Those recovered/recovering from EDs, difficult to diet?

purplishblue

Hey just wondering about how other people with past EDs feel about dieting. I am recovered from a past ED. I find that due to all the years of restricting my calories, and then finally being able eat and enjoy my food, that now dieting feels particularly annoying to me. It's hard to not want to rebel and just eat what I want! I'm able to diet and eat healthy amounts, but I continually go back and forth with doing well with dieting, and then saying screw it and eating whatever I want. Unfortunately this also does not help me with my weightloss goal, I'm sick of being unhappy with how I look.

JessiBurtnett

I have put on 25 lbs in 2 1/2 years, a lot of muscle, but also a bit of fluff. I need to start cutting a bit but I am worried about it triggering something. I finally get to ENJOY food, I am not arriving for perfection, just being happy with myself. I know that I look and feel waaaaaay better than my lowest of 116 at 5'10" and I never want to go back. I would be happy going another 10 if it was muscle ;-) it's difficult to diet, but I just try to eat cleaner instead of restricting tons of calories. Good luck and good job! Recovery is a lifetime!

breathebelievejen

first off, I'm so glad to hear you're recovered and can finally eat and enjoy food! That's a huge deal!

now, on to the question.. IMO it's pretty hard not to slip back into destructive and obsessive habits.. Personally I have found shifting the focus to non-appearance goals (like better mental health, more energy and more specifically a # of workouts per week, increasing reps in strength training etc) can be helpful. I also try to limit my tracking to workouts and either don't track food at all (ugh, hard for me to do to let go of that control..) or only record descriptions of food and not the calories so I don't get really obsessive and restrictive and then end up in a binge and.. well you know the cycle.
Also, I think EDs kinda come with the 'being unhappy with how I look' and being very much sick of it at every weight and size and shape. Sorry if this is too blunt, I'm sure you know the dangers but I would be careful letting these ways of thinking slip back into your mind.. I honestly wonder whether it is possible to diet after an ED (especially on something like MFP where you have all these numbers to track that can quickly become a determiner of your self-worth..) and not become consumed.. books I've read about recovery (Making Peace With Food, for example) seem to have an almost anti-diet stance and suggest learning how to eat spontaneously and mindfully.. relearning hunger signals etc. focusing on eating nourishing food as fuel rather than as pleasure or punishment has helped me..

lawnis04

Hey!

So I'm in very early recovery from an ED, and I've been of the belief for years that dieting after having had an ED is very dangerous territory. You seem to be having the opposite problem (reverting to a recovery mindset rather than an ED mindset) which is good. But I worry that if you do start to get into a "diet groove", it is so much easier to slip back into disordered patterns.

That's not to say it can't be done. I think it can, if you have someone, or multiple people keeping you accountable. Just making sure that you are eating enough/not bingeing/not bingeing and purging or whatever your past behaviours were (also to watch out for new behaviours).

I think before beginning any diet though, you should examine your motives. Don't start one because you are unhappy with the way you look. We are wired differently. In the same way that an alcoholic can't recklessly drink without the risk of going overboard, we can't play around with our weight without the risk of going overboard. You've been there before so I'm sure you're familiar with the feeling of altering your body only to discover that it's "not enough", and you're still unhappy with it.

Make sure that you're at a place where you accept your body (you don't need to love it necessarily), and choose to lose weight for a different reason: health, new lifestyle, etc. Don't focus so much on the food and the weight as just changing up how you live. That way, you have so much to focus on that you won't get caught in a rut. Don't put too much importance on the weight loss because then any disappointment can drive disordered thoughts back.

I don't know your story, so I don't know how much dieting would be playing with fire for you, but as far as I can tell, we all feel invincible and like it would be fine until it's not.

If you notice harmful thoughts or behaviours slipping back in, tell someone immediately. Losing weight is not worth allowing yourself to fall back into the hell that is an ED.

purplishblue

So far I have been able to successfully diet using MFP, both the tracking and reading the posts By successful I mean lost weight healthfully, with no ED symptoms. So I know for me at least I am able to do that. I will say it does suck though feeling that even though I'm not obsessed anymore, it seems I will never truly be happy with my body, as I've been underweight, regular and slightly overweight and still felt unhappy in that aspect.

However, I am hoping that focusing on using weights will help me get to that point because it won't be just focusing on "thin", it's focusing on being strong and having muscle. Still though, I think the "recovery" part of my mind fights against all this dieting/working out, it's hard to go back to that even though it's in a healthy way. Unfortunately this is how I gained weight though, no exercising and eating high calorie foods after leaving behind the ED!