5 things to let go of in recovery

Hello and welcome back to my blog! I haven’t spoken about my eating disorder recovery, really at all, on this blog. I’m not sure why because I did create this blog to help anyone who is suffering and to maybe talk about my experience with anorexia (not ready to do that yet).

The things listed below are things that I’ve done, however, I didn’t do them all at the start of recovery because I was so scared…..but I’m telling you, as someone who has gone through it, that you will recover quicker if you do the following things after you read this ❤️

Delete all calorie-counting apps

This is the best thing I’ve ever done! You don’t need to count calories, they don’t mean anything and you shouldn’t be choosing what food you eat depending on the number of calories.

Admittedly, I didn’t do this straight away because at the start I didn’t want to recover and I found it hard to let go of an app that had been part of my life for so many years. But now I feel so much better deleting it. I only wish I had done it sooner.

Throw away the scales

You don’t need scales, they have no use but to put you down. Your weight is always fluctuating so even from week to week it doesn’t really mean anything if it changes. I used to weigh myself so many times a day and it would obviously go up and down for a number of reasons (toilet, meal times etc.) and I would really hate and punish myself if it went up. I’ve learnt that it doesn’t matter what you weigh, it doesn’t define you as a person. A number shouldn’t define you.

Delete all pictures of yourself where you were bodychecking

I recently did this, it’s hard to do because there are always going to be memories attached to those pictures, however, it shouldn’t matter what you look like. I absolutely hate seeing ‘before’ and ‘after’ posts on Instagram. It is really UNHEALTHY to compare yourself throughout your recovery, you aren’t recovering if you are looking back and wishing you were in the same shape as before. Furthermore, it’s unhealthy for other people to see and do it too. Often people like to kinda show off what they looked like pre-recovery even if they don’t mean it to be mean or whatever, but it makes you feel rubbish about yourself.

Related: My favourite recovery quotes

As soon as you buy anything with calories on the label, draw over it

I once saw an Instagram post of someone’s friend doing this for them and I thought how sweet it was and then decided I would do that to any packaged food I bought that displayed the calories. Deleting calorie-counting apps isn’t enough because calories are literally everywhere…on menus, packaging even ads talk about them so I knew that I needed to do something proactive. Recently I received a big bar of chocolate – bigger than I was expecting which panicked me a bit, but straight away I drew over the calories and I have felt so so much better about having some ever since. Another example is I will always try to tear a packet of something where the calories are so that I don’t have to see them (and it isn’t so obvious).

Related post: How to cope with calories on menus

Delete any Pinterest boards or any bookmarks to do with dieting

I actually only did this a month or two ago because I don’t tend to look through my boards and whilst doing that, I decided to tidy up my bookmarks too. It was harder than I thought to delete these things but I knew that there was no good in keeping something that was pro-eating disorder or that if I was having a bad day, it would drive me backwards.

Since deleting them, I haven’t even considered searching up to look back at the posts. I don’t want a constant reminder of what I used to feel. Once you delete a board, the subject tends to stop showing up on the home page.

Once you delete them (if you don’t have them already) create some new boards that will encourage you to recover like positivity, self-care and recovery.