When you have an eating disorder, your brain is hard-wired in such a way as to instantly pay attention to information and ‘advice’ regarding dieting, weight loss, exercise and all the damaging diet industry and diet culture bullshit that dominates our modern day culture. These messages are precisely what we need to avoid when we […]
Category: Recovery Motivation
Posts that might help provide a bit of motivation to start or keep going in eating disorder recovery!
A human brain can only concentrate and pay attention to one thing at a time. This fact is a reality for us all… that even with the most accomplished or expert brain, focusing on more than one thing at a time is just not possible. Multi tasking is a myth…. I know all you female […]
In eating disorder recovery, we frequently refer to the concept of brain rewiring as a fundamental part of the process. Unless we use the plasticity our brains have to change our habits and make recovery focused behaviours, thoughts and ultimately beliefs our norm, we won’t attain a lasting recovery. Frequently though when people talk about […]
In the past, whenever people have suggested I might like to practice daily ‘gratitude’ – perhaps in a nice journal or using some other method, externally I might have smiled and nodded, while inside I was thinking, ‘f**k off’. ‘Practicing gratitude’ to me sounded hippy, woo woo and quite frankly, when you are miserable living […]
Is the dreaded ‘quasi-recovery’ an inevitability in the recovery process from an eating disorder? This is a question that occurred to me recently. Before I continue though, for those who are not aware of this term, ‘quasi recovery’ refers to the half-way (or maybe a bit more than half-way) recovery state that many people hit […]
If you are here now, reading recovery blogs online and you have an eating disorder then you are already a superhero because whether you have taken any other positive steps into recovery yet or not, you are obviously not just accepting life in the illness and at the very least, you are contemplating the terrifying […]
There are many things common to most of us with an eating disorder but one of these is that we spend so much time (too much time!) seeking and let’s be honest, arguing over, the ‘right way’ to do recovery. Do we go ‘all in’ (I hate that term)? Do we follow a meal plan? […]
I have recently made a really tough decision – perhaps idiotic, perhaps wise, maybe brave, possibly cowardly…. whatever it is, it was very very hard to make and then to put the necessary wheels into motion. And I want to share my current decision and situation, to be real and to show that recovery is […]
Within the eating disorder recovery community there is a large following of the ‘strong not skinny’ movement and a focus on this in terms of recovering from a restrictive eating disorder. Being the naive person that I can be at times, on first hearing the term ‘strong not skinny’ when it was used in relation […]
When I first became ill with anorexia nervosa, I was a 27 year old woman who had never had any form of disordered eating, history of dieting or weight manipulation and I was at a stage in my life where I felt happy and settled. Therefore finding myself with a severe eating disorder was a […]
How many times did I seek the magic answer to eating disorder recovery over my years of illness? How many times have I been asked the question or asked it myself of others, ‘…but HOW?!?’. “But HOW do I eat more / rest more / stop my weird and not so wonderful eating disorder behaviours […]
This morning I woke up to the best message ever in my inbox… a message from another woman, of a similar age to me, who has had anorexia for years, telling me, “Today is the day… I am doing it!!”. … Yes, after a turbulent few days of indecision she is taking the terrifying and […]
“You can’t change the past” – True. “Looking back with regret is never helpful”…. I am not so sure that one is true. The human body and brain are incredibly sophisticated and clever machines. Everything they do has a purpose and with that every human emotion has evolved for a reason. Emotions exist to help […]
In eating disorder recovery, we often use the term ‘overshoot’ when it comes to weight restoration and it is a concept that fills people in recovery, who are already terrified of weight gain, with a deep sense of dread. Unfortuntately, I do think that the dreaded overshoot in recovery, if we want to get to […]
In my last post I wrote about the reflections that I had been making on my eating disorder recovery so far – where I was at the start of this journey and where I am now in recovery and life terms. And I suppose, the truth is that yes, I’ve come a bloody long way […]
RECOVERING NOMAD 