When in eating disorder recovery, there are a number of factors that can make a real difference to how much progress you make in terms of recovery changes and neural rewiring. I have written about some of these in a separate post but in this post, I wanted to highlight the importance of ensuring that […]
Category: Restriction & Fear Foods
In eating disorder recovery communities, the term ‘all in’ has now been used for a few years to describe the eat all you can approach to recovery that many promote and have success with. I have written before about the concept of ‘all in’ on this site but I have never been a big fan […]
Every human brain (however old) has the ability to learn new skills, behaviours, thoughts and emotions. This is the concept of ‘neuroplasticity‘ or ‘brain rewiring’. Eating disorder recovery necessitates changing a lot of behaviours and thought patterns that in the years or decades of illness have become deeply wired into the brain, such that you […]
In the UK, this week is Eating Disorder Awareness Week. I am always uncomfortable about these awareness weeks because of the amount of damaging, stereotypical information on eating disorders that still rears its ugly and harmful head every year, but I wanted to do something to acknowledge the week in my own small way. Therefore, […]
In this post, I am going to do something I have not done before… In my eating disorder recovery, I always found that writing a journal was incredibly useful to me as it helped me get out my frustrations, identify what was troubling me in that moment and then mentally process what I needed to […]
The most searched for and read posts on this blog are my posts about overshoot weight and set point weight. Perhaps this should not be surprising as people with eating disorders are scared of weight gain and so seeking information about the weight they are gaining or have gained is probably to be expected. However, […]
When something stops being an option in your mind for long enough, you just stop seeing it. During my years of heavy restrictive eating, compulsive exercise and movement and painful isolation, my brain learnt and adapted to this being my new normal and stopped paying attention to the fact that anything else was a real […]
I have not written on this blog for some time… I have not looked at it for sometime either and much of the time I easily forget that, ‘Recovering Nomad’ even exists. And then something today made me take a look at my ‘dashboard’ for the website and realise that every day, people are still […]
Very often nowadays, you will hear people say, ‘I am committing to my recovery‘ or recovery coaches might say, ‘you have to commit!‘… And it sounds great doesn’t it? It sounds wonderful. To be committed to the process and committed to our recovered selves… But what does it really mean when we talk about commitment […]
‘Feast Always Follows Famine’…. These old sayings exist because they are true. And in eating disorder recovery when you think you are broken because you are hungry ALL the time and thoughts of food will never switch off, even when your stomach is stretched to a painfully full limit yet no amount of food that […]
In traditional treatment for eating disorders, meal plans are the ‘prescription’ every patient who walks through the door is given. They are the basis that treatment has been built upon for years. Wherever you live in the world and whether it is eating disorder treatment as an inpatient, out-patient, day patient or something in-between, meal […]
Many of us with an eating disorder are told (probably because it is true) that we have very black and white thinking. I do not believe that the black and white mindset is a pre-existing ‘personality trait’ of a person with an eating disorder, which some ‘professionals’ might try to persuade us is the case, […]
The eating disorder mindset is truly unique but involves a lot of thought patterns that are completely irrational yet common to most of us with this illness. One of these is the way that the eating disordered brain will cling onto what we did yesterday, or on the same day last week perhaps, in terms […]
In recovery from an eating disorder, it takes constant vigilance to keep the momentum of recovery going. And when life starts to get more involved again after years of illness and takes over in other wonderful ways, it can be easy to take your eye off the recovery ball and not instantly notice that recovery […]
Currently, when we talk about recovery from a restrictive eating disorder, the term ‘all in’ is often used. ‘All in’ refers to an approach where the person eats to their body’s real demands. They do not eat to a meal plan or to another form of prescribed amount of food, but instead really give in […]