Compensating in recovery

In recovery it is so important that you do not compensate by restricting or eating less because your anorexia tells you that you need to. If you compensate you are giving into your anorexia, which will make it stronger and the real you weaker. Instead you need to fight your anorexic thoughts and stop yourself from compensating, as doing this will get you closer to becoming fully recovered.

As long as I am tempted to compensate, I will not consider myself to be recovered. I believe that in order to be fully recovered you need to have a completely normal relationship with food and these types of thoughts really are not healthy. It is completely normal to have a bigger meal then you usually do sometimes or eat a little extra and you should not intentially compensate because of it or even be tempted to do so.

Tonight I am going out for tea with my mum, dad, sister as well as my dads boss and his childen. I know that my tea will contain more calories then it usually does and also that I wont know how many calories I am eating but I also know that I should not compensate in anyway because of this. I have been tempted by my anorexia to exercise extra as well as eat less throughout the day today but I know that I cant do either of these things.

If I do these things I will be listening to my anorexia and I will therefore be giving it strength, which is completely opposite to what I need to be doing at this stage in my recovery. So even though I feel like going out and going for an extremely long walk. I am not going to do this. Instead I am going to limit my walks to the distance I went yesterday, when I was not tempted to compensate.

No matter how anxious it will make me feel I know that I still need to eat my full afternoon tea and dessert. Not so that I know I am getting enough calories as I know that I would be eating enough without doing this. Instead I know that I need to do this in order to fight my anorexia and so that I am not giving into what it tells me to do.

One day I hope that I no longer get the temptation to exercise or restrict in order to compensate for what I may have eaten but until then, I know that I just need to keep fighting these thoughts. Because if I keep fighting them, they will eventually go away and only then will I be able to fully recover.