Scared of Relapsing
Hey everyone!
My name is Em and I hope you are all doing well. I have been recovering for about two/three years now from purging disorder. I am in a bad place with how I look right now and am going on vacation in a month. I have been more focused on loosing weight in a healthy way. The issue is, I have never lost weight in a healthy way. I do not want to go backwards at all in my recovery. This is so hard, I do not know what to do anymore and I want to love myself. Unfortunately, I do not know how to love myself or do this in a healthy way. If you have any advice or input, it is greatly appreciated. Thank you!
Friend I am here if u need to talk to anyone. More love and support to u.
@em7moons I can definitely relate to this! Losing weight in a healthy way is tough when in recovery from an eating disorder, but it is possible. Something that helped me a lot was setting some guidelines for myself and watchpoints for if it was getting out of hand - as a few examples:
- if focusing on lowering calorie intake, making sure a) that it's still a healthy amount of nutrition and b) not only setting a maximum, but also a minimum so that I don't keep lowering the bar, and c) trying to work in a range rather than exact numbers to make it feel less intense in tracking than when I was in the depths of my ED
- using watchpoints for myself - e.g., I am not allowed to say no to a social plan because it will impact my diet since that was a big part of my ED - this both helps me avoid isolating myself and gives me a checkpoint. If I'm tempted to say no to something social because of it, it's a sign I'm getting too intense and risking slipping back to my ED
- talking about it with people - thta helps me get a second opinion to make sure it's still healthy. If I'm getting side eye for what my diet looks like when I am transparent about it, then it's probably not a healthy diet.
This is a tricky position to be in, and different things will work for different people, but hope those help a bit! Happy to talk more if helpful
