A major part of your recovery will be gaining comfort and acceptance of your body. Whether or not your body size has changed in recovery, you can learn to love and be grateful for who you see in the mirror.
A distorted body image can be deeply embedded in people who are recovering from an eating disorder, whether that’s compulsive eating, anorexia or bulimia. The food behaviors they reach for are used to disconnect from the body.
Recovery brings the opportunity – and the challenge – to be present in the body, perhaps for the first time.
To begin, you can use the following tools to discover your personal image and your connection to your body. Then you can start to learn where this story has come from. That way you can release any hurtful or unhealthy perceptions, and move into compassion and full acceptance.
I teach a model called “The Five A’s” to guide people through this process:
- Awareness (includes acknowledgement and anticipation) – Build your awareness of your current body image beliefs by journaling, meditating and talking about what you discover. Acknowledge your positive, healthy perceptions and anticipate the benefits of moving more and more into this new perspective.
- Appreciation (includes achievement and abundance) – Practice self-caring and self-loving rituals that celebrate your body and all of its gifts.
- Action (includes attention, amends, aspiration and accountability) – Take the necessary steps to care for and heal your body. You may have spent many years making unhealthy choices, but you can repair that damage one day at a time. Build and use a support team for this process (e.g., therapist, dietician, exercise buddy, therapy group).
- Acceptance – The sooner you can accept yourself and your body as you are right now, the sooner you will be able to evolve into the next stages of recovery.
- Affirmations – Talk to yourself kindly and positively, always choosing the perspective that everything you want is already on its way.