5 inspirational ways to stay motivated in your recovery (Video)
By Tanja, Psychologist for Eating Disorders & Body Image
When you started your eating disorder recovery journey you probably felt a lot of emotions. You might have been excited, but maybe also a little bit scared, nervous and vulnerable.
Hi there!
I’m Tanja. I’m a qualified psychologist specialising in eating disorders, negative body image and body hate. I’m also a survivor of anorexia.
My mission is to help you to end your lifelong struggles with food and your body and inspire you to uncover and embrace you true worth. Read more…
Having decided to change, you probably read some articles and maybe even some books about the different treatment options, the challenges you might face and how to succeed.
See the full video here or read the full article below. Have fun 🙂
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For me, when I started my recovery journey from anorexia, I was quite overwhelmed by the physical and mental changes I experienced. After all those years of suffering, I found it very difficult to challenge my eating disorder thoughts, inner voice and behaviours and stay motivated in my recovery. I often asked myself why I had started my eating disorder recovery journey, as it seemed so much easier to fall back into my old and familiar eating disorder behaviours than dealing with painful thoughts and feelings.
You may well face similar challenges. You will need to plan for rough times, during which every part of you will be tempted to fall back into your old eating disorder patterns. However, despite these challenges, full recovery is perfectly possible.
Recent research on addiction has shown that staying motivated is one of the most important aspects of a successful recovery.
Your motivation may flag sometimes, or you may find it difficult to imagine that you will finally overcome your eating disorder. However, there are some important strategies that you can use to stay motivated and encourage you to carry on working towards you recovery.
I would like to share 5 ways to stay motivated that I found helpful in my eating disorder recovery.
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With Tanja – Psychologist for Eating Disorders & Body Image
Categories
Eating Disorder Recovery
Body Acceptance & Body
Love
Intuitive Eating
1. Create a cost-benefit analysis of your eating disorder recovery
Starting your recovery journey has hopefully giving you a feeling that your life is becoming fuller and richer and has given you a sense of how wonderful life can be without your eating disorder. However, you might have phases when you maintain unhelpful aspects of your eating disorder behaviour. For example, you might find yourself occasionally purging after you have eaten, because you have given in to the short-term urge to lose weight. However, remember that accepting temporary discomfort is an important part of achieving your long-term goals.
Carrying out a cost-benefit analysis to examine the pros and cons of your eating disorder recovery can increase your motivation to change.
Ask yourself: What are the advantages and the disadvantages of my eating disorder? Then write down on a piece of card what the main benefits are of your recovery journey and the costs of not making any changes. This card will come in handy when you require a motivational boost.
2. Identify your identity outside of your eating disorder
I had been suffering from anorexia for such a long time, I had forgotten who I was before my eating disorder.
Try to identify who you really are, by identifying things that are important to you but are not related to your eating disorder. Where do your strengths and passions lie? Maybe you love playing an instrument, writing great stories, or being a good friend. It might take some time to identify these qualities. But once you have found the things that make you unique, you will rediscover your true identity and you will be less likely to return to your eating disorder patterns.
If you want to know more about the signs of anorexia, read my article 10 silent signs you might have anorexia.
3. Identify your true values in life
Values are qualities that we consider to be important and we wish to personify, such as love, career, honesty, health and fitness. These values help us to identify who we want to be and how we want to live our lives. Living by them influences our priorities, thinking, decision-making and actions.
However, your eating disorder might have taken you far away from your true values in life. Your previous healthy and positive values might be crowded out by your obsessive thinking related to your body shape, food and other eating disorder thoughts.
However, identifying and learning about your true values in life can help you to identify which decisions or behaviours move you closer to your values, or further away from them. Each time you make a decision in relation to your eating disorder, ask yourself if this decision resonates with your true values.
4. Recognise and challenge your eating disorder thoughts
Shortly after I started my eating disorder recovery, my eating disorder voice got louder and louder. This was the result of avoiding familiar anorexic patterns.
Learning to recognise which thoughts came from my eating disorder voice and which were from my healthy self was extremely helpful on my recovery journey. For instance, when you have an urge to purge after a binge-eating episode, it can be very handy to identify that this urge is coming from your eating disorder self rather than your healthy self.
5. Allow self-compassion
There are usually underlying reasons behind the development of an eating disorder. For some, an eating disorder serves the purpose of dealing with painful emotions, or surviving a traumatic experience.
Whatever underlying reasons might apply to your situation,try to understand your experience and find peace within yourself. Make time each day to offer kindness and words of encouragement to yourself. Tell yourself that it is ok to feel bad in difficult situations during your eating disorder recovery.
It will take time to learn how to live without your eating disorder, but it is truly worth it. You have the right to live your life and be happy, just as other people have the right to live theirs.
You don’t need to struggle alone on your recovery journey.
Simply get in touch to discuss how I can help you.
It is entirely possible to overcome an eating disorder or body hate –
I have done it, others have done it and so can you!
Join the Body Acceptance & Food Freedom Collective
Receive a weekly dose of inspirations to help you make peace with your body and food.
Don’t worry, we hate spam too. You can unsubscribe any time.
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Hi there!
I’m Tanja. I’m a qualified psychologist specialising in eating disorders, negative body image and body hate. I’m also a survivor of anorexia.
My mission is to help you to end your lifelong struggles with food and your body and inspire you to uncover and embrace you true worth. Read more…