Eating disorder recovery is hard, and harder still when you have to ditch the exercise in order to restore the weight you lost to your ED.

Exercise can be a wonderful part of a healthy lifestyle, promoting physical and mental well-being. However, for those in eating disorder (ED) recovery, re-establishing a positive and balanced connection with exercise can be a complex journey. In this blog post, we’ll explore how to build a healthy relationship with exercise as you progress through your ED recovery.

Today’s topics:

• Shift your perspective
• Listen to your body
• Mindful exercise
• Avoid comparisons
• Celebrate achievements

Shift Your Perspective

When I started ED recovery, this was the hardest thing for me. Since I was around 12 years old, I thought being beautiful, worthy and loved meant having a six-pack, being a size 0 – ultimately looking good.

As soon as I realised that feeling good overrides looking good, my whole mindset changed. This is where exercise comes in. Exercise, for me now, means celebrating what your body can do, not punishing it for what you ate or how you think you look based on body dysmorphia.

What changed? My perspective. I reframed my view of exercise. Rather than focusing solely on appearance or calorie burn, I thought of it as a way to celebrate what your body can do and a means to promote overall health.

It took me a while to get here, but I can assure you that it is totally worth it. I now view exercise as a source of healing and self-care. Do I work out every day? No. And that is a HUGE change to my past self where I’d work out three times a day. Some times I go days or even a week without exercise, and that’s totally ok!

Listen To Your Body

This was something that really helped me through it all.

Tune in to your body’s signals. If you’re tired, give yourself permission to rest. Pushing through fatigue or discomfort can be detrimental to your recovery.

This was how I changed my perspective of exercise and not work out every single day. The one habit that I struggled to get out of was thinking that you had to exercise first thing in the morning. Those days when I woke up and wanted to listen to my body when I was tired and didn’t want to work out were the hardest. I’d push through my fatigue and exercise anyway. Now I know that there is no set time to workout, and usually I wait in the day until I get that motivation to do something good for my body.

Again, this took me around a year to understand. But I got there – and you can too.

Your body is very good at letting you know when it needs rest, hydration, and food. Listen to these signals and learn to understand when your body wants more food or some movement added into your day.

Mindful Exercise

Following on from the last point, listen to your body with regards to what kind of exercise it wants (and when it wants it). Some days your body may want that burn of a sweaty cardio or weights workout; other days it may want rest; and other days it may want slow pilates or a walk.

Try not to get too obsessed with having a ‘workout split’. A lot of people I’ve seen in ED recovery turn to the gym and weights, leaning away from cardio. This is great, as it means they are changing their mindset around exercise and celebrating what their body can do in terms of PBs and weights. However, I believe in retuning your relationship with exercise entirely, and practise mindful exercise and listening to your body.

Find a way to workout for you that benefits your mental health, not your looks.

Avoid Comparisons

This leads to talking about comparing yourself to others. As I said, find a way to re-incorporate exercise into your life in a healthy way, for you. ED recovery is not a straight line, and looks different for everyone. Acknowledge that you are on your own unique journey in recovery.

Following accounts on social media focusing on recovery is a good way to get advice and guidance, but remember that it may be toxic. Only follow those pages that truly help you.

Recovery looks different for everyone. Some people take the “all-in” approach, and leave the exercise behind for a good few months, going “cold-turkey” with your ED behaviours in a way.

For me, I tried this approach but it didn’t work. That ED voice in my head was still far too strong to allow myself to give up exercise. I felt guilty and I hated the idea of not exercising – because I truly love exercise (well, I’m now doing a PT course so that explains it!). Instead, I worked on healing my relationship with myself and my views on exercise. Once I learnt that my worth does not lie in my clothes size on what I look like, or how bloated I am (which was a HUGE trigger), I could then introduce exercise in a much healthier way.

Celebrate Achievements

During ED recovery, milestones come often. For example, I celebrated those days where I only did one work out opposed to two or three – this was at the start of my recovery when it was super hard to push past this principle ED habit. It was difficult to ‘celebrate’ not exercising, but I found a way to do so, an eventually I grew to love those days where I did no exercise at all, because that’s a win.

Every win in recovery is a win, no matter how small. Don’t compare yourselves, again, to others with this. Some people struggle in recovery more than others. If you find yourself finding recovery not as bad as you thought you were, don’t feel bad about it. This is what happened to me – in a way, I enjoyed the start of recovery because it permitted food freedom (something that hadn’t had for many years) and I could start socialising again. I hit a low about four months into recovery, when the initial high wore off and reality sunk in that I had to continue eating 3+ meals day and limiting my exercise. I reminded myself of all the reasons why I wanted to continue with recovery – and that’s how I’ve got to the place I am today :)

In conclusion, building a healthy relationship with exercise in ED recovery is about balance, self-compassion, and patience. Embrace the journey, focus on your well-being, and remember that progress is a personal and unique path. By incorporating exercise mindfully and with the guidance of professionals, you can create a positive, nurturing connection with physical activity while supporting your ED recovery.

Signing off,

Pepetoe x