Quasi Recovery

In the area of disordered eating and eating disorder recovery, there are two categories of people who come to work with Seven Health. 

The first are those who are at the start of their journey. 

You realise that there is an issue going on, and you just can’t get better without the assistance of outside help. 

Or maybe you’ve made some initial steps and progress on your own, and through this experience, you now see the value and importance of support and guidance. 

This doesn’t mean you aren’t scared and ambivalent; you most probably are. But despite this, you’re willing to get started. 

The second category, and the focus of today’s post, is those who more aptly fit the description of “quasi recovered” or “recovered enough.” 

Does this sound like you? 

You’ve already gone through a period of recovery, and things have improved from their worst point. You’ve seen improvements like:

• You’re eating more and are including some previously off-limit foods. 
• You’ve decreased your exercise or changed what you’re currently doing compared to the depths of your disorder.
• You have stopped calorie counting. 
• Symptoms like sleep, digestion, energy, and concentration have improved from where they were before.   

In lots of ways, your life is measurably better. But the trouble is, you’re still stuck. 

Maybe you’ve been trapped in this place for a while. You had an initial phase of recovery, before reaching this new plateau. That may have even been years ago. 

It feels like you traded one prison cell for another. Sure, this cell is bigger than the last one. It has more room to move, and you have permission to do things you couldn’t do before. But you are still in prison.

Perhaps it’s only recently that you’ve come to see how stuck you are. 

For so long, you saw all the ways your life was better than it used to be. But now, you can’t help but see all the ways it’s not as good as you know it could be. 

Or maybe you are oblivious to the fact that you are stuck. You are so used to this way of being that it just feels normal. If that’s the case, this article just might be exactly what you need to read. 

What Does True Freedom Look Like? 

Answering the question of what freedom looks like is a personal one. But if you have gone through a recovery journey, where are you now?

I’d like you to look at the list below and think about your own experience with food and your body. Are these accurate descriptions of how things are for you?

• Thoughts about eating have drifted into the background. Sure, there can be some planning, but food is just food, and it takes up little headspace. 
• You’ve regained your period if it had stopped and it is now regular and mostly symptom-free. 
• You can enjoy a meal with friends where you can be present and don’t feel compelled to check the menu in advance.
• When walking by a mirror you’re excited by the person looking back at you. When you see your image looking back at you, the focus is on yourself as a whole person, not merely your appearance.
• You feel connected to and deeply grateful for your body. You can hear its feedback and accept the messages it’s giving you. You trust your body.
• If you exercise, you do so in a way that you genuinely enjoy. You move your body for fun without the feeling of compulsion.
• You can rest, relax, and take time off. You can stop and sit down without feeling guilty. 
• You’re able to digest a wide range of foods easily and aren’t restricted in what you can eat (outside of any medical restrictions).
• You fall asleep easily and can sleep through the night, without the need to eat or pee.
• You feel secure in your toolbox of coping skills – you’re able to deal with the challenges of life.
• Your identity is connected to many aspects of your life, no longer revolving around eating and exercise.
• You can focus and concentrate, whether reading a book for fun or doing deep thinking at work. 

Recovery is highly individual, so there may be things you’d add to my incomplete list. 

But are you in a place where you are living in alignment with most of the above statements? Or are many of these still outstanding?

There are many reasons why you can find yourself stuck in a place of quasi recovery. 

Our world makes full recovery incredibly difficult. Society is largely disordered in its relationship with food and exercise, and when living within the system, it’s an act of defiance to challenge this. 

The world can make it easy to be unknowingly struggling because you think it is just “normal.” Or maybe you do see the problem, but it is easy to disguise what is going on from the rest of the world, so you keep it up. 

Hitting A Wall

For many clients, they got stuck in quasi recovery because they hit a wall. You were on the recovery journey, but then you knock up against some upper limit of what you feel is acceptable. 

“I can’t put on any more weight than this; my body is obviously broken.” 

“I shouldn’t have a level of hunger like this; it’s extreme and too much.”

“I can’t eat more food than this; I must be doing something wrong.”

“I can’t include [fill in the blank] food; I’m intolerant / it’s so unhealthy / that’s too much sugar.” 

“I can’t walk/run/go to the gym any less than I currently do; it’s already so much less than I used to do.”

You were prepared to do recovery but won’t allow yourself to cross some arbitrary line. So your behaviours are now more socially acceptable, but true freedom is still elusive. 

For many, a big part of this is that they don’t know anyone who has reached true food and body freedom. 

Everyone you know still participates in dieting, restriction, or disordered comments about food, exercise, and their body. And when there’s no one to model this in your life, what do you do? What are you even aiming for?

Other clients may have these role models in their life, but they don’t know how to do it for themselves. Or somehow they feel they can’t. I’ve lost track of how many times I’ve heard, “I can see how that would work for someone else, but it wouldn’t work for me.” 

Making Your Living In The Health, Fitness, and Wellness World

What can also make this tricky is when your livelihood revolves around food and movement. 

For many of the guests I’ve had on the podcast, their stories are the same. They struggled with dieting, disordered eating, or an eating disorder. And while they were in the midst of it, they decided to study as dieticians, nutritionists, personal trainers, or yoga teachers. 

Often the goal was an attempt to get a handle on what was going on. To paraphrase what many said: 

“I believed if I studied as a dietician, I would finally learn the perfect way to eat, and this would then allow me to be free.” 

“I thought that if I became a PT, I’d learn how to make my body stronger and more resilient, which would lead to body acceptance.”

With the guests I’ve had on the show, their journey into these endeavours does have a happy ending. They managed to recover and are now in a much better place. 

But in all instances, this wasn’t because of what they studied, but rather despite what they studied. Their healing journey happened outside of what they learned and was largely in opposition to what they were taught at school.

Many of the teachings within each of these professions are disordered, weight stigmatising, and healthist. And if someone “recovers” but follows everything they’ve learned in school, it’s easy to unwittingly become stuck in quasi recovery. 

Or, in other cases, not so unwittingly. These professions can be the perfect cover for why certain ways of eating and exercise are “appropriate,” even when they are in opposition to true freedom.   

Many of the clients I work with are part of the health and wellness profession: personal trainers, dieticians, nutritionists, and naturopaths. And I get how tough this can be. 

You may fear what your clients will think about changes to your eating habits or body. 

You may feel embarrassment, shame, or confusion. “I’m working in the health field; surely, I should be able to figure this out myself?” 

You may  struggle to reconcile recovery with your business. If you help people lose weight or have strong beliefs about food and movement, what will this mean for your business in the future?   

But just because you work in this industry, doesn’t mean you aren’t human. As humans, we’re fallible. We struggle. We question our worthiness or whether we’re loveable. 

And we can need outside help to get better. 

From Quasi Recovery To Full Recovery

I regularly work with individuals who are stuck in quasi recovery. 

Whether you’ve made a career in wellness, or it just feels like food and exercise is your career because of how much space it takes up in your life. 

Dieticians, nutritionists, personal trainers, or regular people can all need support getting over that final hurdle to reach true, lasting recovery. That’s where we come in.

I’m a leading expert and advocate for full recovery. I’ve been working with clients for over 15 years and understand what needs to happen to recover.

I truly believe that you can reach a place where the eating disorder is a thing of the past and I want to help you get there. If you want to fully recover and drastically increase the quality of your life, I’d love to help.

Want to get a FREE online course created specifically for those wanting full recovery? Discover the first 5 steps to take in your eating disorder recovery. This course shows you how to take action and the exact step-by-step process. To get instant access, click the button below.