Month: Jul 2021

Celebrate The Small “Wins”In Eating Disorder Recovery

How often do you hear “It’s The Small Things”



WELL NOW I BELIEVE, DURING RECOVERY FROM AN EATING DISORDER, GREATNESS COMES FROM CELEBRATING “THE SMALL THINGS”
 
After a minor set back a few weeks back, I write this with a newfound sense of self confidence.
 
I am here, writing this because of thousands of little victories. I cannot take credit for this idea, I share this after a recent interaction with the founder of The Recovery Warriors, True Warrior, Jessica Flint. Jessica introduced this principle to me and I feel it’s incredibly empowering. https://www.recoverywarriors.com/

This morning as I caught a glimpse of myself in the mirror, instead of the familiar self-loathing and negative chatter, I heard myself say, ‘you look good today‘. I celebrated this. I don’t recall the last time I heard myself pay myself a compliment.
 
Another example of  a “small win”, yesterday after a migraine, I embodied the definition of a ‘self-care goddess’ and practiced it as if it were some kind of art. I ordered comforting foods that would leave me feeling nourished and happy, I stepped onto my yoga mat for five minutes and did a simple sun salutation. I celebrated it afterwards, “Yey, go me I did yoga”, instead of my adopting my eating disorder  (ED) voice that is harsh and critical that would normally tell me “this did not count”. Instead, I celebrated the fact I stepped on my mat. It does not matter how short it was.
 
I felt a sense of pride, accomplishment that I had honoured my body rather than “I hadn’t done enough, I didn’t deserve to eat XYZ” It felt victorious whilst I sat eating my salted popcorn. I also celebrate this because the guilt was gone. One week prior would have been a whole other story and I would not have been celebrating this little victory if I hadn’t celebrated each individual victory last week. Take credit for your wins and use them to motivate you.
 
We all know recovery is not linear. I have shared posts on lapses and relapses and prevention previously. However, even in setbacks, celebrating victories is incredibly empowering. Three weeks ago, I started to notice ‘that voice’ becoming increasingly noisier. It appeared to come out of the blue. One day I felt like I was almost ready to “hang up my recovery shoes and call myself fully recovered” and the next I was unable to trust a single thought.
 Today, I feel stronger mentally, physically, emotionally than I have probably my entire adult life. I celebrate I got back on track rapidly and far more easily than even a year ago when I went “all in” after my last major relapse. It was the small victories that helped me pull myself out of the vacuum that appeared in front of me.
Choosing the difficult option time after time, riding the ED anxiety waves. It is amazingly simple I had inadvertently restricted when I lost my appetite and had fallen into energy deficit. The warning signs were there.

Lesson learnt, eat more even when I lose my appetite, enlist help. That voice became almost crippling during the week that ensued and I celebrate I did not engage in its demands. I celebrated that although I felt like I had fallen from a great height, I was able to recognize it, I did not bury my head in the sand or isolate, instead I asked for help at the point I recognized things were slipping. I relished this triumph because previously this would have been extremely hard, highlighting how far I have come in recovery, all was not lost. Every bite, every opposite action I made against my eating disorder voice I chose to recognize and celebrate.  
 
Since I started this process, I have a much deeper understanding of how my brain became sick. Each set-back has provided me with valuable information and it was so much easier to pull myself out.
Pausing. This is something so simple. Yet, if I were to ask you, when did you last pause, and slow down? When did you take a deeper look at your thoughts or emotions? Developing an awareness around my thought patterns has been a gift in recovery.
 
One of the things this setback demonstrated to me, was just how important it is to me to be with myself, to listen to my thoughts and become curious about my actions. This for me often involves my yoga mat or my journal. Both things had been neglected for the weeks leading up to the setback. Self-care should never be an afterthought, or “if I have time” instead it needs to be part of our lives in order to have a healthy mind and body. Reframing can be an incredibly valuable tool. The times where we feel we don’t have time or the actions are too small to count, try reframing them to “I did well today because despite being busy, ‘I still stepped on my mat’, just the process of stepping on it and giving time for you counts. Same principle with exercise, perhaps you go for a short run and normally your brain would tell you it’s not good enough, how about ‘go me, I ran today’
 
It is incredible how we can ignore such seemingly small moments or deem them as insignificant or unimportant, yet they often hold such empowering insights or lessons. Leaning in, acknowledging, and celebrating the small things is how we grow.  Do not ignore or just brush aside these important moments. Celebrating the small stuff makes a BIG difference.

What win will you celebrate today?

For the days where you are feeling nostalgic towards your eating disorder…

During the recovery process, I believe it’s common, even normal that many of us feel some kind of nostalgia towards our eating disorder. 

The times in recovery where our ED comes knocking and tries to lure us back, nostalgia is a tactic it uses. 

I found this crazy, why would I ever want to return to something so destructive, yet I experienced a sense of wistfulness for it at times. 

Your ED will not remind you of your darkest days in the depths of it, it will tell you mistruths, altered memories- such as, “it wasn’t that bad, you didn’t really have an eating disorder, not every day sucked, you still ate xyz, you didn’t miss” bla bla. But it will not be reminiscent of the rules you had to allow yourself to do that, the guilt and shame you felt and the resentment from others when their concern fell on deaf ears. No, it will not remind you of any of this. 

It will recollect and romanticize the euphoria you felt on occasion, but not the crashing low points that always followed and were the majority. It is deceptive and the memories are modifications.

Your eating disorder has been a maladaptive coping strategy. It’s not surprising it tries to draw you in, at a point in your recovery where you are experiencing so many challenging emotions, new experiences, loosening of support, why wouldn’t your eating disorder try and lure you back, romanticize its role in your life?

 It might be on a bad body image day; the voice whispers a reminder of old compliments you used to get. It will not remind you of the days where you missed out on happy events in order to follow the ED demands or how the compliments left you feeling conflicted and confused. 

Nostalgia is natural in recovery, but do not dwell in it and do not believe the romanticized picture your ED paints, your ED was not a happy place.

On the days where your ED tries to convince you otherwise:

I find reminding myself of the many things I DO NOT miss about my eating disorder helps snap me out of it.  Here are some of those things I do not miss…

  • My entire brain being consumed by nothing but thoughts of food and numbers.
  • Being “bone cold” all the damn time no matter what the temperature was.
  • The deception, the constant lies and shame that accompanied.
  • The isolation, the missed social events and memories 
  • Not being able to eat with company, not being able to eat alone.
  • Not having a period
  • Feeling lightheaded most of the time 
  • The pain, and many injuries through not allowing my body to rest.
  • The inability to laugh the inability to cry real tears. 
  • The crippling fear when faced with a “fear food.” 
  • The incapacitating supermarket, menu, choice “blindness.” 
  • The brain fog and difficulty to concentrate and apply most of my brain.
  • The sore throat 
  • The bloating and constipation 
  • Never getting a full night’s sleep, sleep being haunted by fear foods.
  • Not being able to eat out without planning a year in advance. 
  • Having to move 24/7. The unbearable discomfort of being still.
  • Being boring because I had nothing to talk about
  • Feeling like a constant failure no matter what. No number, image or achievement was ever enough. 
  • Feeling like I wanted to crawl out of my skin all the time. 

The list is not endless. I could continue. 

However, I feel it is important to remember a few things:

Nostalgia towards your eating disorder is nothing to feel ashamed about, it makes a lot of sense in recovery. We should normalize it. 

Nostalgia is natural in recovery, but do not dwell in it and do not believe the romanticized picture your ED paints. Bit by bit this nostalgia will dissipate and become replaced with the truth so long as you keep addressing it.