Staying on Track Day to Day

 The process of recovery can be very overwhelming.  Sometimes we get lost in the big picture and forget about the little things we can do each day to stay on track.  

It can be helpful to create daily rituals to reaffirm your dedication to recovery and to remember why you are working so hard.  

The following are some daily activities you can do to help you stay on track.  Pick 2-3 activities and commit to them for at least a week.  At the end of the week, reflect and adjust your activities so they best fit your needs.

• List 3-5 things you are grateful for - remember the little things
• Read something inspirational
• Connect to your spirituality
• Call/talk to one supportive person
• Write down specifics about how you are going to follow your meal plan for the day
• List the reasons why you are following your meal plan and exercise plan TODAY

Understanding and Interrupting Relapse

The recovery process from an eating disorder can be long and arduous.  It often feels like two steps forward, one step backwards.  Slips and relapses occur.  It is important to understand the process of relapse so you can intervene sooner rather than later. 

The following is an excerpt from an article on addiction relapse.  I think it is very applicable to eating disorder relapse, and provides a nice illustration of the process...

[Relapse] is the progressive process of becoming so dysfunction in recovery that self-medication... seems like a reasonable choice.  The relapse process is a lot like knocking over a line of dominoes.  The first domino hits the second, which hits the third, and soon a progressive chain reaction has started... Each domino in the line (i.e. each problem that brings us closer to [symptom] use) gets a little bigger and heavier until the last domino in the sequence is ten feet tall, four feet wide, and a foot thick.  As this 10,000 pound domino begins to fall on us, it is too heavy for us to handle alone... When the last domino falls, it hits us from behind when we're not looking.


So here we are, moving along in recovery.  We tip over one small domino.  No big deal!  That domino hits the next, and then the next.  A chain reactions gets started.  The first dominoes are so small that we can easily convince ourselves that it's no big deal.  We look the other way and start doing other things.  All of a sudden a huge domino falls on us from behind, crushing us to floor, causing serious pain and injury in the process.  We need to make the pain go away and we reach for old reliable - the magical [symptoms] that always helped us with our pain in the past.  [We are now fully engulfed by the eating disorder.]

(Understanding Relapse by Terence Gorski)

Read more for examples of the relapse process and helpful tips on interrupting relapse...