Eating Disorder Recovery, Triggers, and Rules

Hi, loves! We're kitty-sitting, and it's a Tuesday, and I just got back from an incredibly long day of camp counseling. I don't know where my thoughts go while I'm working . . . most of my brain seems to be so occupied by counting students and helping them that I don't even identify as my own person until camp lets out and all of a sudden my own mind rushes back into itself and I remember that there's more to my life than a hot glue gun and band-aids. LOL.

Coming home tonight, I turned the computer on and began working on my assignments for health class. We're learning about nutrition, exercise, and "weight management" this week, and when I saw all those words, I immediately remembered being 15 and in my first high school health class again. There were a lot of positive things about my health class, and I am grateful for all my teachers, but I definitely attribute my descent into disordered eating behaviors to the "calories in, calories out" and "watch what you eat" guidelines that I learned both from the media and from my textbook. The textbooks all mean well, but when you've got a predisposition for any sort of eating disorder, reading that "activity levels must balance out with caloric intake" can be really triggering.

I didn't understand quite how triggering they could be until just a few minutes ago, when I opened a worksheet about BMI, negative calorie requirements, and goal weights that caused me to break down sobbing to my mother.

I'm not criticizing any worksheets or assignments, and I've known people who have incorporated fitness goals and calorie counting very successfully and positively into their lives, but as a person in eating disorder recovery, a worksheet focused on calculating my goal "pounds to lose each week" is really, really distressing. It reminds me so much of the very first rules I chose to incorporate into my restrictive eating habits several years ago, and it speaks to the rules I am now working so hard to let go of.

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The tricky thing is that any diet or exercise advice I read becomes a "rule" in my head--something I have to abide by "or else." I don't take the advice to heart . . . instead I take it to a very deep, dark, addictive place within myself.

Eating late is bad for you? Omigosh now I need to stress about mealtimes. Drinking water is good? Better finish two bottles of water in the next two hours!
Sitting is dangerous? Stop sitting!  

If you're serious about recovery, you need to actively remind yourself that these rules are NOT what are keeping you "safe." Honestly, breaking these rules won't hurt you nearly as badly as stressing yourself out about them will.

Stressing out about following a "rule" is much worse than facing your fear of the unknown. 

 My challenge for you (well, for all of us) today is to ask yourself where your "rules" come from. Are they from a textbook you read? An article you skimmed? An advertisement you saw? Try to imagine your life without these rules:

What if you listened to hunger cues, not to a clock?
What if you could eat food prepared by other people?
What if it was okay to sit down?
What if snacks weren't the enemy?
What if the answer wasn't always "eat less, exercise more"?

Think about it, now. Would your life open up without these rules? Would you feel less anxious? We often rationalize our diet and fitness rules as protecting us from uncomfortable feelings like stress, indigestion, and breakouts, but I've actually found that the angst I feel over following all my diet/fitness rules actually causes stress, indigestion, and breakouts. When we're relaxed and willing to go with the flow and just accept our bodies(!), we feel SO much better.

I'm definitely not recovered yet, but I'm working on it. I know so much more now about myself than I did when I was 15 and calculating my BMI for the first time, and I'm not going to let myself let go of all the hard work I've done to pull away from restriction, addiction, and compulsion. Life with an eating disorder is not a fun one. It's freaking stressful, and I think that, if we really commit to recovery, we can get to the other side and find that flexibility, flow, and acceptance bring way more joy than dieting ever can.

<3 <3 <3