How to recover from an eating disorder

Honestly, no one ever feels 100% ready to recover.

When recovering from an eating disorder, you must act before you’re ready. If you wait until you’re 100% ready to recover, the reality is you’ll likely be waiting the rest of your life.

I remember how tempting it felt to delay recovery until tomorrow or next week. But by doing this, you’re expecting more from your future self than you’re expecting from your current self, and that isn’t fair.

Continuing to delay recovery also increases the likelihood that you’ll spiral further into your eating disorder.

Look at content that supports your recovery

Your environment, who and what you surround yourself with, will significantly influence your outlook on life. So it’s time to develop an awareness of the media and information you’re consuming and to make conscious choices that support your recovery.

There are some excellent Health at Every Size, anti-diet culture and pro-recovery resources available.

Exposing yourself to these resources can help you challenge your beliefs around food, exercise, body image and self-worth, which is essential for lasting recovery.

During my recovery, knowing other people had been through a similar experience and were now living a healthy and happy life helped me to feel less alone and gave me motivation and hope.

If you need some recommendations for Instagram accounts, YouTube channels or podcasts to follow, reach out to Your Nourished Mind.

Reach out for support

Support, especially professional support, can help to increase your motivation to recover and translate this motivation into action, moving you closer towards recovery.

I know how difficult reaching out to others can be. I was terrified of telling people, and it kept me stuck in my eating disorder for a long time. You’ll likely be able to think of 101 reasons not to reach out; eating disorders thrive in isolation, so to reach out poses a major threat, but it is essential for recovery.

Unfortunately, the reality is that not everyone will respond in the way you need or deserve. But this is not a reflection of you, and as hard as it may feel, you need to keep reaching out until you get the help you need and deserve.

Not meeting full diagnostic criteria for an eating disorder is not a reason to delay getting support.

Clients of Your Nourished Mind do not need to have an eating disorder diagnosis to access support from an Eating Disorder Recovery Coach. I work with people all along the disordered eating spectrum and recognise the detrimental impact that disordered eating can have on someone’s life.

You deserve help regardless of where you fall on the disordered eating spectrum.

Challenge ED thoughts

Eating disorder thoughts often become automatic. And regardless of how far from reality these thoughts are, they tend to feel very real.

The early stages of recovery involve reducing or stopping eating disorder behaviours, which means not acting on the automatic eating disorder thoughts.

It takes time to rewire your brain, and professional support can help you identify, separate from and challenge your eating disorder thoughts. While giving in to these thoughts may help you feel better in the moment, doing so will only keep you stuck in your eating disorder.

So, what can you do instead? The opposite action; eat the food, don't weigh yourself (better yet, throw out the scale).

Repeatedly not acting on your eating disorder thoughts and doing the opposite action means these thoughts will quieten, and your healthy self will gain strength.

Set specific recovery goals

As a Recovery Coach, I support clients to challenge and change their eating disorder thoughts and behaviours in the here-and-now.

A big part of this is helping clients to identify their personal recovery goals, and collaboratively breaking down goals into smaller, more manageable steps. Setting achievable goals allows you to feel a sense of accomplishment and build up your confidence and motivation as you progress in your recovery.

I help clients identify and challenge any perfectionist or black-or-white thinking that arises in this process.

Goals should be flexible, including ranges to work within, for example, “I will eat one of my three breakfast options for breakfast each morning over the next week, and I will eat it any time before 8.30 am”.

I assist clients in regularly reviewing their goals and considering;

• What went well?

• What didn’t go well?

• And what can be learnt?

Self-reflection assists in overcoming any barriers or obstacles and continuing to build on your goals. It is also essential to give yourself credit for what you have achieved.

It is easy to feel overwhelmed when you think about recovery as either being sick or being recovered. But recovering from an eating disorder is made up of thousands of small steps, and each step you take deserves recognition.

Commonly for those who have experienced an eating disorder, we find it easy to be hyper-critical of ourselves, so giving yourself credit can be a great lesson in self-compassion.