Eating disorders affect at least 30 million Americans and have the highest mortality rate than any mental disorder. Those who survive eating disorders often face a long, difficult journey.
Eating disorders are classified as mental illnesses characterized by severe disruptions in eating behavior. In our diet-oriented culture, many people may not realize that eating disorders still take a big toll.
As someone who has done extensive research and writing in the field of eating disorder recovery, and who has ongoing personal experience with the recovery from an eating disorder, I have found that while it is possible to fully recover from an eating disorder, it can take a lot of time and it often action. There can be many causes of eating disorders, including genetics, personality, trauma or often a combination of causes. But by the time someone is diagnosed by a doctor or therapist, the immediate causes are less relevant than recovering. Steady healthy habits are helpful in the recovery process.
Bad diet
The most important action someone can take to recover from eating disorders is to stop dieting. Diet of weight loss is the main cause of eating disorders, eating habits, dissatisfaction with the body and low self-esteem. In contrast, weight-neutral self-care approaches – that is, maintaining the current weight – have been found to help repair eating disorders.
But diet is only the first step. It is necessary to investigate and address factors that maintain eating disorders.
Abandon safety behavior
Many people who partially recover from eating disorders still rely on behaviors that help them feel their weight or appearance safe or less anxious. These so-called safety behaviors can vary, but can include monitoring food intake, weight monitoring, nutritional values, the caution of food ingredients, and avoiding eating in social situations.
The short-term anxiety-reducing benefits of safety behaviors are part of what makes it so difficult to eliminate. Unfortunately, safety behaviors create a distraction and leave the eating disorder undisputed.
To stop the safety behaviors that maintain eating disorders, it is important to find alternative ways to think and act on food, eating, body and weight. Strategies to achieve complete recovery from eating disorders include letting go of safety behaviors and more self-confidence and self-care.
Self-esteem is a safety behavior that maintains the overestimation of weight, which is part of the definition of eating disorders by the American Psychiatric Association. Persistent concern about weight or shape at the end of treatment has been found to be a strong predictor of relapse into an eating disorder. A powerful strategy to reduce weight overweight is to consider a personal 30-day “no weigh” experiment.
Other safety behaviors aimed at gaining information about your shape or size – such as mirror checks, squeezing the fat on the upper body, feeling muscles or bone, comparing social comparisons and seeking reassurance from others about your body – should all be considered for elimination. Each of these examples can be a safety behavior that helps maintain unnecessary worry about weight and shape, and in turn keeps the eating disorder alive.
Practice self-confidence
Exercising confidence around eating means that you must unconditionally give permission to eat when you are hungry, no matter what food you want, in the desired amount. Research has shown that the unconditional consent to eat is the exact opposite of an eating disorder. It can be scary to give unconditional permission to eat, but it seems that any kind of food rules, including restrictions on when, what and how much to eat, have led researchers to keep participants more preoccupied with food. Diet rules encouraged participants to have a much greater tendency to overeat, especially if they violated one of their food rules. On the other hand, research participants who allowed themselves to eat when they were hungry, and to choose foods and quantities they wanted, had a lower tendency to overeat or overeat.
Confidence in the body to make direct choices is one aspect of self-confidence. Self-confidence also extends to many other self-care practices.
Get involved in self-care
A person’s individual relationship with his own body is the “doorway to pathology”, which means that if the relationship is not positive, the person runs the risk of developing an eating disorder. To fully recover from an eating disorder, this doorway must be filled with positive self-care practices. People who recover can learn to engage in self-care practices that contain no elements of self-harm.
Food malnutrition contains both elements of self-sufficiency and self-harm. Self-care involves setting up and listening to body signals and responding in helpful ways. ‘Tired’ can, for example, cause you to ‘rest’ or ‘switch off the light and go to sleep now’. The feeling of ‘very uncomfortable’ may be that it’s’ time to change this situation ‘, and the feeling of’ overwhelmed ‘may mean that it’s time to take a break’ or ‘time to make a list’ make ‘, depending on the situation.
These reactions depend on the assumption of self-confidence. One must trust that the body does not lie. Our bodies tell us what we need to know, and responding to their messages can help us to fully recover from eating disorders.
Take some risks
It can feel daunting to abandon safety behaviors and replace them with self-confidence-based self-care. Change is inherently risky. But before positive change can take place, it is necessary to take some risks. And it’s worth it, because full recovery involves more than just letting go of eating disorders and safety behaviors. It also involves feeling better about yourself.
Participants in the research that achieved recovery from complete eating disorder had positive self-concepts. Those who have fully recovered from eating disorders showed higher self-esteem, self-efficacy, or a person’s belief in his or her ability to accomplish a task and self-direction than those who have not recovered or those who are in partial recovery. Another research study showed that the more positive ways participants were able to think about themselves, the less likely they were to lose treatment for eating disorders.
Taking the risks to trust your body and to respond to self-care is almost guaranteed to lead to an improved self-concept. Taking these risks can be daunting in the short term, but worth it to achieve a recovery from eating disorders.
This article was published from The Conversation, a non-profit news site dedicated to sharing ideas from academic experts.
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Catherine Gillespie does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has not disclosed any applicable commitments outside of their academic appointment.