Eating Disorder Recovery and Support

Emily In this show, Emily is full of great advice on mindset shifts that are key to a successful and sustainable recovery. How learning to be assertive and set boundaries helped Emily stop using her disorder as a way to communicate to others • How Emily’s approach at recovery involved taking small steps forward consistently over time And once I stripped back my eating disorder, there’s this amazing, beautiful person under there.

My body has not changed significantly over the past few days, the past few weeks, or even the past few years. Any time I had life stressors (good or bad) the eating disorder crept back in, and my weight slid down while my life spun out of control. For the second time, I read Emily Duke’s article about her experience getting the vaccine because of her BMI. It goes something like this: I have fought my way back from an eating disorder that I battled for over two decades.

Poor form during exercise (in everything from walking, to running, to lifting weights) increases the risk of injury, both acute injury like from twisting an ankle as well as from chronic injury and the development of arthritis. When we use the “wrong” muscles for a movement (like what happens with chest breathing) we end up putting abnormal stresses on joints which can wear down the cartilage and lead to that “bone on bone” type of arthritis which leads to joint replacement surgery. The diet industry likes to blame body weight for things like joint pain and arthritis, but a person’s body weight has very little to do with it. When we aren’t using the proper balance of muscles because we use incorrect training methods, or because we don’t take the time to warm up our muscles before exercise (and cool down afterwards), it creates tightness and “pulling” that disrupts the alignment or “tracking” of our joints, leading to injury.

We often assume that eating disorder = super skinny girl. Sometimes speaking up about your eating disorder backfires I said the entire truth to myself, and made the decision to share my story. Speaking up can be scary because it makes the eating disorder feel real.

But even if someone doesn’t like dessert foods (in general), they still enjoy things like barbecue sauce, fruit, or balsamic vinegar, for example, all of which have sweetness as the predominant flavor. I’ve shared before that I started this journey by eating ice cream at every meal, and was pleasantly surprised that after a few days, the idea of ice cream for breakfast no longer sounded good. How to Eat Intuitively by Eating Dessert Besides the fact that I now give myself permission to eat dessert on a daily basis, eating dessert actually helps me eat other types of foods more intuitively. However, the syrup in combination with the cinnamon sugar coating on the french toast sticks was quickly making me feel a little over-sugared, more than the protein in the french toast seemed to be able to balance out.

On top of that, ED thrives in secrecy, making quarantine an ideal environment to practice eating disorder behaviors unnoticed. It’s possible to feel lost and lonely and find your identity outside of ED. it’s truly possible to be a strong, never-giving-up-or-quitting kind of person who finally says goodbye to ED during a life changing global pandemic. Working on tasks for others and caring for animals gets me out of the ED headspace and reminds me that the world is far bigger than my eating disorder.

Walls built so high no one could reach me. I see the sun rise and feel it’s warmth. Make progress in your recovery and get additional support in The Courage Club. Don’t miss out, join the waitlist today!

As I reflected on this diary, I realized something I needed to do in order to truly embark on my healing journey towards recovery. When I finally built up the courage to admit the truth to my mother and father, I felt years of emotional baggage release. The love that my parents and friends continued to shower upon me helped me to more deeply love and accept myself, and release my own self-judgments. Now, when I look at my diary entries, I am so relieved to be writing about my gratitude for life, my love for self, my acceptance of my body and my enjoyment of food—free of disordered tendencies.

However, we recently made a batch of lentil curry simply because we did not have any other food (i.e. animal protein) in the house, and I found myself eating about twice as much food as I normally do for my given hunger level. As I noted in this post, I’ve been realizing more and more lately that I still have a tendency to try to latch on to food or my body for a sense of stability, clinging to the fact that these parts of my life are often predictable. I have decided that it is important to me to get comfortable eating all kinds of different foods because I don’t want to be averse to certain meals because of the amount of food I will need to eat to feel satisfied. Whether that means exploring the woods with my sister and her kids, trying new foods with my best friend, or traveling to a new city with my husband, everything is more enjoyable when it’s shared with the people I love.

She tried to fit the mold of a perfect daughter, perfect mom, perfect wife. 5 years, 140 episodes, and multiple recovery programs later, Lisette is a completely different woman and is proud of the massive mountain high milestones she’s reached in her recovery. Tune into her full story and learn why finding your voice, passions, and purpose can bring anyone, at any age, out of the emptiness of an eating disorder into the fullness and joy of life. * Why it is never too late to recover from an eating disorder * How PCOS factored into the development of Lisette’s eating disorder