My Mother Makes Me Doubt Myself

Sorry to hear you're feeling this way. I imagine your Mum is just being protective, but I agree that your reasoning and your goals sound both healthy and rational.

Do you use exercise to manage your weight, or just diet? Do you have any medical condition which prevents you from exercising? If not it's worth considering. I strongly recommend yoj look into some kind of strength training. You don't need to spend money on weights or a gym membership, simple bodyweight training can do wonders. I'll write more when I'm back at my computer (typing long messages on my phone takes aaaaaages!) latef on today.

Have a think, let me know. And your Emglish is perfectly fine.

Good advice from RosemaryBronte, I second all of that! I hope you feel able to monitor yourself and be self-aware enough to recognise if/when your ED does start to become an issue again and consequently open up to whomever you need (your mum/friend/doctor/MFP contact). In the meantime it sounds as though just keeping some of your thoughts private from your mum might be a good tactic, to stop her worrying unnecessarily and preserve both your sanity and relationship with mum!

After an accident of my own, I spent about six months on crutches and the next six years just learning to walk again. I had to be a little resourceful when it came to exercise but I'm now in the last stages of my rehabilitation and except for the slight drop foot I have been left with (caused by the permanent nerve injury) I'm pretty strong and fit again. I didn't think it could happen but it did, and I hope the same will be true for you! I'm finally able to start thinking about running again once the weather clears up!

Personally I've found various types of bodyweight training to be more useful and versatile than weights but of course that's just me and everyone is different. Things like pilates, callisthenics, yoga, other kinds of functional exercises always make me feel that it's easier to build up to things gradually. For example, the programme I'm currently using (called Body By You by Mark Lauren, working my way up to being able to do his You Are Your Own Gym) takes an exercise like the chin up and breaks it down into smaller baby-steps. He starts by getting you to do an exercise called Let Me In (you can see an example of this here: https://youtube.com/watch?v=LPvK5FamZKY ) and after you are strong enough to do twelve of those you move on to a slightly harder version with your legs bent further, and then on through a series of exercises which gradually more difficult until one day you can do a pull up. To me, pull ups are one of the most intimidating exercises I can think of, so I love this approach - I don't need to spend a second worrying about the fact that there is NO WAY ON EARTH I could do a pull up now, all I need to think about is doing the much MUCH simpler exercises in between.

I find it more satisfying because it's a challenge, but a manageable one. I got to the stage where I knew I could lift light weights, then I knew I could lift something a little bit bigger but I found it boring and never really felt like I was developing the kind of strength that was useful to me. I get way more satisfaction (and adrenaline) out of knowing that I am working my way up to doing a single-leg squat! And past a certain point I realised that I either had to keep buying heavier weights/stronger resistance bands or pay out for a gym membership and use theirs. I don't mind doing cardio, I've always loved running, dancing and general cardio classes, but it can get a bit monotonous and on a bad day the time will drag and I get bored. If I get bored when I'm doing strength training then I know the work is too easy and I need to take it up a notch because that's the ONLY time the workout will drag. When I'm doing strength training I am concentrating and working far too hard to ever get bored. An hour's strength training goes by like twenty minutes cardio. (For the record, half an hour's strength training is plenty, I just like to do more of everything! You don't have to do an hour )

Anyway, I'm kind of rambling now and I don't know if any of that will be useful to you, but maybe it will give you a little food for thought. Lots of people (including me!) believe that building strength makes it easier to manage their weight because it is thought to aid metabolism. If you are spending any time at all thinking about your calorie intake it makes perfect sense to think about things that will help you burn a few extra calories from time to time. Today for example, I was so hungry this evening and my food diary told me I only had enough calories left for a pretty boring dinner... so I did an hour of strength training and was able to add an extra 300 calories to my dinner without having to feel guilty, or like I'd 'cheated' or that I'd undone all my hard work so far. Let's face it, there WILL be days when you want some chocolate cake (and pizza, and wine, and allllll the lovely things we have to be sensible about!) and rather than beat yourself up about it or feel that you are losing control of your good health, you may as well just do a bit of exercise and then eat the cake totally guilt-free.

If you're interested in pilates I can recommend a DVD called First Steps Pilates Course by Pilates on Demand.

See here: amazon.co.uk/First-Steps-Pilates-Course-Boxset/dp/B00OQE266C/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1456182216&sr=8-1&keywords=pilates+on+demand .

At £18.99 I'm afraid it's not the cheapest one out there, but it has three discs and six full workouts of different levels. You start with the first workout and progress from there. For me it was worth the money because I knew I would use it - I bought it almost a year ago and still use it every week, it's helped me so much - and it would be so much cheaper and more convenient than pilates classes. There are lots of other DVDs out there, plenty of them for beginners and Amazon reviews can be really useful.


Right, I've yakked on enough! I'll step aside and let someone else get a word in edgeways! Feel free to ignore this entire post if you like!