There’s a lot of opinions around food and body image even within the intuitive eating space. And that’s really important! We all have different lived experiences and resonate with different people and ideas. That should be championed.

But I wanted to share with you two actions I personally took on my journey from disordered eating that drastically helped me and added incredible value to my life and recovery.

  1. Disordered eating patterns are a faux sense of control or safety
    There’s a difference between feeling ‘good’ and feeling relief.

    The notion of feeling good is joy and peace in your eating. Whereas relief is experiencing a lessening of a high-level activation. Relief typically doesn’t last and is a small taste of what is possible when there is healing and you’re ‘good’ in your recovery with your food.

    The antidote here for this faux sense of safety or control is co-regulation.
    And this is only found in the context of relationship. And that means we have to be willing to risk being rejected again.

    Even though co-regulation is only found within relationship, there is a variety of ways that this can look.

    The goal would be to find other(s) that we would consider ‘safe enough’. This might mean that they are curious enough and willing to support you without judgement.

    However, maybe these kinds of people are not currently in your life. The next best thing is for you to be a safe person for yourself.
  2. You deserve to eat the food regardless of what you did today or what other people think
    – Breakfast
    – Lunch
    – Dinner
    – Snacks
    – Treat

    You get to eat them all regardless of what you ate yesterday, or earlier in the day, or the comment someone made to you about your body. When you are regularly eating enough food, you’re teaching your body that it’s safe to increase your metabolism and respond to food the way it should.

    This is an important action and not something to be overlooked.

Let’s dive deeper into this topic in the video below.

https://youtu.be/ngmGOZ1ue2c

P.S. If you are looking for help on your food recovery journey, we’d love to be a ‘safe enough’ place for you to land. If you’re interested in learning more, head over to our Get Started page to schedule a free time to chat over what care options would work best for you.