How to accept your body in eating disorder recovery
So before begin, I just want to say that I am someone who is still in recovery from an eating disorder. While I’ve been in a good place in recovery for quite some time, I don’t have everything figured out and I’m still learning, and I think that’s okay. I just want to share what I have learned along my recovery journey to hopefully help someone else out there who is similarly growing in this area of body acceptance.
That said, this blog is purely based on my personal experience with body acceptance and include what I’ve learned during hours of intensive outpatient programming, and meetings with therapists and dietitians. I’m also going to separate “how to cultivate body acceptance” into three key buckets: 1) take care of your body 2) rewire your mind and 3) assess your community.
Take Care of Your Body:
Give your body proper fuel. Do not restrict food to make your body fit a certain body type. You can’t grow body acceptance and be fighting against your body through restriction at the same time. The only way to truly accept your body is to allow it to BE. I noticed that when I stopped restricting food, and instead allowed my body to get the nutrients it wanted, my body and I stopped felt more in sync. I worked with a dietician to create a meal plan and slowly work my way to intuitive eating throughout the recovery process.
Similarly to not restricting, do not punish your body with exercise. You should never feel like exercise is a punishment for eating more, eating a certain type of food that you don’t think is “healthy,” or as a way to force your body to be a shape that it doesn’t want to naturally be. Again, I worked with my dietitian on creating a healthy relationship with exercise, and I have a specific blog on this topic as well.
Explore mindful movement / tuning into your body. Yoga is a fantastic form of mindful movement because it allows you to slow down and connect your breath to movement. But tuning into your body can also mean just noticing it - notice your breathing, tightness or looseness in different areas, how different parts of your body feel. This has improved my awareness of my body, feel closer to it, and accept it for what it is.
Rewire Your Mind:
Read books. There are tons of body acceptance books out there (Amazon offers quite a few.) I personally enjoyed reading “The Body Keeps the Score,” as this describes how trauma is held in the body. As someone with PTSD, this really helped me understand why my body reacts in certain ways, holds tension in certain areas, and why I in many ways felt distanced from my body. Understanding my body better definitely helped me accept it more.
Avoid looking in mirrors. I know this sounds a bit extreme, but my body acceptance improved A LOT when I stopped analyzing myself in the mirror. I also used to put encouraging sticky notes on my mirror - things like “You are kind. You are doing the best you can. You are a great friend.” - to reinforce positive things about myself when I did look in the mirror.
I know this sounds crazy, but talk to your body. Out loud. I especially do this when a negative thought about my body comes into my head. When my eating disorder voice said “Your body is gross, you’ve gained too much weight.” I would say “Body, don’t listen to ED, you’re amazing, and I’m so grateful for all that you do for me.” Which leads me to my next point…
Express gratitude for your body. Speak / write 1 thing every day that you’re grateful your body does for you. And I mean actually say it out loud or put pen to paper. When we verbalize these things / write them down consistently, it truly can change our mindset. Consistency goes a long way when it comes to rewiring our brains!'
Stop talking about your body and other peoples’ bodies. I (regrettably) used to comment on how myself and other people looked all of the time. I would find myself just making really negative comments about people, and that’s because I was so insecure about my own body and about myself. Words have so much power, and so I decided to replace these negative comments with positive things about myself / the person. For example, instead of saying “That actress looks horrible in that dress,” I would say, “I really liked that actress’ performance in the movie.” I noticed when I stopped talking badly about my body and others’ bodies, I started to think differently too. I became a lot happier and could see myself and others for who they truly are as people. This is such a gift :)
Assess Your Community:
Get in touch with the body acceptance community that already exists. For me, I did this via Instagram. I have an Instagram called @growithtori, and and I’ve used the space to engage with accounts and people who are truly part of a body acceptance and food-positive community. I I rarely engage anymore on my personal Instagram because it’s just a highlight reel. I encourage you to start unfollowing people who don’t promote body acceptance and get in touch with the amazing Instagram community that is.
Set boundaries with who you associate with. Take notice of the conversations that that your current friends have with you. Are they focusing a lot on other people, their bodies, and their looks? I’m not saying you have to cut these people out of your life entirely, but I am saying maybe it’s important to set a boundary so that you’re no longer spending as much time with that person. Or, make sure you’re being aware of how their words impact you. I truly believe that you are the sum of the people you surround yourself with, so make sure you’re surrounding yourself with people who speak positively about themselves, their bodies, and food.
Consider the community you’ve been raised in. A lot of times our parents and their perspectives on bodies can influence how we see our own. Our parents are only human, and while they might not have intentionally taught us to like or dislike certain parts of our bodies, it can still do damage. So, maybe it’s worth journaling out how your parents’ discussions of bodies impacted how you see / treat your own body. From here, you (and your therapist :) can start to build your own opinions on what a good body means to you.
Safe to say this blog is long enough, so I’ll leave it here.
Sending you so much love!
xx Tori