Compulsive movement or exercise is a key part of an eating disorder for many… and I can confirm, first hand, that it is a miserable and cruel thing to live with. Feeling compelled to keep moving your body, no matter what, and when not doing so feels overwhelmingly wrong and terrifying, makes the movement side […]
Tag: compulsive movement
Fundraising for charities or non-profit organisations is a challenge to say the least. It is hard work to raise money for organisations when you are up against so many charities now all competing for the public’s spare change. Eating disorder charities have the additional problem that eating disorders are considered by many in the general […]
Today I have spent the whole afternoon and evening wrapped under a blanket, on my sofa with some reading, TV and music… And it has felt incredible. Perhaps, it has felt even more incredible because not so long ago, when I was still deep in the eating disorder that I experienced for over a decade, […]
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 […]
A couple of days ago I wrote a post about the Covid-19 pandemic that is sweeping the globe and the impact it might be having on those with eating disorders. That post included my more general thoughts about how difficult this period of time can be for someone with an eating disorder but that it […]
I recently published my 200th blog post on this website… and I started writing these posts when I was at the start of this eating disorder recovery attempt – a time that feels a long time ago in many ways and yet also like it was yesterday. In fact, it was about 6 months ago! […]
Let me talk a bit more about compulsive exercise and movement with an eating disorder and in recovery because it is not spoken about as much as it should be, yet it is a key factor in keeping many of us sick and rarely addressed sufficiently in treatment. Why it is not addressed more in […]
One of the most common questions about eating disorder recovery that I get a lot and that I asked myself when trying to work out how to approach recovery is do we address all the fears… the eating more food, the resting, the stopping all the other weird s**t we do at the same time..? […]
For years, compulsive movement has taken up my every waking moment. If I couldn’t be moving then I would be hyper-anxious and my thoughts would be consumed by the need to move. This was my status quo and movement was my drug. If I was a smoker then movement would be my nicotine rush or […]
I’ve written in previous posts about lower level movement compulsions in eating disorders & the importance of addressing them in recovery. Facing up to eating more food and weight restoration alone does not a full recovery make! Recovery entails overcoming all the little behaviours and compulsions that have wormed in over the years – some […]
A light-bulb moment? Yesterday, I explained, in my post, More About Me!, that turning 40 this year was part of the wake up call I needed to take meaningful action against the eating disorder that had plagued my life for well over a decade. But with an eating disorder we often wait for a light […]
So often in eating disorder recovery we hear people advocate to just ‘let go’ of the illness or claiming that they are ‘letting go’ in their recovery. For a long time I’ve longed to ‘let go’. It sounded liberating, joyous & like a weight would lift from suffocating my life & drift away! But I […]
Giving up compulsive movement in ED recovery is HARD! For those with compulsive movement/ exercise tendencies, stopping could be compared to an addict coming off heroin & that is not an exaggeration! I’ve found attempts to reduce activity levels to minimal amounts, while not reducing food intake, the hardest thing I’ve done in my life.. […]
HOW to stop compulsive exercise & movement in eating disorder recovery: It is all good knowing we have a compulsive exercise problem and even the theory behind why it is there but does that help us in stopping it? Please don’t think I am perfect. I am working hard to address my compulsions with movement, […]
What constitutes compulsive movement? Formal exercise is easy to identify as something that we should not do in eating disorder recovery. Putting trainers on, going for a run, swimming, going to the gym and formal sports are all blatantly understood as being ‘exercise’ by joe public. What about lighter exercise though? The ‘well it is […]
RECOVERING NOMAD 