Eating Disorder Help~ 4 Essential Steps!

What I have found as a wellness counsellor and eating disorder specialist is that true, long term recovery has 4 essential components that support and work in alignment with each other. In the work that I do, we look deeply at each of these 4 components and uncover the places that are stuck in each one.If you are ready to get emotional eating help, to recover from an eating disorder and get FREE once and for all from problematic eating, assess where you are at in each of these areas:

Physical:

Getting “into your body” is the first effective strategy to try when you are feeling anxious and “triggered” with the food. The breathing and relaxation strategies we review are powerful tools to combat stress and anxiety that may appear. Also, maintaining a program of eating every 3-4 hours will ensure a helpful pattern of eating,  as well as  looking at your sleep patterns and honouring any deficiencies you might be experiencing physically by maintaining regular visits to a physician or holistic health practitioner. Looking at your hydration and your overall health is also important here. Keeping an updated food plan and reminding yourself that this is a fluid tool that will need to be adjusted as things shift and change. Be gentle and allow for movement here while also remaining conscious of what your present experience is and what will best serve your body right now. Overall, the physical component must be incorporated with the other 3 components to be effective.

Emotional:

Emotional eating help begins with taking care of how you feel emotionally one day at a time, one minute at a time. Learning to check in with yourself and give yourself the care you need and the opportunity to express how you feel is very important. There is a strong correlation with people that can't stop eating and are also constantly running form their feelings. One suggestion in this area is to throw a pity party! Thats right!- give yourself time to BE lonely, sad, depressed, angry…..but put a beginning and an end to it ! In other words, when the loneliness creeps up, give yourself 20 minutes to really FEEL it. Do whatever it is you need to do to BE in the loneliness….Cry, yell, sob, throw things…whatever ! Be in it ENTIRELY for the 20 minutes and set a timer ! When that 20 minutes is up, move on. It is over and you are ok- great in fact. Start to schedule PITY PARTIES ahead if time if you are dealing with ongoing difficult feeling. Do it every day, allowing yourself to be IN the Loneliness for an allotted time, or whatever emotion has you feeling stuck.

Spiritual:

Coming back to the present moment of your experience will connect you to your conscious self ( your true nature), again and again. It is helpful to have strategies that resonate with your spirit. When you are present you have choice. Starting off your day with intention and meditation is a great way to get grounded in spirit and resonate with your highest purpose, or you may resonate more with prayer, chanting, religious ceremony and or spiritual community. Just being in nature and providing yourself with deep self care daily can be enough to really connect with your inner child, and find peace with the internal struggle. This is not so much about cultivating some outside spiritual practice, but weather it is about connecting with yourself intimately and coming out of the automatic pilot that drives compulsive eating.

Mental:

Acknowledging and transforming the thinking that is creating your reality daily is the mental cleansing that will bring you back to the present moment. Are you feeling lonely? What thoughts are creating that reality? What is the alternative? What is the maintaining factor, or what is keeping you stuck? Take pen to paper here and write out your triggers as outlined. Start implementing your alternatives and have a buddy for accountability. Following specific exercises in restructuring your distorted thinking will serve in transforming your unwanted emotional state. If you are feeling confused about your triggers, and what thoughts need re-working, and you feel the food has gotten out of control, you can be sure that there is a thought that has you stuck. It may feel like the food, or simply an unwanted emotion but when you get to the bottom of the distorted thought you see that all healing lies in this place.

I would love to hear your experience working these 4 components in your recovery with problematic eating. Please feel free to leave  comment and share with anyone this might serve!

Our 12 week, online group program starts every 2 months and is a great way to dive deeper  into these 4 components of healing. Contact me for early registration on the next course, today!