NEWS FLASH:
There will never be a “right” moment where you jump up and decide recovery sounds awesome and you’re totally ready. Nope. It won’t happen. Recovery is scary, new, difficult and uncomfortable.
Your eating disorder is comforting, safe, and everything that you know – yet it’s not a way to truly live. Even though it’s worth the pain and difficulty, there won’t be a magical time when you decide recovery sounds fun.
So what are you supposed to do? Keep slipping farther and farther into your eating disorder? Because that will happen. It will consume you more and more if you don’t do something do something. NOW!
In fact, pause from this article, go grab a snack, and keep reading as you eat. Seriously. I’m eating as I write this.
“Where do I start?”
Start anywhere. Even if it’s 5pm and you haven’t had a “good” food day, week, month or year. Even if you’re unsure, fearful, or in the throes of “I’m just going to binge later anyway, why eat now?” To quote Nike, “JUST DO IT.”
Are you waiting for your “aha!” moment, where you decide enough is enough and radically become eating disorder free?
I have had plenty of “aha!” moments. Yet they still never turned into recovery. Why is that? Because recovery takes planning.
Well, I’m actually quite good at the planning stage. You want copious goals and steps to achieve them? “Great, no problem. I’ll start tomorrow. On a fresh note, of course.”
Does tomorrow ever come?
I’m sorry, but screw tomorrow! Tomorrow is an illusion.
Think about it: you’re insightful enough to know you have a problem. Look at you! You’re reading about recovery on a recovery website right now!
Yet you’re staying stagnant, stuck in the vacuum of your eating disorder. You can see yourself falling further into the pit. Instead of catching your fall with your hands, you simply look away…and subsequently fall flat on your face.
Ouch. It’s time to get your hands out.
Waiting to be saved?
And finally, are you waiting for someone else to swoop in and save you?
Here’s the cold hard truth about being saved: it’s only a story we tell ourselves so that we don’t have to do the crazy hard work…No one else can save you.
They may worry about you, they may even force you into treatment.
But it is YOU, my friend, who has to decide that you don’t want to suffer from this eating disorder anymore. It has to be your choice.
A quote I saw online once sums recovery up, stating, “I’m not saying it’s going to be easy; I’m saying it’s going to be worth it.”
Regardless of what you’re waiting for – you are still just waiting. Stop postponing your amazing life you should be living!
A good article, my youngest had just left home and I am left here within who never bothers now, no professional support and an ed. Yes I am just existing eating the same cold boring food every day, yes low BMI but not that low. Know I have to recover to live the rest of my life, but so hard to know how to start, what to eat and get rid of the thoughts constantly in my head every time I get in the scales or eat anything with calories, thinking I should start exercising, perhaps cook and actually eat a meal, but when is the right time? It ‘ll have to be soon or I won’t be here to recover.