5 Ways Journaling Can Help in Eating Disorder Recovery

Posted on February 16, 2022February 15, 2022 by Alison Pelz, LD, RD, CDE, LCSW

What do Oprah Winfrey, Freda Kahlo, Marie Curie, and Anne Frank all have in common? (Besides being exceptional women, that is.)

They all journaled.

When you read about why these incredible women kept a diary, building a strong connection with one’s emotions and thoughts is the theme that comes up.

People who suffer from eating disorders often really struggle to identify and cope with their emotions and thoughts. (And not just people with eating disorders, lots of people struggle to connect with what they’re feeling and why!) Often the eating disorder then becomes the way to cope with those emotions, unhealthy as it may be.

Having a strong journaling practice doesn’t mean that your eating disorder will just evaporate on its own. But keeping a journal is a tool that can help you in your journey in recovery, and support your work in therapy. If you don’t have a therapist or treatment team click here to learn more.

Journaling can help:

Rid unhelpful, repetitive thoughts swarming around in your head.

Simply writing thoughts down sometimes can provide a reduction of these thoughts. The more we hold onto or try to bury our feelings, the stronger they usually become–and the more it feels like they can start to control us. When you take time to get the thoughts out in some way, your mind is able to release them, instead of clinging onto them.

Identify your fears and worries.

Many people who have eating disorders often experience high levels of anxiety. Journaling can assist in identifying those fears and worries in order to evaluate if they are actually reflective of the truth. Learning to identify when our fear those fears are “real” can help both your problem solving skills and your ability to tolerate some levels of anxiety.

Increase a sense of control by reflecting and processing thoughts and feelings.

Giving yourself a space to review and reflect on what you’re feeling without judgement can help take the power out of those strong feelings. Instead of feeling like they are controlling you, learning to reflect & process them helps to teach you that your feelings are trying to communicate something to you, but they don’t have to dictate your life.

Explore and sort out your emotions.

Identifying, understanding and communicating emotions can be hard, especially for those with eating disorders. Often people with eating disorders use eating disorder behaviors to cope with their emotions. Journaling is a tool that can instead help you to navigate your emotions, so you don’t have to rely on your eating disorder to manage them.

Reduce avoidance of problems & stress.

While avoiding problems and stress may seem helpful particularly in the short-term, in the long-term it actually increases feelings of stress, discomfort, and fear. For example, if you are anticipating a tough conversation with someone the longer you put the conversation off the more stressful it becomes. Usually, once the conversation is completed there is a sense of relief. Merely writing about the anticipated conversation is a great first step to reducing avoidance. Eating disorder behaviors often serve as a way to avoid stress and discomfort, so developing a healthy practice to manage stress can help reduce reliance on those behaviors, as well as strengthen your stress management skills in the long term.

Tips to Get Your Journaling Practice Started

Journaling can be downright daunting–especially if you are not used to talking about emotions. But think of journaling as a practice, something that you may feel “not good at” at the beginning, but over time you will become more confident.

Make it part of your daily routine like brushing your teeth. Perhaps journal at around the same time or point in your day. Maybe start off with journaling five minutes a day and increase the length of time as needed or as your confidence builds around journaling.

What to Journal About:

There is no “right way or wrong way” to journal. The point of the journal is to get your thoughts and feelings out on paper. No need for perfect grammar, spelling, or handwriting.

You may start by writing about your day (what you did, thought, and any feelings that came up), or a particular situation that you felt strongly about–whether it was a good or bad feeling.

It may be handy to keep a list of feeling such as this one next to your journal. This can be a good tool to increase your emotional vocabulary, strengthen your ability to identify what you’re feeling, and really understand your emotions.

If you don’t know where to get started with your journaling practice, try one of these journal prompts:

3-5 things you are most grateful and why.
One thing you felt proud about today.
Something you recently did that was hard and how you manage it.
A stressful situation and how you can cope with it.
A letter to a future self.
What do you feel most worried about and why.
What others would say to you about why they care for you.
Eating disorder-specific:
Name 5 ways your eating disorder is helpful and 5 ways that your eating disorder is unhelpful.
If I didn’t have my eating disorder then I would be doing these five things.
If I didn’t have my eating disorder then I would feel these 5 things.
I would want my friends and/or family to know about my eating disorder ar these things.

If you are looking for more ways to support yourself in your journey of eating disorder recovery, talking to a therapist may help. Please call for a free 15-minute phone consultation to learn how I work with clients with eating disorders and loved ones.

Exploring Values Instead of New Year’s Resolutions in 2022

Posted on January 13, 2022September 16, 2024 by Alison Pelz, LD, RD, CDE, LCSW

How do you feel about New Year’s Resolutions? The new year often feels like the perfect time to implement changes, and the constant flood of “New Year New You” marketing definitely adds to the pressure to shake things up each January. Unfortunately, a lot of that marketing is heavily influenced by diet culture. Instead of making a New Year’s Resolution in 2022, try exploring your values instead.

Diet culture, or a cultural belief that values thinness over physical and emotional health, absolutely reinforces resolutions that are focused on weight, food, or exercise.

New Year’s Resolutions focused on food, weight and exercise can wreak havoc, even when they’re well intentioned. 1 in 4 dieters will go on to develop an eating disorder, so a new year’s resolution to lose weight can spiral out of control no matter what intentions are behind it. Remember, dieters themselves are never the problem – the problem is that diets don’t work.

Values are something many therapists explore with clients. Values are the cornerstone of Acceptance and Commitment Therapy, or ACT. ACT “teaches mindfulness skills to help individuals live and behave in ways consistent with personal values while developing psychological flexibility.” Values are fundamental beliefs that guide our attitudes and our actions.

You might be wondering how values and goals differ.

Values are different from goals because goals are something that you achieve and can check off.

Values, unlike goals, don’t have an end. They’re a part of your basic belief system about the world and your role in it. Values may shift over time, but they are often long-term.

For example, a goal could be “I want to travel to all 50 states”. In contrast, the value in this case could be “travel”. Booking a trip lets you meet your goal and uphold your value. As they say in ACT, you are participating in a value-driven behavior by booking the trip.

I find using values work is helpful for clients with eating disorders for several reasons. Values work leads to:

Increased sense of self

Exploring your values helps you answer questions like “Who am I?” and “Where am I going?” Values work also helps folks suffering with eating disorders understand that they are so much more than their eating disorder, their weight, or how they feel about their body.

When you’re doing values work, it helps to come from a place of abundance versus a place of scarcity. So often, people don’t feel like they are enough or they’re doing enough. In contrast, coming from a place of abundance helps you to recognize that you are enough just as you are, and that you are doing your best.

It’s kind of like looking at the glass half-full instead of half-empty. Instead of assuming the worst about yourself, work on assuming the best.

Increased confidence by connecting actions with purpose.

Establishing what your values are is an important way to get to know yourself better. When you understand what your values are and why they’re important to you, it’s easier to recognize things that interfere with those values.

Values work can help those with eating disorders recognize that their eating disorder interferes with many of their values. This can often serve as a motivator for recovery.

Fewer feelings of worthlessness.

Feeling worthless or not good enough can be extremely distressing. Let’s say you have a thought “I didn’t do anything today.” When clients say this to me, I often have them tell me what they did that day. There’s always something!

For example, maybe they texted a friend, called their mom, went to work, paid a bill and went to the grocery store to pick up some items for dinner to cook for their family.

These everyday tasks or activities most likely reinforce their values:

Texting a friend is connected with the value of relationships and caring
Calling their mom connected with the value of family and caring
Went to work and paid a bill connected with a value of financial health and reliability
Going to the grocery store is connected with health and family.

Are you stumped on what values are important to you? Here are a few examples of values to consider:

Health
Financial wellbeing
Recreation
Personal growth
Family
Relationships
Spirituality
Community
Social justice
Honesty
Reliable
Caring
Fun
Kindness
Authenticity
Learning
Stability

For folks who struggle with eating disorders, it is helpful to think how recovery behaviors are linked with values.

So if you value health and have an eating disorder…it might feel uncomfortable to hold both of those at the same time. Acting in a way that is aligned with your values can be a powerful motivator for recovery.

For example, if you think you may have an eating disorder and you value health, merely reading this post is a value-driven behavior (a behavior that upholds your values). Or let’s say you are in treatment for your eating disorder. When you attend treatment appointments you are behaving in a value-driven way.

Rather than focusing on resolutions in 2022, exploring your values can be a more impactful way to make changes that are in alignment with what’s important to you.

Are you interested in exploring your own values and how your behaviors stem from them? Click here to learn more.

4 Tips for Anyone Who Loves an Adult in Eating Disorder Recovery

Posted on November 10, 2021November 9, 2021 by Alison Pelz, LD, RD, CDE, LCSW

When you hear the words “eating disorder” what comes to mind? More often than not, eating disorders are associated with teenage girls. While it is true eating disorders often develop in adolescence, adults can have eating disorders, too.

It’s possible for eating disorders to initially develop later in life, not just during adolescence. It’s also possible that adults suffering from an eating disorder developed it during adolescence and never fully recovered. Life stressors (like a pandemic, for example!) later in life can also cause a relapse of eating disorders.

Eating disorders develop for a variety of reasons including genetics, temperament, gender, and dieting history to name a few.

It is less important why and how the eating disorder developed, and more important to focus on supporting your loved one in their eating disorder recovery.

If you love someone in eating disorder recovery, here are four ways to show your support:

1. Think about an eating disorder like a physical illness.

An eating disorder, like cancer, is not a choice. This is often misunderstood. If it was as simple as just choosing to eat more food, far fewer people would suffer with eating disorders.

If your loved one was going through treatment for cancer you may do some of the following: learn about their diagnosis, take them to treatment appointments, provide support, and check-in with them more frequently.

You can do the same with eating disorders. Eating disorders are dangerous and can cause long-term health effects and even death, and they should be taken seriously. See what you can do to understand that eating disorders (EDs) are a physical as well as mental illness.

2. Get educated on eating disorders.

Learning as much as you can about eating disorders is another way to support a loved one in recovery. Eating disorders on the surface appear to be about food. But, make no mistake, while food issues are part of the eating disorder, eating disorders are psychiatric illnesses that must be treated by experienced clinicians. Here are some resources to learn more about eating disorders:

The National Association of Eating Disorders
The Eating Disorder Sourcebook by Carolyn Costin
Eight Keys to Recovery from an Eating Disorder by Carolyn Costin and Gwen Schubert Grabb
Skills-based Learning for Caring for a Loved One with an Eating Disorder by Janet Treasure, Grainne Smith and Anna Crane

You can also ask your loved one if they would like for you to attend treatment appointments with them so you can get a better understanding of their treatment plan and goals.

There are also resources on social media sites like Instagram that offer helpful information about eating disorders, diet culture, and recovery. Make sure to check that the information you’re getting is coming from a reliable source – there are lots of folks out there who borrow language from body positive and anti-diet circles but who are still pushing intentional weight loss or food restriction. It can be really eye-opening to learn about the root causes of eating disorders, in addition to being a great way to support someone you love with an eating disorder.

3. Learn how to communicate with your loved one in a supportive way.

As with most things, supporting someone in eating disorder recovery requires communication. The best way to find out how to support them is to ask! Ask them directly what would make them feel supported or what they’re struggling with. Find out what they would find helpful or for ways you can provide support (or adjust your support if necessary).

It can be tricky to communicate about such emotionally charged topics. Statements such as these can feel supportive to your loved one.

“I know this is hard.”
“You can do hard things.”
“I am here if you would like to talk about it.”

There are a lot of ways to be supportive, but some statements aren’t helpful for folks in ED recovery. Unhelpful statements that you may be tempted to say (remember the ED is not only about the food)

“Just eat.”
“I don’t know why this is so hard…do what I do [insert advice about food, exercise].”

Remember, eating disorders are not just about the food. Everyone’s body is different, and most of us aren’t qualified to give out medical or nutritional advice anyway – we can leave that to the folks on the treatment team.

Another thing to keep in mind is that mealtime can be particularly stressful for those with eating disorders. Some meals and foods may be easier or harder for your loved one to eat. If you eat with your loved one at mealtime it may be helpful to focus on light conversations that have nothing to do with their eating disorder.

4. Be patient.

Eating disorder recovery is a marathon, not a sprint. Recovery is not linear, in fact, it can get quite messy. It requires lots of learning and unlearning, as well as patience and self-compassion.

Don’t give up, and keep checking in with your loved one. Get support for yourself if you need a space where you can process the emotions of supporting someone through recovery. It’s okay to recognize that supporting someone sometimes means asking for help yourself. The National Alliance for Eating Disorders has free support groups for loved ones.

If you are looking for more ways to support your loved one in eating disorder recovery, talking to a therapist may help. Please call for a free 15-minute phone consultation to learn how I work with clients with eating disorders and loved ones.

Consider Body Acceptance Over Body Positivity

Posted on October 20, 2021September 16, 2024 by Alison Pelz, LD, RD, CDE, LCSW

There’s a lot of buzz in the wellness and mental health worlds about body positivity and body acceptance, but what do those terms even mean?

Body acceptance is the idea that it’s not always possible to feel positively about your body, but it is always possible to accept it and treat it with kindness. The end goal of both of these is to increase the acceptance of all body sizes and to help people feel more comfortable in their own bodies.

In contrast, body positivity is the idea that everyone deserves to feel positively about their body image. If you’ve ever seen a post on social media telling you to “love your body”, then you’ve probably experienced body positivity.

At first glance, body positivity sounds great. After all, things would be so much simpler if we could all just love our bodies! However, that’s often easier said than done for a number of people.

The idea of body positivity has its roots in fighting diet culture, but the term doesn’t resonate with everyone. After all, feeling positive about your body is a tall order for a lot of people.

First of all, there is a multi-billion dollar diet industry that uses its considerable resources and influence to convince us all that there is something wrong with our bodies. Feeling insecure about how our bodies look is a surefire way to get us to buy products that will “fix” us. However, consider the idea that there was nothing wrong with your body in the first place.

People who are chronically ill or have varying abilities might not feel like they can be positive about a body that is constantly in pain or not able to move through the world easily. People who are recovering from eating disorders might not trust their body’s cues or might feel distress when thinking about their bodies.

Body acceptance might feel like a more attainable goal than body positivity.

You might also go back and forth between positivity and acceptance for your body depending on the day. Nothing lasts forever, and the feelings you currently have about your body probably won’t last. What will last are the consequences of the way you treat yourself, so do what you can to show yourself compassion.

It’s important to remember that one isn’t better than the other. Body positivity and body acceptance are options, and if one feels more attainable than the other, don’t push yourself to feel things about your body that you’re not ready for.

Here are some questions that I get asked frequently about body positivity and acceptance:

Question: I hear all of this stuff about body positivity and feel hopeless. I feel like I am nowhere near loving my body. Is it necessary for me to feel body positivity to recover from my eating disorder?

Answer: While body image, or what we feel and think about our body, is closely tied to eating disorders, body positivity is not necessary for recovery. Body positivity is an ideal outcome of recovery, but it’s not the only outcome available.

In a nutshell, body dissatisfaction or a negative body image often contributes to the extreme eating and exercise behaviors we see in folks with eating disorders. In fact, if negative body image is not in check, the eating disorder will keep going. However, feeling positive about your body is not required to start recovery.

Body acceptance is often a more accessible place to start. As mentioned above, body acceptance is the practice of acceptance, even if you aren’t completely satisfied with it. Body positivity is the practice of feeling positively about your body, which can be a lot harder to do.

It is okay to like some parts of ourselves, but not all. Like so much in life (jobs, school), we may like some parts but not all. Either way, we accept that the parts we don’t like are there.

Question: I really don’t like my body. How can I at least work on increasing body acceptance?

Answer: The knee jerk reaction in our culture is if we don’t like something we need to “fix it”. Certainly, diet culture gives a false notion that if we “work hard enough” then we can have the body we want.

I am here to say I have never met a person with an eating disorder that is NOT a hard worker.

Body acceptance is about changing our thoughts about our body, not about changing our body to match our thoughts.

A typical thought someone may have with body dissatisfaction is “If I get my body to look a certain way I will be more confident.”

While there may be some truth to that, changing your looks is not the only way to feel confident. Confidence can come from so many places, but unless you address the root of that insecurity, a new one will pop up in its place.

If you broaden your thoughts, you will see that there are lots of other ways to build or have confidence without staying in your eating disorder.

Another typical thought someone may have about body dissatisfaction is “I am afraid of what people are thinking of me.”

That is to say you fear people will react negatively to you. Lots of times, you don’t even have proof of this happening, but the fear is there all the same.

Unfortunately, many folks who struggle with eating disorders have been teased, ridiculed, or bullied about their body. Many people who struggle with eating disorders come from families that place high value on looks. (If that’s the case for you, this is something to address and unpack with a therapist.)

More often than not, when we assume people are thinking something bad about our bodies, we don’t have any evidence to back this up.

These thoughts and worries are the real distress, not our bodies. Freeing yourself from the worry that other people are judging your body can give you more time to think about what it would feel like to accept your body as it is.

If accepting your body still sounds scary, there are things you can do to help. One way to increase body acceptance is to identify parts of your body that you do like. It is OK to like some parts of your body but not all parts. You can keep a journal where you write down what you like about your body. You can write down something that you’re grateful for that your body does – like how your stomach holds in all your organs and protects them, or how your thighs help you get from place to place. You don’t have to love each little bit of your body to want to take care of it and keep it safe. Acceptance is enough.

Increasing body acceptance is key in eating disorder recovery. If you’re looking for more support in developing body acceptance, please click here to schedule a free 15-minute phone consultation with me.

Maintaining Eating Disorder Recovery as a College Freshman

Posted on September 8, 2021September 7, 2021 by Alison Pelz, LD, RD, CDE, LCSW

College can be a difficult transition for anyone, but if you’re in recovery for an eating disorder, it can be a particularly stressful transition!

Some of the challenges of maintaining your recovery while returning to school include:

Change in Routine

When in recovery, changes in routine can be tough. Routines allow for some comfort and dependability, because when we have them, we know what to expect. Routines also have very practical uses in recovery–they affect meal planning, treatment appointments, sleeping habits, etc. All of which play a role in recovery! Navigating a new routine can be challenging, and can feel overwhelming, so giving care and consideration to what your new routine will be is important.

Increased Demands + Independence

Going to college is an exciting time because it is the first taste of independence so many of us have! However, gaining independence is also a lot of responsibility–especially if we’re not used to it. It can be easy to not set any boundaries for yourself, but that’s not a sustainable way to take care of yourself. At the same time, you’ll also need to use some of that newfound independence to balance the demands of your school work, which might be more intense than you’re used to. It can be extremely stressful navigating that responsibility for the first time, and increased stress can lead to an increase in eating disorder symptoms.

Exercise + Diet Culture

On a college campus you’ll be surrounded by other young people, who are also surrounded by the constant messaging on social media about diet and beauty standards. Additionally, gyms on campus may be full of college level athletes training in ways that other folks who don’t need intense conditioning for a sport shouldn’t be pushing themselves to compete with. You might be surrounded by fear of the “freshman fifteen” or feel pressure to skip meals to study for exams with other students. The culture around food and exercise on a college campus may not be the healthiest one–and it’s important to prepare for that with a counselor beforehand so you have coping mechanisms you can use when need be.

What can you do to maintain your recovery?

Consider your schedule

Be gentle with yourself as you adjust! College is a big change and you don’t need to try to do it all at once. This means, don’t push yourself to take too many classes your first semester while you’re still getting used to the new expectations. Really think about what your limit is before you feel yourself burning out.

Consider also taking classes that you wouldn’t consider as the most challenging. It’s a whole new style of learning in college, there’s nothing wrong with taking it slow to figure out what you can handle. That way you’re not overworking yourself and you are reducing the amount of stress you might experience.

When thinking about your schedule, consider any habits you have that are helpful to your recovery (social meals, treatment appointments, etc.) and what will be needed for those in your regular routines.

Make a recovery plan before you go

Are you working with a therapist right now? Will you continue to work with them? Or will there be someone on campus to connect with? Have group supports been part of your recovery plan? What is available in terms of group support at your school? Does your current therapist have plans or ideas on what will be important to your recovery at school?

Be sure to set up any regular appointments and checkups with your treatment team ahead of time, to help provide you the professional support you may need to stay “on track.”

Are you working with a dietitian right now? Work with them to help you maintain recovery.

You might want research on what mealtimes are like at school. Consider questions like: What food is available when? Where are the places to eat? What are their hours? Do you know what food do they provide? What are the meal plans like? Is there one that is more conducive to your recovery? Together with your dietitian it might be helpful to gather some information about what the different meal plans are, and make some pros and cons for each of them.

If you don’t have a treatment team, go to the student health center on campus and they will be able to assist you.

Remember: it’s normal for eating disorder symptoms to recur in times of high stress and periods of transition. But by taking time to consider how your recovery will be impacted in this period of transition, you can create a plan to cope with stress and continue with your recovery. Remember, you only have to take it one day at a time!

If you need help in your eating disorder recovery or not sure if you have an eating disorder or not, please click here to schedule a free 15-minute phone consultation with me.

The Body Image-Eating Disorder Connection

Posted on April 13, 2021April 13, 2021 by Alison Pelz, LD, RD, CDE, LCSW

What is body image?

Body image is how we perceive our bodies and looks. In other words, it is what we say to ourselves or our thoughts about our body. Having body dissatisfaction or a negative body image means that the majority of thoughts about one’s body are negative.

For example, while looking in the mirror, Sarah says to herself, “I am so ugly.” which then produces possible feelings of shame and sadness. However, Sarah doesn’t, get feedback from others that she is “ugly.”. In fact, she often gets comments from friends and co-workers that she looks nice.

When Anna looks in the mirror, she often says to herself, “My thighs are gross,” again leading to feelings of sadness and shame. In contrast, Alicia looks in the mirror and thinks “I am looking good today,” which may lead to feelings of happiness.

How we perceive our bodies is influenced by many factors, including family, friends, media, gender identity, culture, and the health-care system, to name a few. Body image is not static. It may change depending on our mood, situation, stage of life, or the season.

The body image-eating disorder connection

The majority of those who suffer with eating disorders have a negative body image. One of the key features of eating disorders is the overvaluation of weight, shape, and eating habits on self-worth.

Self-worth is how and what we think about ourselves. In other words, those who struggle with eating disorders equate much of their self-worth with their ability to control their weight, shape, and eating habits. Having a negative body image often keeps the eating disorder going.

Sarah from the example above, is able to identify that she has lots of good things going on in her life, including a strong friend group, a new job that allows her to be financially independent, her volunteer work, and close ties to her family. However, she places much of her self-worth on how she looks. She insists that her other qualities “don’t count”.

Think of self-worth in terms of a pie chart made up of several different categories. Sarah’s self-worth pie chart looks like this:

As you can see, Sarah places a lot of her self-worth on her ability to control her body and eating. When the majority of self-worth is tied to the pursuit of eating “correctly” and maintaining a certain weight and shape, other things that make us feel worthy are ignored. Furthermore, when we can’t control our looks or food in the way that we think we “ought” to, feelings of failure sink self-worth even lower.

Often in the pursuit of improving body satisfaction, we try to change the way our body looks with diet, exercise, and surgery. However, this often comes with lots of distress. One of the most impactful ways to improve your body image is to not actually change your body, but to reduce the emphasis placed on looks as related to self-worth.

After Sarah recovered from her eating disorder, including improving her body image, her self-worth pie chart looked more like this:

You can see that body shape/weight decreased in influence on self-worth. Other categories increased as Sarah was able to experience more joy in those areas and even learned that creativity and spirituality were additional sources of joy for her.

Body dissatisfaction is a key component of eating disorders. Healing your body image is needed in the recovery from an eating disorder.

Body image is often one of the hardest parts of an eating disorder to heal, but it is possible. Remember that to heal your body image, you don’t need to change your body, but rather your thoughts about your body.

If you think you have an eating disorder which often includes a negative body image it is crucial that you get professional help. To learn more about treatment please click here.

Therapy work can help you stop feeling out of control and gain a sense of calm in relationship with food and your body. I would love to help you leave the food worry behind and be free to create the life you want. Schedule your free 15 minute consultation today.