Eating disorders affect at least 30 million Americans and have the highest mortality rates from any mental disorder. Those who survive eating disorders often have a long and difficult journey ahead of them.
Eating disorders are classified as mental illnesses characterized by severe disruptions in eating behavior. In our diet-driven culture, many people may not realize that eating disorders still take a huge toll.
As someone who has done extensive research and wrote in the area of recovery from eating disorders and who has ongoing personal experience in recovering from eating disorders, I have found that while complete recovery from an eating disorder is possible, it can take time and often requires a lot of action. There can be many causes for eating disorders, including genetics, personality, trauma or, often, a combination of causes. But the moment a person is diagnosed by a doctor or therapist, the immediate causes are less relevant than how to recover. Consistent healthy habits are helpful in the recovery process.
Abandon the diet
The most important action a person can take to recover from eating disorders is to stop dieting. The weight loss diet is the number one cause of eating disorders, binge eating, body dissatisfaction and low self-esteem. In contrast, self-care approaches with a neutral weight – that is, with a focus on maintaining the current weight – have been found to aid in the recovery from eating disorder.
But abandoning the diet is only the first step. It is necessary to investigate and address the factors that maintain eating disorders.
Abandon safety behaviors
Many people in partial recovery from eating disorders still depend on behaviors that help them feel safe or less anxious about their weight or appearance. These so-called safety behaviors can vary, but they can include monitoring food intake, monitoring weight, checking nutritional values, being very careful with food ingredients and avoiding eating in social situations.
The short-term anxiety-reducing benefits of safety behaviors are part of what makes them so difficult to eliminate. Unfortunately, safety behaviors create a distraction and leave the eating disorder itself unchallenged.
In order to stop engaging in the safety behaviors that serve to maintain eating disorders, it is important to find alternative ways of thinking and acting in relation to food, food, body and weight. Strategies for achieving full recovery from eating disorder include abandoning safety behaviors and becoming more self-confident and self-caring.
Self-eating is a safety behavior that maintains the overvaluation of weight, which is part of the American Psychiatric Association’s definition of an eating disorder. Continued concern about weight or shape at the end of treatment is a strong indicator of relapse in an eating disorder. A powerful strategy for reducing overvaluation of weight is to consider a 30-day “weightless” personal experiment.
Other safety behaviors aimed at obtaining information about someone’s shape or size – such as checking the mirror, tightening the fat on the torso, feeling muscles or bones, engaging in social size comparison and seeking assurances from others about your body – all have to be considered for disposal. Each of these examples can be a safety behavior that serves to maintain undue concern about weight and fitness and, in turn, keeps the eating disorder alive.
Practice self-confidence
Practicing self-confidence when eating means giving yourself unconditional permission to eat when you are hungry, whatever the desired foods, in the desired amount. Research has shown that unconditional permission to eat is the exact opposite of an eating disorder. It may be anxious to give yourself unconditional permission to eat, but it turns out that any kind of dietary rule, including limits on when, what and how much to eat, led research participants to be more concerned with food. Dietary rules led participants to be much more likely to overeat, especially when they broke one of their dietary rules. On the other hand, survey participants who allowed themselves to eat when they were hungry and choose the foods and quantities desired were less likely to abuse their food or to eat compulsively.
Trusting your own body to direct food choices is an 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 their own body is the “gateway to pathology”, that is, if that relationship is not positive, the person is at risk of developing an eating disorder. To fully recover from an eating disorder, this door must be filled with positive self-care practices. People in recovery can learn to engage in self-care practices that do not contain any elements of self-harm.
Excess food contains both elements of self-care and self-mutilation. Self-care involves tuning and listening to the body’s signals and responding in useful ways. For example, being “tired” can cause you to tell yourself to “get some rest” or “turn off the light and sleep now”. The feeling of being “very uncomfortable” can indicate that it is “time to change this situation” and the feeling of being “overwhelmed” can mean that it is “time to take a break” or “time to make a list”, depending on the situation .
All of these responses depend on the assumption of self-confidence. It is necessary to trust that the body does not lie. Our bodies tell us what we need to know and responding to your messages can help us to fully recover from eating disorders
Take some risks
It can be daunting to abandon safety behaviors and replace them with self-care based on self-confidence. Change is inherently risky. But for positive change to occur, it is necessary to take some risks. And it’s worth it, because full recovery involves more than just abandoning eating disorders and safety behaviors. It also involves feeling better about yourself.
Research participants who achieved full recovery from eating disorder had positive self-concepts. Those who have fully recovered from eating disorders showed higher levels of a person’s self-esteem, self-efficacy or belief in their ability to succeed in a task and self-direction than those who were not in recovery or those who were in partial recovery. Other research showed that the more positive ways participants were able to think about themselves, the less likely they were to abandon treatment for eating disorders.
Taking risks to trust your own body and engaging in responsive self-care will almost always lead to improved self-concept. Taking these risks can generate anxiety in the short term, but it is worth it to achieve full recovery from the eating disorder.
This article was republished from The Conversation, a non-profit news site dedicated to sharing ideas from academic experts.
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Catherine Gillespie does not work, consult, own shares or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article and did not disclose relevant affiliations other than her academic appointment.