Eating Disorder Activities for Recovery

Eating Disorder Activities for Recovery
Page content

Develop a Healthy Plan for Recovery

Overcoming an eating disorder requires a structured plan of recovery. The first step that can be helpful to begin recovery is to meet with a dietitian or nutritionist. The dietitian can help you to come up with a healthy daily caloric goal and set up a fitness regime to help you meet the ideal standards required to get better. Whether underweight or overweight, a dietitian can determine the best method for you to get to a healthy body weight.

Starting a journal along with new eating and fitness habits helps you to become accountable for your own actions and choices. A diary can be used to record every food consumed, along with disordered eating patterns or unhealthy behaviors. Along with each entry, a note of one’s mood and physical state should be recorded in order to be able to look back at each entry and determine how each action leaves you feeling emotionally and physically.

Developing hobbies outside of the home can be a great way to distract the mind from unhealthy thoughts and prevent unhealthy actions. Often, eating disorders are linked to a preoccupation with food. Distracting the mind from this preoccupation can be a way of preventing many eating disorder behaviors, or providing distraction from the negative feelings that go hand in hand with eating disorders. Many people find it helpful to develop a hobby that can be performed instead of binging, purging or overexercising.

Reach out to Family and Friends

Finding support is helpful in getting over eating disorders. Support groups are often available for a wide range of mental health issues, including anorexia, bulimia and binge eating. These groups help people to meet up with others in similar situations, along with providing an outlet to speak openly about eating disorders. Support groups allow people to develop a strong support system and find people that they can call when they need help.

Finding one main support person can be helpful as well, as this person can be contacted during or before a crisis and they will know how to help prevent bad situations. A good support person would be a therapist or doctor, although family members and friends can be helpful if they are willing and able to provide such support. When struggling with an eating disorder, do not be afraid to reach out for help. Even if family members and friends don’t fully understand, it is better to face struggles with loved ones than try to overcome them alone.

Get Treatment to Overcome Eating Disorders

The most important and helpful step to tackling eating disorders is to seek treatment. There are various treatment options for people with all types of eating disorders, and often the intensive care of these programs is necessary for getting better. Some centers offer individual eating disorder treatment, involving work with doctors, nutritionists and therapists. In-patient programs are a very successful method of treatment, as they allow a break from the real world where patients get to focus mainly on getting better and building healthy, life-long habits.

Regardless of the desired method of treatment, it is important that people with eating disorders set up some type of eating disorder activities for support and recovery. Recovery is not easy, and the more steps taken, the better the chance of recovering is. The most important thing to remember is that you are not alone, and that nobody deserves to go through this by themselves. Reach out to loved ones, they will likely be eager to help you start to get better.

References

Something Fishy: Types of Treatment - https://www.something-fishy.org/reach/treatmenttypes.php

HelpGuide.org: Eating Disorder Treatment and Recovery - https://helpguide.org/mental/eating_disorder_treatment.htm