330: Common Mistakes That Prevent Recovery

Chris Sandel: Hey! If you want access to the transcripts and the show notes and the links talked about as part of this episode, you can head to www.seven-health.com/330.

Hey, everyone. Welcome back to another episode of Real Health Radio. I’m your host, Chris Sandel. I’m a nutritionist and a coach and an eating disorder expert, and I help people to fully recover.

Before we get on with today’s show, I just have an announcement that I’m currently taking on new clients. If you are living with an eating disorder and would like to reach a place of full recovery, then I would love to help. And it really doesn’t matter how long this has been going on, whether you are in your early twenties and this has been a fairly new thing or you’re in your late forties or early fifties and this has been going on for multiple decades. I truly believe that everyone can reach a place of full recovery, and I would love to help you reach that place.

So if this is of interest to you and this is something that you want to have happen, even if it feels like it’s something out of reach, then please get in contact. You can send an email to info@seven-health.com and just put ‘coaching’ in the subject line, and I can send over the details to you. And I really think that this episode today is going to be very much connected to that. What I want to do as part of this episode – it is a solo episode; it is just me; I’ve jotted down some notes and I’m going to be talking about a topic.

The topic today is common mistakes that I see in recovery. I was really wanting to do this because I’d been reflecting on the clients that I’m working with and seeing the people who are really making strides and things are going well versus the people where it feels a little stuck and we’re not making the kind of progress that I would like them to make or that they would like to be making. I did this based on my reflection of working with people for a really long time and starting to think about what gets in the way so often.

And I know that if I do this in a couple of months’ time, there’s probably going to be some other things that are coming up that I want to add here, but this is what I brain-dumped this morning before hitting record on this one.

00:02:15

Mistake #1: Not setting meaningful goals + not following through

When I think about the common mistakes that I see, the first one that comes up a lot is setting a goal in recovery and then bailing on it and not following through on it. The one thing I do want to say with this is I think goals and goal-setting is really important for recovery. If you’re being very wishy-washy with the “Well, I’ll recover, and let’s just see what the day throws at us. I’ll definitely make some changes at some point today”, it is just not going to happen.

I’ve been doing this long enough to know that you have to be very intentional about, “This is a thing that I’m going to do” and really follow through on that. So if the first thing that you’re doing is not setting a goal, I would say you need to do that. You need to be very intentional about “This is actually where I’m putting my focus for today or this week or this next two weeks” because if that’s not happening, it’s unlikely you’re going to get very far.

But if that does happen and you say, “This is going to be my goal,” you need to follow through on that – and you need to follow through on that irrespective of what comes up. This could be irrespective of what comes up in terms of the eating disorder thoughts, in terms of the sensations that arise, in terms of the fears, in terms of the emotions, life stuff – which I’ll get to at some point with this. But it’s really making these goals a non-negotiable, where it’s like, “This is the goal and I’m going to follow through on this irrespective of what happens.”

Too often, what I see is someone setting a goal, and we’ll set a goal and talk about it, and “These are the things that could get in the way, so we need to make sure they’re not happening. What is going to make it easy for this to occur? Okay, cool, we need to have that sorted out”, whether that’s you need to go to the shops or we need to change this thing. But getting really specific about it and really granular in a lot of ways of “These are all the things we need to do” and then it not happening in terms of the goal.

The reason that this is so important is, one, obviously, the more you’re making changes in recovery, the better, but it starts to then seep into your beliefs about what you think you’re capable of and really then starting to get hooked by those eating disorder thoughts of “Oh, I just can’t do that.” It’s then really important to say “This is the goal” and then follow through on it, because if you start to do that, if you set a goal and follow through on it and you do it for five days, seven days, two weeks, you start to realise, “Oh, I can actually do this thing. Even when those thoughts came up, I still stuck to it.”

You also start to notice upsides from doing that. I think there’s this real myth that “When I do recovery, man, I’m going to have to have this horrendous period for a really long time where I’m seeing no benefit, and then at some point in six months’ time or nine months’ time or two years’ time, then I’ll start to notice a benefit”, and that’s just not true. Within a matter of days, people can be seeing changes. And it’s not that their life has drastically changed, but there can be some really important changes that people start to notice, whether it is with their energy or with their sleep or with their digestion or just “My belief in myself has now changed because of what I’ve been able to do.”

This is why it becomes so important to make those goals non-negotiable. What I would say is the worst version of this in terms of the mistakes people make is when they set this really tiny goal. So rather than saying, “What is useful for my recovery?”, it’s like, “Let’s ask the eating disorder what it would suggest it would allow me to do”, and basically any iteration of that, the eating disorder is still saying that’s too much. So someone sets this really tiny goal and then they still don’t do it. This then just adds to the idea of “Man, this is just all too hard. I don’t even have the capacity to do this. Maybe the next time I set a goal, I need to make it even smaller.”

I know that within the literature around goal setting, there’s a lot of talk about let’s make this really tiny change that you know you’re going to be able to do, and it feels so small that it’s just so easy. And while that may be useful in some areas of life, it just does not work with eating disorder recovery because of what is driving the eating disorder, which is namely being in a low-energy state. So the goal has to be meaningful enough.

When somebody’s then setting a goal that is already not going to be make much of an upside if it’s actually followed through on and then they don’t follow through on it, you’re just getting the worst of all worlds as we’re doing that.

Because when I think about recovery, recovery, rather than trying to do the minimum – which I think is what most people are trying to do, like “Let me eat the minimum amount of food to be able to get there, let me gain the minimum amount of weight to be able to get there” – what is really required is that you go well past that. You blow past what you believe or what the eating disorder believes is acceptable, because when you do that, you’re then in this totally different realm. You’re not trying to hold on to anything. You’re not in the same place of comparison, of “Okay, I normally have this bowl of cereal, but I’ve added an extra two spoonfuls into this bowl of cereal” and we’re still in that same realm, where we’re doing something completely different. It feels like that would be way scarier, but that is actually where people start to really experience true freedom.

So as part of this first mistake, it’s setting goals and then not following through on them. The inverse of this and what I recommend is setting goals that are meaningful and then following through on them and noticing in a fairly quick amount of time that there is some upside for doing this.

00:08:09

Mistake #2: Delaying a change until later in the day

The next one that I see, which is common – and this often goes hand in hand with the goal setting piece – is delaying making a change until later in the day. This could be, as I talked about, someone just not setting a goal at all and just the “I wake up, I feel like yeah, I should do something connected to recovery; let me just get through the first couple of hours and maybe we’ll think about that in the afternoon, or we’ll think about that in the evening time.” As I said, that typically leads nowhere, and that change just doesn’t happen.

But also, it could be “When I’m setting a goal, I’m going to set the goal for making a change later in the day. I’m going to set it for in the afternoon time or in the evening time.” It’s not that that can’t happen, that someone can’t make some changes later in the day, but what often happens is that the earlier part of the day, and often the first actions that someone is taking, is setting the tone for how the day is going to unfold.

If you are not setting the tone in terms of pro recovery changes and you’re setting the tone in terms of eating disorder behaviours, it makes it a lot harder to pull back from there. For example, if you start the day and you go and do fasted exercise or you take an appetite suppressant or you’re skipping breakfast, you are basically saying, “Okay, I’m choosing eating disorder behaviours for the first part of this day.”

And what that means is that by doing those different things, by not having the food, by doing exercise, you’re getting into a lower and lower energy state as part of that. You’ve already not eaten through the night or for a long period of time, so you’re already waking up in this lower energy state, and if you then do things that take you even further down into that, it makes it even more likely you’re going to get more eating disorder thoughts. There’s going to be more physical sensations, where “Now I’m even more conscious of my belly or my body”, and it just makes it so much harder.

So my recommendation is always, when we’re starting to make changes, my focus is typically, let’s make a change to your breakfast. Let’s make a change to your mid-morning snacks. If you’re not having those things, let’s bring it in. If you’re doing exercise at that point of the day – and we’ll talk about this in the moment, but we need to be moving that out. Because we can’t be starting the day from a really eating disorder behaviour place and then hoping that we will navigate back to a better place later on. It just doesn’t happen, and it makes it so much more difficult.

When I reflect on the people who do well in recovery versus the people who are really stuck, it’s because for the first choices you are making, you are setting up your day in a specific way. And if you set it up in a pro recovery way, it typically goes in that fashion.

And it’s not that there can’t be then challenges that occur where you’re dealing with a sick child or you’re dealing with this thing that happened at work. Those things happen, and you’re then in a better place to be able to deal with it. Because if that happens and you’ve already skipped your breakfast or done a workout, the likelihood at that point that you then stick to the goal of making that change or doing something that is going to support you in your recovery – it’s just less likely to happen, or nearly never going to happen, just because now there’s this challenge, it’s bringing up more thoughts and emotions, and “Oh man, I really can’t. I need to hold on to the restriction.”

So really, don’t delay making changes until later in the day, because it either flat-out doesn’t happen or you’re just making it more likely that that’s going to be the case. And it makes it much more difficult. Also, if the point at which you make a change is right at the latter point of that day, it’s more likely that you’re going to have a panic attack. It’s more likely you’re going to really freak out as part of that change. It’s more likely there’s going to be real concerns.

And I know that there can be this feeling of “If I delay everything and then make a change later in the day, worst case scenario I can just go to sleep. I’m not having to then eke out the rest of the day with the overwhelming thoughts about food or what I’ve just done or the guilt or all of those things.” So I understand why someone wants to do it in that way, but if I look at the likelihood of a change actually taking place, it’s highly reduced – but also the likelihood of that event not going particularly well. In terms of the change event not going well, I think it is drastically increased because you’re starting making that change from such a depleted state.

00:12:52

Mistake #3: Continuing to do exercise

The next common mistake that I see is continuing to do exercise, especially when it’s a driving factor in someone’s eating disorder. When I’m looking at people’s exercise habits as part of their eating disorder, there’s a real wide mix of what is going on.

From my perspective, for everyone, I want them to be having a break from exercise. I think it’s important from an energy standpoint, and that energy can now be used by the body to repair, but also from a psychological flexibility standpoint, to be able to say, “Hey, I’m truly in the driver’s seat here, and I can take time off so that I can develop a healthy relationship with exercise later on where I can truly take time off when I need to, I can truly be able to do things different, I can go on holiday, I don’t have to exercise.” To be able to really do that, I think you need to be having time off. And that’s true whether exercise has been a small part of your eating disorder or has been a big part of your eating disorder.

But depending on where someone’s at, it might not be the first place we start. I would love it to be, but there are times where I feel like we could possibly get away with not touching exercise to start with. But in other situations, it is just so abundantly clear that exercise is such a big part of someone’s eating disorder. And I would say that is connected to, when are you doing it? If you’re doing it first thing in the morning, especially if you’re doing it first thing in the morning where you’re not having food, it is going to be having a huge impact on how you feel, the kinds of thoughts that are coming up, how depleted you’re getting. In that situation, it’s a really big deal.

But also, for people who are doing this quite a lot – and ‘a lot’ is obviously relative, so I’m not going to give specific amounts here, but there are people where “I’m exercising either multiple times a day or I don’t take any days off, I can’t take days off”, where it’s really obvious how much this exercise is so central to the eating disorder.

I think for some people, their thought process is “I’m just going to increase my food to compensate for this, and I won’t have to touch my exercise, or I’ll bring it down a little bit but I’ll just increase my food and then it will be fine.” That just doesn’t work from my perspective, and it doesn’t work because most people just don’t increase their food in the way that they intend to. It’s like, “I’m going to do that; I’ll definitely have a bigger lunch”, and then you’ve done the exercise in the morning and then lunch doesn’t actually really increase, or it doesn’t increase to the degree that you thought it was going to. So really recognising, “I don’t actually make the changes that I say I’m going to make when I keep the exercise in.”

And I know for a lot of people there’s this feeling of “If I pull out the exercise, then the eating disorder convinces me that I definitely can’t eat any more food. If anything, I’m going to have to be pulling things down. So by keeping the exercise in, this is giving me the freedom to increase what I’m doing.” And it just truly doesn’t work. I think this is an eating disorder mirage, or it’s a myth it tells you to keep you stuck.

I think for a lot of people, there’s also this idea of “Well, exercise is really good for my mental health, and if I wasn’t doing that, I think my mental health would be so much worse.” And again, I just don’t buy into this. Having an eating disorder is not good for your mental health. It’s probably the worst thing you can do for your mental health. So us making changes to allow you not to have an eating disorder is going to be the best thing for your mental health. And stopping exercise is the way to actually get to that place.

I just think that people really need to be – I want to say honest with themselves, but I think that can be hard because of how much the eating disorder warps one’s perspective and perceptions, but just recognising that doing this exercise is having an impact on this eating disorder. I think it can be difficult as well because there can be this feeling of “Man, you don’t know how much exercise I used to do. This is so reduced in comparison to before.” Which in relative terms may be true, but in terms of what is best for one’s recovery, the best option is not having that exercise that is in there.

I’ve had instances where I can remember clients who’ve made really massive tries in terms of their eating, but they just weren’t willing to take the time of exercise and change in that way. My warning to them was, hey, I can see how much of an improvement you’ve made in loads of different areas, but this one thing that you are just not budging on, I think this is going to come back and bite you. I think what will happen is with time, the reduction that you’ve made will start to inch up; the ‘Well, I’m only doing it three days a week now’ will start to become four or five, and it’s really easy for things to then slide, because you fundamentally haven’t removed this thing that is fully driving the eating disorder.

So really, my strong recommendation is that if you are exercising and exercise is part of your eating disorder, you need to stop that as part of going through recovery. I did a whole episode on exercise and movement in recovery, so I will link to that in the show notes, and I talk more about what that could look like, how that can be done, returning exercise into one’s life afterwards. But I think this is a really important thing.

And of all the things, this is often where there is the most resistance from people, and of all the areas, when someone does make this change and truly commits to it, it has the biggest impact and in the quickest amount of time. So I know the eating disorder is convincing you that that’s not going to happen, but it truly does, and it does help in a way that you’re probably failing to grasp how much it can help.

00:19:10

Mistake #4: Trying to be a ‘normal’ eater

Another mistake that I see is looking at what other people are doing as your guide. I think that this happens both in terms of looking at what other people are doing in recovery, but more often having a look at what other ‘normal’ people are doing, whether that’s “What is my partner doing or eating? What is my mum eating? What are the colleagues at work eating, what are the comments that those people are making any time cake’s brought in or biscuits are shared?” Really looking around for “What are other people doing to inform what I should be doing as part of my eating?”

Again, I did a podcast on this recently, where the goal of recovery is not for you to be a normal eater. The goal of recovery is for you to eat in a way that helps your body to be able to recover. So you shouldn’t be looking around. As humans, we are always comparing. Those thoughts are going to come up. It’s then recognising, “That thought has arisen; just because it’s arisen, does not mean that I need to pay attention to it. That thought can be there and I can still make the change that I need to make. I can still follow the goals that I’ve set.”

The more that you’re focusing on everyone else, the more that’s going to have an impact on your recovery, and now in a positive way. It’s the same thing that I say around what people talk about when talking about other people’s bodies or all of these ideas of “But what is everyone going to think?” or “What is everyone going to say?” The more that the focus is out there, the more that you’re going to try and do things to manipulate what other people are going to think and say, and the more that you’re going to do things that are not in service of recovery as an attempt to do that.

Versus “I’m going to just stay completely within my own lane, and all I’m going to do is focus on what I need to do. It doesn’t matter what the other people in my office are eating or doing because if I try and do that, I am the only one that suffers. I am the only one that continues to live with an eating disorder. It doesn’t matter, it doesn’t affect them. This is only affecting me.” And for a lot of people, “This is only affecting me for the last one decade, two decades, three decades.” So being able to say, “Hey, I’ve got to put the blinders on that stuff. I’ve got to just focus on me.”

And the more you’re able to do that, the more that what other people are doing starts to become a lot less important and you start to realise, “Actually, it wasn’t about everyone else’s opinion. It was actually about my own opinion.” I’ve just seen this confirmation bias in that “That’s what other people say and that’s what I’m afraid of”, so being able to say, “You know what, my guide is not what everyone else is doing; my guide is what is important for me.”

And this is true even when looking at what other people are doing in recovery. Because yes, sometimes it can be useful to understand what other people are doing. As part of the work that I do with clients, there’s a group component and we have group calls, we have group meal support calls. There is seeing what other people are doing. You can look around at what other people are doing and use that in a really beneficial way where it’s bringing curiosity to it and bringing interest to it and saying, “Oh okay, that’s interesting. They’re doing it in that way, and this other person’s doing it in this other way, and they did this thing.” Okay, great, that’s really useful.

But not where “I’m going to find someone else in recovery who’s doing the minimum and I’m going to make that my maximum.” It’s “I can look around and see what other people are doing in recovery to help support me and give me ideas, but I’m not going to use it in a way that constrains my own recovery”, because I think that’s too often what happens: “Let me find the people who can give me reason why I don’t have to do this thing that I’m afraid of.”

00:23:12

Mistake #5: Believing the eating disorder thoughts

The next one – and this is a really common mistake that I see – is really believing the thoughts. This is believing the eating disorder thoughts or the thoughts that “I can’t do this, I won’t be able to handle this, these thoughts that I’m having are true” and really getting hooked by those eating disorder thoughts.

I’ve said this many times on this podcast before; I say it many times to clients: you are not your thoughts. Your thoughts think themselves. They come into your conscious awareness and then you become aware that they are there. And when you’re living in an eating disorder and you’re in that physical state within your body, there are certain thoughts that are going to arise much more commonly. And just because those thoughts are coming up, doesn’t mean that it’s a value of yours. It doesn’t mean that it’s true, it doesn’t mean it’s important. It doesn’t mean that you have to give it your attention.

And even if something may be true, you can also recognise “Me spending my time getting hooked by this and focusing on it isn’t helping me in my recovery. It’s not helping me to have the kind of life that I want to lead. It’s not helping me to have the kind of relationships that I want to have. So yes, this thing can be true, but actually, it doesn’t help me at all to spend my time thinking about this. I notice that this thought has been generated, and I’m going to use different tools” – and this is stuff I work on with clients – “to still be able to take that action.”

I also think that this can often happen as well when things have been going pretty well. So things have been going well, then there’s some kind of setback that happens, and people get into this very black-and-white thinking around “Ugh, I’m just never going to be able to do this. Yeah, maybe I did it for a week, but man, it’s just too much.” So really starting to believe those thoughts.

Again, I’ve done another episode on cognitive distortions, which I’ll link to in the show notes, because I think that’s a really important thing to recognise all these different types of thoughts that the mind will generate, and when you’re then noticing those because “I know that there’s that type of cognitive distortion.”

But really noticing that “Thoughts are just thoughts. Thoughts think themselves. Just because I had a thought, doesn’t mean that I have to follow through on it.” Because again, when you’re making changes, there are going to be lots of eating disorder thoughts. The idea that “I decide that I’m going to do recovery and all that stuff just drops away and disappears” is just not true. If anything, it’s going to get worse in the short term. There’s going to be more of those things coming up because you’re knocking against it. You’re doing things that go past what you were doing before. So the managing of expectations for me is: this is going to happen. There’s going to be this increase, and you can still make that change.

00:26:09

Mistake #6: Letting life get in the way of recovery

Another common mistake that I see is letting life get in the way of recovery but still making time for the eating disorder. I think this comes up again and again, where people are like, “Oh my God, work is just so busy at the moment, and yet I found time to get up early and go and exercise. I’ve made time for this thing that is an eating disorder behaviour, but oh gosh, I just don’t have time for this recovery stuff.” Or “My kid is sick, so I just couldn’t eat breakfast. I guess I found some time this afternoon to do some cleaning around the house. There was some low level movement, but I just couldn’t do the recovery goals.”

I think this comes up again and again. And I know that this is situations where it becomes more difficult, because when there are things that mean that your day is going differently to how it usually goes or “this thing I wasn’t expecting, a sick kid, is now in my lap and I’m having to deal with it” – I know that is going to be more likely to want to lean on the eating disorder behaviours. If this has been your way of coping, which is what an eating disorder turns into even if that’s not how it started – it becomes someone’s very blunt instrument for dealing with all of life’s challenges, whether it’s very much connected to body or food or exercise or it’s just connected to any challenge in life.

But just being able to recognise that “I say that I can’t do recovery in these situations, that I don’t have the time or it’s too much or it’s too busy, and yet I’m really dedicating this time to the eating disorder. I’m finding time to do the eating disorder and make that an absolute priority.” It’s rare – and ‘rare’ might not even be the right word; I can’t even think off the top of my head of a single client who said, “Life got so busy that I just stopped doing the eating disorder. I just didn’t have time to be able to do it, so I just stopped doing it.” That just doesn’t happen.

But it definitely happens when people talk about recovery. “Life got so busy and recovery fell into the background. I just wasn’t doing the things that were really important as part of it.” When I think about the people who do well in terms of recovery and keep up with it, it’s “Life got lifey, and yet I still continued on with doing the goals and doing the things that were part of my recovery.”

This is where your recovery really can take off, because if you’re able to do this in these really hard moments, when things get easier, it’s going to be even easier to do. Being able to recognise, “It got really hard this morning because of a sick child, and then this thing happened with that meeting at work, and yet I still kept up with my recovery goals” – you do that a handful of times and you start to realise, “Oh, I can do this. No matter what happens, I can continue to do this” versus “I bailed on that a number of times” and then there is this narrative of “I can’t do this. It’s just too hard. Life’s just too challenging right now. I’m going to have to come back to this at some latter stage.”

So another mistake I see is letting life get in the way, or letting life be used as an excuse for why you weren’t able to follow through on this.

00:29:33

Mistake #7: Mistaking a feeling for something else

The next one I want to mention is mistaking a feeling or a sensation for something else. Let me give an example of this: having a really difficult time with kids or with work or with an ex-partner, and this is experienced within the body as various sensations, it’s experienced as certain emotions. But rather than being able to stay with that particular sensation or emotion and understand “This is being driven by that thing at work, that ex-partner”, whatever it is, allowing the eating disorder to morph this into something else. This is then experienced as bad body image, this is experienced as fear of weight gain.

So I have this thing in life that is a challenge, and rather than being able to stay with that actual challenge and being able to recognise these are the specific emotions that are coming up connected to this, it makes sense that this would be hard or overwhelming or challenging in that moment, and being able to give yourself self-compassion about the fact that you are single parenting right now and that’s just really hard, it then shifts into “Man, it’s all about my body image. Recovery is just too hard. I need to restrict, I need to go back to exercise”, all of those different things.

I really think that this is the part of recovery that is then so important both for recovery, but then for life forever. Because life will continue to present challenges, and this is how you then learn those other ways of coping. This is the way that you learn to then be able to navigate life without the eating disorder so that you’re able to recognise, “Okay, I need to be doing these things in the moment, and that helps me be able to deal with it, and I need to be doing these things bigger picture, consistently, just baked into my everyday life, because when I do them, it increases my window of tolerance. It helps me to feel much more grounded. It helps me to stay on the straight and narrow in terms of my recovery.”

So just really being able to take a step back. I think this is what it really is about: when you’re having those body image struggles, just as an example, it’s like, “Let me just take a step back and notice, what’s going on? What’s actually changed? What’s happened today, what’s happened yesterday? Why is this coming up in a way today that it wasn’t before?”

I’d say this part becomes easier in some senses as you move a little further along in recovery, because if you are just fully in it in terms of the eating disorder, every day is just bleak followed by bleak followed by bleak. It’s just the same day on repeat. There aren’t any points of contrast where you’re able to notice, “Actually, I did have a couple of good days. Yeah, now the body image has got so much worse, but it wasn’t like this yesterday, or it wasn’t like this last week.”

Getting to that point where you’re able to notice those points of contrast, but then when that is there, being able to have that awareness, being able to have that pause, to be able to step back and survey what’s going on and be curious about, “Huh, this is interesting. I wonder what’s going on or why this is occurring or what else could be going on that has led me to start to think this way about my body or food or exercise.” Because typically there’s something else that we can find that’s occurring in your life, whether it be a certain incident, whether it be “Man, I’ve just not slept well for the last four or five days, and I know that’s going to be having an impact.”

But it’s really important to be able to step back and reflect as opposed to just making these automatic eating disorder behaviours as a way of coping.

00:33:35

Mistake #8: Doing the same thing + expecting different results

Another common mistake that I see is doing the same thing again and again and expecting different results. I’ve talked about some of the mistakes already.

For example, “Hey, I’m going to make a change; let me get through the first half of the day. Maybe I’ll make a change later in the afternoon or in the evening time” and then you do that and no change actually takes place, and then tomorrow we just do the same thing, and then the same thing the day after – expecting that even though this thing has happened in the exact same way for the last handful of weeks, handful of months, handful of years, decades, “I’m going to do the same thing but it’s going to be different this time.”

When I’m working with clients, whatever we do in terms of the goals, I’m always saying we’re going to run an experiment. We’re going to run an experiment for the next week or the next two weeks. You’re going to do this goal or goals, and then we’re going to talk about what happened as part of that experiment. What did you notice?

I think, coming back to the believing the thoughts piece, it’s very easy for the eating disorder to tell you, “This is what’s going to happen. This is going to be the outcome.” And the reality is, you have no idea what’s going got happen. Because even if the thing happens that the eating disorder says will happen in terms of “There could be weight gain” or “You could feel guilty after eating that food”, there could also be the experience of “And I was able to handle that, and I was able to cope, and it didn’t affect me in the same way that I thought it would. It was really intense for half an hour or an hour, and then it started to come down. Or it was really hard for a few days and then it got better.”

You’re only able to actually learn this by having that experience. There’s no amount of me telling it to you, there’s no amount of you listening to recovery stories or reading things. You have to experience it. So what I’m always recommending for someone is, cool, this is going to be the goals; we’re going to run this experiment and then we’ll come back and talk about what’s the data, what happened as part of that experiment, to then figure out what we do next from here.

But what I find with a lot of people is the mistake of “I know this hasn’t worked, this exact thing hasn’t worked for a month or a year or whatever, but I’m going to do it and I think it’s going to work this time. It’s going to be different this time.” Because if I’m doing something with someone and one, they run the experiment and it doesn’t work – great, we’ve gathered data on that and we’ll figure out what parts didn’t work as part of it. What parts did? How does that inform what we do next?

But if someone is saying, “This is the goal, this is what I’m going to do” and then for two weeks nothing happens – cool, let’s learn about what happened there. Was your intention every day when you got up that you were going to do the goal and then you got to the goal and you then bailed? Or as soon as you woke up, you knew you weren’t going to do it? Or you decided the night before? I want to pick that apart. I want to understand, what’s been the chain of events, what’s been the process that has led up to you getting to that place so that we can figure something out to do differently.

There can be times where we set the exact same goals because it didn’t happen, but we’re now adding in these other features to it. “Cool, I need you to get your partner to be the one that goes to the shops, because you say when you go to the shops, you just go into that freeze mode and you’re unable to buy the thing that you need. So for now, let’s remove that step. I know in the future, we want you to be able to do that, but the most important thing right now is you bringing in more energy, so if we can jump over that step and have someone buy that food for you and that helps, great. We’re going to do that.”

So really learning from what you have been doing to then make better choices, to do things differently. And that’s true, as I said, even when things don’t go well. We can still learn from it. But if there’s no real learning, there’s just “I’ll do it the same way but this time I’ll try a little harder” or “I think it will be different” – it typically isn’t. It’s rare that someone just does the same thing and then, lo and behold, after a couple of months, for some unbeknownst reason, it just changes. It doesn’t typically work like that. So it’s going back to the drawing board and thinking, what do we need to change as part of these goals?

00:38:10

Mistake #9: Trying to do recovery on your own

The final one that I want to mention is just the idea of trying to do this on your own. Obviously this isn’t happening when I’m working with clients, although it can in some degree if someone’s then not really communicating. When I work with people, I say I want to be hearing from you between calls. If I’m not hearing from you, it’s normally not great news, because for a lot of people, if they’re not doing what they should be doing in terms of the goals, there’s an “Oh gosh, I don’t want to tell him, I don’t want to say, so I just pull back, I don’t message, I’m not in contact.”

I get the pull to do that, the worry or the fear or the feeling of shame or all the things that can then come up as part of it. But from my perspective, I’m always like, you’re not going to get in trouble. At no point am I going to be shouting at you. At no point am I going to be belittling you. As I talked about a moment ago, let’s talk about this. What’s happened? Tell me what’s happening leading up to it. Let’s figure this thing out so we can make a plan.

When I think of recovery, it is one of the hardest things that you will ever do. And I say this not to then scare you off from doing it, because people do very hard things, and I bet that if you reflect on your life, there’s been many hard things that you have already done. It’s just, “I’m going to do something that is one of the hardest thing, if not the hardest thing in my life, and I’m going to do try and do this on my own, and I’m going to try and piece it together based on some stuff that I hear on podcasts or some things that I pick up from Instagram or this thing that I watched from YouTube videos” – I just don’t think it works.

And it doesn’t for a number of reasons. One, you’re often not doing all the things that you need to be doing as part of it. You hear me talking about goals and you’re like, “Yeah, yeah, that sounds like a really good idea” and just kick the can down the road or “maybe I’ll deal with that later” and it just doesn’t happen. So it’s that you’re often just not doing the things that you need to in recovery.

But two, if you are, as I said before, there are lots of thoughts that then start to come up. There are a lot of different emotions that start to come up. You get into a place where you just start to second-guess yourself. So “Yeah, I did this for a week or for a couple weeks, but then this thing happened, and man, it all became too much.”

Or you start making a change that is actually the right change, but it doesn’t lead to good results to start with. And when I say good results, you’re not noticing this really positive upside to start with. From my perspective, if I’m working with you, I’m able to say to you, “Actually, it’s fine. That’s totally normal. The trajectory with this is those things happen in the beginning and it will get better. You’re not actually doing something wrong; that is the right change to be making or that’s the right things to be experiencing. Just keep going with this.”

Also, the inverse of that – someone does something and it’s like, “This is a really good idea. I should keep doing this. It feels like it’s working”, and actually it’s leading them in the wrong direction, and they shouldn’t really be doing that. Again, if I’m working with them, I’m able to have that conversation and say, “I know it feels like it’s working; these are the reasons why I think this is a red flag and why I would suggest doing something different.”

It’s just with recovery, it’s also not quick. It’s not “Hey, I did this for a couple weeks and we’re all good.” This is something that’s going to take time. And again, when I say it’s going to take time, you don’t need to make it longer than it needs to be. I think for most people, they are making recovery way longer than it needs to be, especially the piece where it is most challenging. The bit where it is most challenging in those early stages could be much quicker if people were doing the things that would actually support that. And even when you’re doing that, it still takes time. So it’s important then to have someone, or many someones, to be able to support you with that.

And I know there are people online and there are people with very big platforms or vocal voices who talk about doing recovery on their own and how they were able to do it. It’s not that I doubt that they did it – although there are definitely people I doubt online of whether they are really, truly recovered based on what I can glean from different posts or the way they talk about things or whatever. But even if there are those people who truly do this on their own, they are the tiniest fraction of a percentage, and if we look at all the people who are trying to do recovery on their own and the people who actually lead to that occurring and are getting to that place of full recovery, it’s the tiniest of a fraction. There’s so much survivorship bias baked into the fact that they become people who are talking about this, having podcasts, all of those things, that it makes you feel like “Oh yeah, that’s the right approach. Everyone can do recovery on their own. I’m going to get there” when you’re not seeing the people who’ve tried that approach and are just not getting anywhere.

I know that this can sound very self-serving in terms of I’m saying all this and then “Come work with me.” If I’m not your guy to work with, that’s completely okay. I just want you to get better. I want you to fully recovery. So if there’s someone else that you listen to or follow or is offering services, whether it be inpatient or outpatient, whatever, go for it. I want you to get the support. I want you to get better, and I truly believe that you working with someone else increases the likelihood of that happening – with the caveat of you need to be working with the right people or the right teams or the people who really, truly understand this.

There are plenty of horror stories out there in terms of inpatient or outpatient or recovery coaches or all of this stuff, as there is with everything. So it’s not, hey, find the person you found and just go work with them. Do some due diligence. Listen, find out, “Does this actually sound like it’s right for me?” But I really, truly believe that you trying to do this on your own is making it infinitely more challenging than trying to do it with the support of other people, and other people who really understand eating disorders.

So that is it for this week’s episode. This one turned into probably a longer one than I initially intended, but it felt like I had a lot to say today. As I said a moment ago, I just want people to recover. I’m such an advocate of full recovery because I truly believe that everyone can get there. It’s not a matter of “If I do the things, maybe it’ll happen.” It’s “If you do the things, it will happen.” I truly believe it, and I’ve seen this occur.

So if you want help in your recovery, I would love to be the person to give you that help, to support you. You can send an email to info@seven-health.com, and if you just put ‘support’ or ‘coaching’ in the subject line, I can then send over the details.

So that is it for this week’s episode. I will be back with another episode next week. It’s a guest interview. Until then, take care, and I will see you soon!

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