For years, Lisa desperately struggled to find something that would motivate her to recover from her eating disorder. She kept searching for reasons to recover – to eat in a “normal” way, but Lisa kept ending up in the same tired spot, wanting only to keep the eating disorder happy.

“Why is this happening to me?” Lisa wondered. If you’re living with an eating disorder, you likely know the answer. You probably know all-too-well how it can feel so much easier to give in to the eating disorder that to try to challenge it to stop.

Eventually, though, Lisa realized that while opting for eating disorder behaviors made her feel better in the moment, she knew it was slowly but surely taking over her whole life and entire identity. The eating disorder wasn’t making her happy anymore, but for lack of a way out, she kept choosing to acquiesce.

With time, Lisa realized that, among other things, her eating disorder was getting in the way of her lifelong dream of traveling the world. The kind of travel she knew she wanted just wasn’t conducive with her holding onto the eating disorder, so it had to go.

What Lisa needed, and what anyone trying to recover from an eating disorder needs, was to identify something bigger and more important than the eating disorder. She needed to find her ‘why’.

This powerful reason to recover from an eating disorder is going to look different for each person, but one thing will be consistent: it will be something more valuable to you than the eating disorder and 100% worth fighting for.

3 Powerful Reasons to Recover From Your Eating Disorder

It’s true that one of the most crucial steps to get in alignment with your eating disorder recovery is to become very clear on why you want to recover. Often times, I help clients to get in touch with and cement this motivation at the forefront of their minds. Here are the 3 major reasons that generally fuel the drive to recover.

#1 Taking Pleasure in Love, Relationships, & Family

It’s extremely difficult to be in a healthy committed relationship when you are in a relationship with your eating disorder.  The eating disorder may have taken such an important and central role in your life that you have little energy for anyone or anything else.

Many times, the desire to recover comes from the strong desire to find a partner and to have children. For one, the eating disorder can directly impact fertility and the ability to conceive.

Solid recovery is incredibly important before starting a family for many reasons.

For women who have already started a family, the motivation to recover at this time can stem from wanting to end an often generations old transmission of disordered eating. One of the surest ways to ensure your raise children with healthy relationships with food and body is to heal your own self first.

#2 Pursuing Career & Purpose

Living with an eating disorder consumes such a huge amount of time that might have instead been used to pursue a life’s goal such as building a business or volunteering for a specific cause. For some, realizing this passion for a particular career path or pursuit can provide a strong reason to recover from an eating disorder.

In addition, the reality is that the physical and mental health effects of an eating disorder can often preclude you from being able to pursue these goals. When you are compromised due to restricting, binging, purging, or over exercise, you simply don’t have to bandwidth to really dedicate to these goals with your whole being.

#3 Fun, Joy, & Meaning

The third area is often overlooked, yet crucial to making you well-rounded and whole. Everyone has the ability to engage in “play” on some level. People are simply meant to have play as apart of our lives – we do this from the time we are children.

Whether it’s music, travel, reading, or just being in nature, chances are your eating disorder is standing in the way of your connection with fun and meaning. Each of us has us a passion and purpose that your eating disorder might be obscuring. The reason to choose recovery is there inside you and you simply need to find it.

How You Can Get in Touch with Your ‘Why’

It’s so hard to recover when everyone else seems to want it for you, but you haven’t found that desire for yourself. In reality, maybe you aren’t ready right now, but if you were ready, why would you want to recover? Try this journaling exercise to parse out what you are seeking with recovery:

To enhance your intrinsic purpose right now, you’ll need to consider both the past and the future:

• Think back and remember all of the things that your eating disorder kept you from ranging from the invitations you declined because there would have been food involved, to the physical discomfort caused by your behaviors. Realize that if you are to continue down that path, there’s really only one direction you are surely headed.
• Now shift your focus to the future: a future without the eating disorder in your life. What does this look like? If you didn’t have your eating disorder, what would you hope to accomplish? What would you do with all of those hours in the day not spent obsessing about food or your body?
• Would you be finishing grad school, spending more time with your family, or dedicating time to learning how to garden, knit, or even run for public office? Use your imagination to try and create clear images of the experiences you could have without your eating disorder present. Write those down in detail.

It’s been my experience, both personally and as a therapist, that eating disorder recovery becomes consistently successful when you are clear on your ‘why.’ Only when you find this, are you able to truly see what you are willing to give up (hopefully your eating disorder!) to make this happen.

Only then are you able to really release the old patterns that are keeping you stuck and keeping you sick.

I’ve helped many people on their journeys to make peace with food and their bodies. As an eating disorder and body image therapist for nearly a decade, I work with clients at my office in Agoura Hills, CA and provide online therapy in California and New York. To learn how I can help you, give me a call now or click on the button below to get in touch to schedule your free 15-minute phone consultation.