9 Ways To Care For Yourself When Recovering From An Eating Disorder

Here's the thing: For most of us, accepting our body when when recovering from our ED demons doesn't just happen and then we never think about it again. It's an active process — two steps forward and one back. It's filled with frustration, conflict, shame, anxiety, and fear. We can't just go to a 50-minute counseling session once a week and then go back to our destructive ways for the other 167 hours and 10 minutes. So, when you're outside the therapy room, here are 9 tips to to keep in mind:

Be compassionate with yourself. I can't say this one enough. Empathize with your feelings of anxiety, frustration, and defeat. Acknowledge the courage it takes to stand up to an eating disorder. Understand that we're all imperfect — that's what unites us — and that we're all in this battle together. Practice mindfulness. The yoga room can be a super helpful place to practice this stuff, and to start accepting your body.

When I began my recovery journey, I cancelled my subscription to a popular women's magazine. Five years later, when I read the occasional issue at the gym or hairdresser, I see the content through a very different lens.

Trying to fit into those clothes is hindering your process, and trying on clothes that are too small just makes you feel like crap (as it did for me this morning).

Eating disorders thrive on scaring you into thinking if you do something different, the world will end. Try ordering at a restaurant without Googling the nutritional info. Try skipping the gym for one day and seeing what happens. Try giving yourself permission to indulge in the brownie without beating yourself up, or try sitting with the discomfort of bingeing and refraining from purging (despite what your eating disorder is telling you to do).

Try going out in public without looking in a full-length mirror before you leave the house. Try permitting yourself to wear tights. Or shorts. Or a tank top. Or whatever you might not have let yourself wear before. We're up against enough in our effed up world of body shaming. Let's give ourselves a break from it within our relationships to ourselves.

If you keep doing what you've always done, you're going to get what you've always gotten. Step out of your comfort zone and do something different.

It's natural to grieve the part of your identity you believe you've lost when you put on recovery weight, but try to remember what else you've gained that the scale doesn't measure (e.g. sleep, warmth, calm, freedom, social connection, dessert, etc.).

Start following feminist blogs or wellness websites that promote wellness over fitness. A few of my favorites are Elephant Journal, Upworthy, Huff Post Women, and of course, mindbodygreen! Pick up Scientific American or Psychology Today to replace the aforementioned model-filled mags.

I've never been as miserable as I was when I was at my thinnest — in the throes of depression and anxiety, avoiding social situations for fear I might have to eat, chained to the gym, monitoring every move I made and beating myself up if ED didn't approve of my actions. When I hear ED trying to bait me, I remind myself that I choose life over skinny.