snack structure: Creating a Flexible Structure with Food.
If possible, I’d also recommend seeing a therapist!
A few other helpful tools:
- Spend time answering this question: “In an ideal world, how do I want to feel, think and act around food?” Create a vision for yourself of what you really want.
- Based on that, set small, specific and measurable goals for behavior change. Only focus on 1, 2 or 3 goals at a time. One you feel like you’ve met that goal, set another!
- Tell a trusted love one about the commitments you are making to yourself to heal your relationship with food and your body. Identify what they could do to reassure, encourage and support you, and ask for their help.
- Start a dialogue between your ED self and your healthy self. It’s common for the ED to be loud and demanding and even to get the final say in making decisions. Notice the ED demands, food rules or food fears that come up and write them down. Then create a dialogue using your healthy self. Give your healthy self a voice and equal time in the conversation! Example: ED self – “I have to go at least x hours between meals.” Healthy self – “I notice myself getting overly hungry if I go that long between meals. I hate the headaches I get because of it.” ED self – “But you’ll eat too much if you eat sooner.” Healthy self – “Maybe I’m eating too little food and my body is asking for more food, more often.” And so on! Doing this consistently will strengthen your healthy self, and that – in essence – is how you recover from an eating disorder.
Question 2: “How do I stop constantly thinking negatively about how large I am?”
Body image is tough stuff, much harder than even food or exercise in recovery. In fact, you may heal your relationship with food and exercise far sooner than you feel comfortable in or about your body.
I don’t say that to be discouraging, only to create realistic expectations for body image work. It takes time, intention and consistency.
But to specifically answer your question, I’d recommend identifying your body image triggers. Are you doing things that create more fixation on your size or shape? Here are some questions to ask yourself that will help you explore possible triggers:
- Am I wearing clothes that fit, and that I feel comfortable in? Even if they fit, is the style making me more aware of my body (constantly needing adjustment, etc)?
- Am I weighing myself?
- Am I engaging in other body checking behaviors besides weighing, like checking myself in reflective surfaces, sucking in, or touching parts of my body to “check” them?
- Am I consciously or subconsciously comparing myself to others? Do I walk into a room and size everyone up?
- How do I talk to myself about my body? Can I bring awareness to my self-talk and try to make it neutral or positive, instead of overly negative?
Realistically, you will have negative thoughts about your body. We all do. But you can decrease the intensity, frequency and duration of those thoughts by being mindful of triggers and taking steps to minimize them.
A clear sign of healing and growth in recovery is being able to have a negative thought about your body and not having that thought lead to ED behaviors. Even on a bad body image day, you still connect with your body and take good care of it.
I hope this has been helpful! If you have any questions you’d like me to answer in upcoming eating disorder recovery Q&As, feel free to leave a comment! Stay tuned for more to come.