Tips for Maintaining Recovery from an Eating Disorder: Practical Strategies to Prevent Relapse
Recovering from an eating disorder is a courageous journey, marked by progress and growth. Maintaining that recovery and preventing relapse requires ongoing effort and support. Whether you’re newly recovered or have been on this path for a while, implementing practical strategies can help you stay grounded and focused on your well-being. Here are some compassionate tips to support you in sustaining your recovery and nurturing your health.
1. Build a Strong Support Network
Having a support network is invaluable in maintaining recovery. Surround yourself with understanding friends, family, and professionals who encourage and support your journey. Regular check-ins with a therapist or counselor can provide ongoing guidance and a safe space to discuss any challenges or concerns. Remember, reaching out for support is a sign of strength, not weakness.
2. Develop and Stick to a Routine
Establishing a daily routine can offer structure and stability, which are crucial for maintaining recovery. Include regular meal times, self-care activities, and healthy habits in your routine. Consistency helps in managing stress and reducing the likelihood of relapse by creating a predictable and supportive environment.
3. Practice Mindful Eating
Mindful eating involves paying attention to your hunger cues, savoring your meals, and eating without distraction. This practice helps you build a healthier relationship with food and fosters greater self-awareness. By tuning into your body’s needs, you can prevent overeating or undereating and stay connected to your recovery goals.
4. Set Realistic Goals
Set achievable and positive goals that focus on your overall well-being rather than just the absence of disordered eating. Celebrate your milestones, no matter how small, and use them as motivation to keep moving forward. Setting realistic goals can help you maintain focus and build confidence in your recovery journey.
5. Engage in Healthy Coping Strategies
This ultimate bundle is made up of 5 amazing digital workbooks for you to complete digitally using your computer, or print off, pop in a binder and work through at your own pace.
It's like having your own health coach at your fingertips, only it costs less than the average price of one coaching session!
The workbooks included:
WORKBOOK ONE: STRESS & ANXIETY
This workbook is for you if you feel like you're overwhelmed with life's worries and responsibilities. Stress is likely to be affecting your health, happiness, and your work and personal life.
By the end of this workbook you will:
• Recognise the symptoms of anxiety and depression
• Learn how to manage thoughts of worry, catastrophic thinking and negative thought patterns.
• Learn how breathing exercises can relieve the symptoms of stress and immediately calm you down.
• Learn how using SCRUM methodology can make managing your work and business significantly less stressful and more productive.
• Put in place highly effective morning and evening routines, tailed to your lifestyle.
• Bring joy, passion and creativity back into your life and find your sense of purpose.
• Reduce feelings of isolation, put less pressure on your romantic connections and rekindle your social life in a way that fits around your life's responsibilities and interests.
• Put in place lifestyle habits which will support your calm mindset and improve your overall health.
WORKBOOK TWO: BODY IMAGE //Expanded Edition//
This printable workbook is designed to help you move from a place of hating your body, to a place of respecting and accepting your body, while also recognizing that you are so much more than your appearance. After completing the coaching exercises your body image will no longer hold you back from the parts of life you've been missing out on.
This 37-page workbook is split into three parts:
1. Body Neutrality - Shifting your focus away from your physical appearance and onto the other parts of what makes you, you.
2. Body Acceptance – Learning how to show your body respect and compassion and reach a place of peaceful acceptance with it.
3. Body Confidence – Reaching the stage where we don’t let our appearance or, more accurately, the thoughts we have about our appearance hold us back from enjoying the life we want.
WORKBOOK THREE: EMOTIONAL EATING
This workbook is packed with coaching exercises based on Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CBT) to help you better understand the causes of emotional eating and put in place effective alternative, more effective coping strategies for difficult emotions.
This workbook is split into three parts:
1. Understanding Emotional Eating
2. Developing Emotional Awareness
3. Developing Coping Strategies for Difficult Emotions
My approach to Emotional Eating is ‘Anti-Diet’, which means I do not view emotional eating as an ‘eating problem’. Research shows that responding to emotional eating by restricting food intake increases the risk of binge eating and so this is something I strongly advise against when working to overcome emotional eating.
Instead, the focus throughout this workbook will be to become more emotionally aware that we can accurately label our emotions, identify our underlying needs and meet them effectively.
By taking the time to work through the 43 pages of this workbook, you will:
• Understand why dieting or food restriction is NOT a solution to emotional eating (and why it exacerbates it)
• Understand why you comfort eat and how it's benefiting you (yes, really)
• Increase your emotional awareness - you'll be able to accurately label what you're feeling and identify the cause of it
• Develop effective, alternative coping strategies for coping with strong emotions
WORKBOOK FOUR: PEACEFUL EATING
The Printable Intuitive Eating Workbook for people who want to leave diets behind once and for all and embrace Intuitive Eating instead.
The workbook is split into three parts:
1. Developing Body Awareness – these exercises are designed to help you check in with your body’s signals, including your hunger and fullness cues.
2. Unconditional Permission to Eat – these exercises will help you understand and ditch the food rules you’ve adopted from past diets and diet culture.
3.Mindful Eating – these final exercises will help you find enjoyment and satisfaction from food and listen out for pesky thoughts of diets creeping back into your mind.
WORKBOOK FIVE: HEALTH BEYOND THE SCALE
In this workbook, we will be taking steps to improve our physical health, without focusing on weight. The truth is, we can only truly focus on our health, both physical and psychological once we have totally removed ourselves from diet culture and the dieting mindset.
Throughout this workbook, I want you to keep in mind that our health is important, but that it is also not a measure of our self-worth. It does not define us as people, as we are not ‘bad’ people when we become ill or if we have health issues.
This workbook is split into three parts:
• Part 1 - Joyful movement, where we will look at how to add pleasurable forms of movement into our lives and working through the barriers and issues we may have around exercise.
• Part 2 - Gentle nutrition, where we will look at the physical effect’s food has on us, some general nutritional guidelines (not rules!), and why calories and portion sizes are irrelevant. We will also discuss what we mean by the term ‘play-food’ and the value of ‘play-food’.
• Part 3 - Alternative ways to assess health, where we will look at biomarkers such as blood pressure, blood glucose, and blood cholesterol. All of these are far more useful in diagnosing, managing, and preventing common lifestyle illness, than simply stepping on a bathroom scale.
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PRINTING TIPS:
This workbook contains a mix of portrait and landscape pages. Please select 'Auto portrait/landscape'
when printing.
You can also print on both sides to save paper.
Follow me on Instagram & Facebook: @beyondthebathroomscale
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ABOUT THE CREATOR
Karen Lynne Oliver, BA, MA, is the founder of Beyond The Bathroom Scale®, a hub of self-help resources to aid with recovery from disordered eating and body image.
A former Social Worker, Karen holds a bachelor’s degree in Sociology, specialising in health and society and a master’s degree in Social Work. She has trained in counselling skills and psychotherapy-based approaches including Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CBT), Dialectical Behavioural Therapy (DBT) and Motivational Interviewing (MI).
Karen has previously written HuffPost UK and has been featured in The Metro, Cambridge Independent and Cosmopolitan Magazine.
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NOT LICENSED FOR PROFESSIONAL USE
To obtain professional use license, please purchase the workbooks using this link: https://beyondthebathroomscale.co.uk/therapy-workbooks/p/body-image-disordered-eating-cbt-workbooks-digitally-fillable-and-printable-for-professional-use-health-coach-therapist-pt
© Copyright 2020 Beyond The Bathroom Scale® – All Rights Reserved.
"Beyond The Bathroom Scale" is a Registered UK Trademark and the intellectual property of the website owner, Karen Oliver, trading as Beyond The Bathroom Scale, part of Lynne Media ('our', 'we', 'us').
We take the protection of our intellectual property very seriously. If we discover that you have breached the terms of the license, we may bring legal proceedings against you and seek monetary damages and/or an injunction to stop you using our materials. You could also be ordered to pay our legal costs.
Develop and practice healthy coping strategies to manage stress and emotions. This might include mindfulness techniques, exercise, creative hobbies, or relaxation practices. Finding positive outlets for your emotions can reduce the likelihood of turning to disordered eating behaviors and support your mental and physical health.
6. Challenge Negative Thoughts
Eating disorders often come with a host of negative self-beliefs and thoughts. Work on challenging these thoughts by reframing them with more positive and realistic perspectives. Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT) techniques can be particularly helpful in addressing and transforming these thought patterns.
7. Stay Educated
Continuing to educate yourself about eating disorders and recovery can empower you to make informed decisions and stay committed to your journey. Books, workshops, and online resources can provide valuable insights and support. Knowledge is a powerful tool in maintaining your recovery and preventing relapse.
8. Prioritize Self-Care
Self-care is an essential component of recovery. Ensure you are taking time for activities that nourish and rejuvenate you. This might include exercise, relaxation, hobbies, or spending time with loved ones. Prioritizing self-care helps you maintain balance and prevent burnout.
9. Seek Professional Help When Needed
If you find yourself struggling or experiencing setbacks, don’t hesitate to seek professional help. Therapists, dietitians, and support groups can provide guidance and support tailored to your needs. Professional help is a crucial resource in navigating challenges and reinforcing your recovery.
10. Stay Connected to Your Recovery Goals
Remind yourself of the reasons you embarked on your recovery journey. Keep a journal or visual reminders of your goals and achievements. Staying connected to your motivation can help you stay focused and committed to your recovery path.
Conclusion
Maintaining recovery from an eating disorder is an ongoing journey that requires dedication, support, and self-compassion. By implementing these practical tips, you can nurture your well-being and stay resilient in your recovery. For additional support and resources, explore our Course Library, which offers a wealth of information on body image, intuitive eating, emotional eating, managing stress, and more. These courses are designed to empower you with the tools and knowledge you need to sustain your recovery and continue growing in your well-being.
