article - Trusting Your Body

http://www.remudaranch.com/Resources/news_detail.aspx?article=13369346

Trusting Your Body

By Heather Showalter, RD

One of the most difficult aspects of recovery from an eating disorder is learning to trust, especially learning to trust your body. Learning to love and trust your body (the two are connected) takes time and most likely will be a gradual (and sometimes frustrating) journey, so I'd encourage you to begin with this; this summer, allow trust to begin blooming by starting each morning grounded in the truth that you are "fearfully and wonderfully made" (Psalm 139). When you radically accept this as truth, despite how you may be feeling towards your body on any given day, you free yourself to start exploring what it means to take care of something so wonderful, and to slowly foster a renewed relationship with your body based in truth and love. You will not always wake up believing your body is wonderful, but treat yourself as if you believed it was true each day.

The journey towards increased trust in your body begins by trusting recommendations given by your treatment team. Nutritionally, your RD can help you establish meal and exercise plans to set some initial boundaries to work within. Then, once your food/exercise patterns are stabilized and your weight is maintaining within a normal range, you can begin building increased trust by listening to your internal body cues and adding them in to the equation. This involves a willingness and readiness to come with a spirit of curiosity verses judgement towards your body and behaviors. For example, if you are hungry after eating lunch one day, instead of judging your hunger or fighting it, ask yourself why you might still be hungry as well as if the hunger is physically or emotionally based, and then honor any true hunger with acceptance verse a critical mind. Similarly, when you start to incorperate normal activity back in to your life, give yourself space to explore new activities or sports, and respect your body's limits verses judging yourself based on your performance. Trusting the body may also including honoring that when it is tired, it may simply need a day of rest while still eating normally throughout the day. Overall, as you are ready to lower the initial structure and increase trust, give yourself grace knowing that it will take time to learn to listen to the body well, and know that this phase of exploration will lead you to encounter things that both work and don´t work...and that´s okay. Learn from the mistakes, problem solve and increase structure with your RD when needed, and mostly, look forward to the new joys of freedom that will come with increased trust.

Your body is an amazing vessel which holds the beautiful treasure of your soul, and thankfulness for the ways it allows you to engage in life is best returned by listening to what your body has to say and taking care of it out of respect. Blessings as you continue on your journey!