Fear and Resistance in Eating Disorder Recovery

Recovering from an eating disorder is not easy. But it's necessary. If any of us want to live truly meaningful lives, we need to let go of what is holding us back, and, regardless of whether or not we want to admit it, eating disorders are holding us back.

As someone who's in recovery right now, I'm going to be completely honest and admit that, despite my best intentions, I still experience fear regarding food and exercise. The idea of increasing my meal plan often triggers a tidal wave of worries, and I usually have to monitor my movement to make sure I'm not using cleaning as a form of cardio. But dealing with some recovery fears recently, I realized just how limiting (and ridiculous) my thoughts are. Surely it isn't "normal" to be planning what and when I'm going to eat tomorrow, and the fact that I vehemently resist the idea of eating differently from how I currently am indicates that that's just what I need to do.

Steven Pressfield is right: "The more important an activity is to your soul's evolution, the more resistance you will feel."

Reading that makes it so obvious just how much we need to conquer our fears in recovery. Yes, there's a difference between resistance and self-preservation (i.e. if you feel resistance towards jumping in front of a car, then please listen to it!), but when it comes to eating disorder recovery, the only resistance we feel is caused by the eating disorder voice trying to perpetuate itself. The eating disorder doesn't want you to get better, so it'll do whatever it needs to in order to convince you to hold onto it.

In other words, the eating disorder is a total narcissist who's obsessed with criticizing us and telling us what to do. The eating disorder puts fear in our heads and makes us resist the very things that will make us better, and when we do try to get better, the eating disorder tells us we're being "bad."

But guess what?  Here's some Oprah wisdom for you:

"Where there is no struggle, there is no strength."

The struggle that our eating disorders present us are giving us strength. Every victory--however small--counts, and over time, victories add up. When we say yes to a slice of pie on Thanksgiving (or just on a regular night) instead of panicking about macros, we tell the eating disorder bully that it isn't in charge. And we take our power back!

Another fun way to take power back? Positive self-talk! Even if it feels forced sometimes. Eating disorders want us to feel bad and insecure, but our hearts want us to be happy. They want us to love ourselves so that we can then love others and make the love force on the earth more powerful than the hate force.  Here's a fun (albeit challenging) exercise in self-love:

Yay! You're adorable ;).

<3 <3