My Friend Ana

Healthy Eating After Recovery

Learning to eat healthy after an eating disorder
During recovery, the main focus is getting back back to a healthy weight and learning to eat without worrying about calorie intake and ingredients. During my recovery, I taught myself to not care about, or fear, junk foods and just not think about it. I just tried to eat without my disordered brain inhibiting me or holding me back- I tried to eat in spite of the thoughts my disorder had trained me to have.
While this method worked in terms of more or less overcoming my fear of food, it lead me on the path of eating unhealthily. While I felt good about eating whatever, I was still struggling with the effects of eating all the junk. I'd feel bloated, nauseous, and just overall unwell.
Diet has a huge impact on ones mental health as well as physical. In this sense, the phrase we've all heard "you are what you eat" is true. If you eat crappy, you feel crappy.
So I had to learn to eat healthy, with healthy portions. An apple a day. Carrots with my lunch. Celery and peanut butter as a snack. Of course, with my eating disorder watching what I eat is often difficult because I have to be cautious in becoming obsessive over tracking and mapping out my meals. It's easy to slip and start back up with our eating disorder habits of counting calories.
So how do we do it?
Find a balance.
Set the goal to become healthy, rather than to lose weight or change your body.