Eating disorder treatment: The recovery journey begins here!A successful eating disorder treatment starts with having some facts about your ED very clear in your mind. In the previous section , we began analyzing what the problem was, in this section, we will state where recovery begins. I must have tried to stop my binge eating at least 260 times. One time for each one of the weeks contained in five years. Every Sunday I would go to Wall Mart and buy healthy food. Every week I "started eating normally for good". And I failed every single time. Sometimes I could sustain the healthy eating for 3 weeks, sometimes for one, others just for two days and most of them just for 5 hours. I would binge on junk food during the week and throw all the uneaten vegetables to the garbage on Saturday. No matter what I did, there was "something" dragging me back and squashing down all my good intentions of finally having a nice relationship with food. I started asking myself: Why? Why does this happen? What is wrong with me? Why can't I just eat healthy if that is what I want? Why can't I stop eating everything I see? So by writing in my journal, I started unveiling unconscious thoughts that kept dragging me back to my unhealthy habits towards food every single week of those 5 years. Here I share with you all of those unconscious little "somethings" that kept me trapped on my ED for so long: Most of the time, I feel as if I have to live struggling with food and my weight for the rest of my life. No matter what I do, it seems to be that I will have to carry wit this forever. When will it be over? Should I make it be over? I don't know if I will be able to live with this other 40 years. Then, I realized I wasn't born with my eating disorder. I actually used to be very picky as a kid and I do remember when I started eating out of boredom as a teen. So this purging, binging, starving thing is actually something I learned and now it is a deeply rooted habit in my being. That means I can re-learn how to have a healthy relationship with food. Rewording Henry Ford's saying: "Whether you think you can overcome your eating disorder or not, you are right" With time and lots of self-help reading I started changing the way I saw my eating disorder. It changed from seeing it as a curse or a burden I had to carry for the rest of my life, to seeing it as a life lesson. from which I had to learn. Life is full of obstacles to be jumped and problems to be solved: Divorce, poverty, ignorance, abuse, lack of education...you name it. I mean, there is even people that is born without limbs and I saw the videos on YouTube where you can see them not complaining and trying to live their lives in spite of their physical limitations. My body is complete and functional. My limitation is mental. That means not that I have to learn to live with my eating disorder, BUT, I have to figure out the puzzle and find a way to be eating disorder free. What I mean here is that You have to be convinced that you can outgrow your eating disorder. If you don't believe so, why bother trying then? On of the first things everybody intuits, is the fact that the binge eating, the starving, the purging, the spitting, I mean, that the crazy relationship with the food is not the main problem. I realized that my eating disorder had to do with my emotions. With being depressed, with being angry, with being afraid, with being lazy, with feeling lonely, with not only not loving myself but with hating me. Food was a way to cope with feelings, to fill emptiness. Continuously struggling with food and weight was just something to get busy with in order to avoid facing all those uncomfortable feelings. You may say: Not me! Really!! My eating disorder is just about the weight!! the only thing I want is to lose weight!! If that is the case, I would dare to say that the thing you are avoiding with your eating disorder is to accept that deep, deep inside of you, you don't like/accept yourself. You want to loose weight in order to like yourself more or to make others like you. So, what is really and eating disorder? If you are really, truly committed to your recovery, you have to be willing to face those things that make you sad, scared, stressed, etc. You have to learn a lot of lessons and by learning them, you will stop having all those feelings that make you live with an ED. I knew that even I was very self confident in some areas of my life, in others I was not. I was very confident at school and work but I knew I wasn't that confident about the way I looked. I knew I had a low self-esteem. What it took me long to realize, was the connection between the low-self esteem and the possibility of recovery. It is very logic though. If my self-esteem was so low, if I didn't love myself (I'm ugly, stupid, bad, etc) why would I bother on making the effort of losing the weight and feel better? An ugly, stupid, bad person doesn't deserve to feel better. Why would I give myself the gift of recovery? Deep in my mind, as my self-esteem was low, I didn't deserve it. I used to think:"Once I lose those extra 10 pounds, I will be very confident, others will like me and I will like myself more" But that is not the way it works. As impossible as it sounds, I came up with the idea that I had to love myself first, so I could feel I was worth the effort. If I felt I was worth it, I could help myself and receive the help others were trying to give me. Do you feel deep inside of you that you deserve a happy, eating disorder-free life? Do you feel that this is possible for you?Do you feel guilty for having an ED and that your family has to pay for it? Do you feel you are a "bad" person? Have you pushed away help because deep inside you feel you don't deserve the help? that you don't deserve recovery?. One of the basic things you need to make your eating disorder treatment successful, is to know deep inside of you, that you deserve better. That you deserve recovery. Getting over your eating disorder will take time because there will be relapses I know you want to be eating disorder free and thin by next summer. But that is just not going to happen. You didn't get into this mess overnight, so don't expect to get over it by next month and for good at the first attempt. Getting an eating disorder treatment to work takes its time. You have to be patient with yourself. Maybe that is why you would like to subscribe to this site E-zine. Being in contact, will help you keep in mind that you can leave your eating disorder behind. Plus, you can receive tips on HOW to actually do that. I will be sending it to you every three months.
Realize of the advantages in having an eating disorder that make you hold to it Yes, you want to get rid of your eating disorder but you keep on coming back to the purging, the starving and the binging. Have you thought that there might be something you actually like about your eating disorder? Believe it or not, THERE ARE benefits from having an ED. And enjoying this benefits, keep us attached to the ED. One of them, is avoiding to face things that make you afraid. Does this happen to you? Do you hide behind your eating disorder? Do you hide behind the fat accumulated due to binge eating? Learn to love and please yourself FIRST I think the most common trait in girls with eating disorders, is this feeling of having to please others, of wanting to be liked by others in order to like themselves. This is one of the top things required to learn how to stop binge eating, vomiting, starving, etc. I am not going anywhere nor getting any better unless I learn
how to love myself
Actually, this is a fun part of the eating disorder treatment: focusing on yourself. :) Know that life is directly created by your thoughts Whatever you think of or believe, will find its way to manifest into your reality. So, what happens if you spend 95% of your time thinking about: food Well...your life will be full of that and only that. Besides building self-love, I suggest that working with your mind is another of the pillars of eating disorders treatment. In the "Your Mind" section of this site, you can find some info on how your mind works and some examples applied to EDs. In the "You and Food" section I suggest some new ways to relate to food by changing the way you think about food Be careful with what you think, and make a conscious effort to take your thoughts into new directions. Have goals Once you start getting rid of your eating disorder, you will have a lot of free mental space and a lot of free time you won't be using weighting yourself, eating, etc. All of that free mental space and time has to be put to good use. This will help you to walk away from the old known road. You need to think what your life will be like without an eating disorder. You need to want something so bad, that your eating disorder will be small next to it. Talking about goals...I think you will love this podcast by Steve Pavlina Faster Goal Achievement. It can be used for any kind of goal, but for our fun, it gives an example about loosing weight :) Another tool for goal achievement is the vision board, which consists of having somewhere at sight something that constantly reminds you of your goals. Have you thought about what could be the goals for someone trying to get rid of an eating disorder?
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