Episode 337: Motivation is something that isn't very dependable in recovery (and life in general). One day it's there, the next it's gone. In this episode I look at how to deal with low motivation at different points in recovery, as well as some ideas of things to rely on instead of motivation.
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Chris Sandel: Hey! If you want access to the transcript, the show notes, and the links talked about as part of this episode, you can head to www.seven-health.com/337.
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 episode, I just want to announce that I’m currently taking on new clients. If you are living with an eating disorder – it doesn’t matter whether this is something that is a recent thing over the last couple of years or you’re reaching the third or fourth decade of dealing with this – I would still love to help. I believe in full recovery and that everyone can reach that place, and if that is where you would like to get to, even if that feels somewhat tenuous, it feels too far out in the distance, if there’s a part of you that believes full recovery is possible, then I would love to help. You can send an email to info@seven-health.com and just put ‘coaching’ in the subject line, and then I can send over the details.
So let’s get on with today’s episode. Today what I want to go through is dealing with low motivation in recovery. This was actually a topic that came up as part of the group that I run. When I work with clients, there is one-on-one stuff that I do with clients, there is a programme that I’ve created, and there’s also a group component as part of that. We do group coaching calls, we do group meal support calls where we get together, there’s a community area. And as part of these group coaching calls, we have different topics that we deal with.
I was asking people what would be some of the things they would like to go through, and one of the ideas that came up was dealing with low motivation in recovery or having moments when that arises and how to cope or what to do in those situations.
So I thought I would just share some of the stuff that came up as part of this, some of the stuff that I prepared as part of that call, and looking at different points where this can be this low motivation. Because I think low motivation can come about for different reasons, so what I want to do is go through a couple of different scenarios and then some of the different tools that you can use if you find yourself in that scenario.
And then at the end, I want to look at, what are other things that you can be using instead of motivation? Because unfortunately, motivation isn’t particularly dependable. One day you wake up and you’re like, “Yes, full recovery! I’m doing this, I’m going to do all my goals. I’m full wall going at it.” And then the next day you wake up and it’s like, “Bleh, I don’t know why I’m even doing this.”
I think that the more you’re trying to rely on motivation, the more you’re going to feel let down. So I think there are better things that we can depend on, and this is a lot of the work that I do with clients. So yeah, I want to cover that towards the end.
00:03:14
Let’s look at low motivation with getting started in recovery. Maybe you’re just thinking about getting started with recovery and you just don’t feel like “I’m waiting for this real push, I’m waiting for this motivation to fill me up and then I’ll get started with recovery.” Or maybe you dabbled a little bit in recovery and then that all fell by the wayside and you’re thinking about maybe giving it another go again, but again, there’s just a lot of apathy. There’s a lot of “I don’t know if this is ever going to work” and you find yourself in that spot.
If that is where you are, here are some of the things that could be helpful. And what I will say is there are some things that are going to overlap with these different scenarios, so there will be sometimes a little bit of repetition with this. I also want to say just because this is in the ‘just getting started’ category, you can still use this at other points within recovery.
00:04:12
To start with, starting with a ‘why’, and actually starting with a ‘why’ that hurts enough. I think often, pain can be one of the most honest starting points, and I think asking yourself, “What have I lost because of the eating disorder?” And a lot of these ideas you can do as a journalling prompt. Pull out a piece of paper. “What have I lost because of the eating disorder? What friendships, what energy or health complications, spontaneity, joy?” What is the cost that you’ve paid? What has been lost because of this?
Really using this as fuel to recognise, “Hey, I don’t want another week, another year, another decade of living this way.” So using this to either build motivation or just to recognise, “Hey, I’m going to get started.”
00:05:05
You can then build a vision of what you want instead. So we’ve got, “What has this been costing me?” and then we can look at, “Where do I want to get to?” I think both of these things are helpful, and for some people they’ll have more trouble connecting with one or the other. Some people really have difficulty connecting with the vision piece, and this is true especially when an eating disorder has gone on for a really long amount of time and “This developed in my teen years and now I find myself in my forties or my fifties.” It’s hard to have a vision because it feels like “I don’t even know who I am anymore. I don’t even know what I like.” It can feel like this is just too lofty.
But if that’s not the case and you can build a vision of some sort, then I would highly recommend doing it. So imagine a day where you’re free from obsessive food thoughts or compulsive movement or body fear. How would you want to be spending your life? What do you want to be doing with your life if the eating disorder wasn’t around?
As part of working with clients, I have a specific writing exercise that I do connected to this; it’s one of the first things I do in the free programme that I have, and there’s a link to this in the show notes, so you can sign up to that. I actually have the writing exercise connected to this.
Really, what you’re wanting to do is paint a really vivid picture, use as much emotional detail, and use this to really anchor your vision and anchor why you’re doing recovery. With this, you can do it as a journalling prompt; you can draw it. You can use whatever medium works best for you, but you want to keep coming back to this. Often, when people do the ‘creating their vision’ exercise, I recommend, read this daily. Have this be the first thing that you read each day to remind you, “This is why I’m doing recovery and this is where I want to get to.”
00:06:59
Identify the costs of not changing. Ask yourself, “What happens if I don’t do anything?” I think what often happens for many people is they stay stuck because of the fear of recovery and what may happen and all of the immediate things that might happen if I start to eat more or stop exercising or whatever the changes are going to be, and the eating disorder gets into all the catastrophizing and the ‘what if’ thinking.
But what then gets missed is all the things I’m missing out on. “What am I actually missing out on day to day, week to week, year to year because of this?” Really being able to identify the cost of, “If I don’t do anything, what happens then? What do I miss out on?”
I know for a lot of people, there can be this idea of “When I’m on my deathbed, is this what I want to be thinking, ‘this is how I spent my time’?” So maybe fast forward into the future and think about, in five years’ time, do I want to be looking back and recognise “Hey, I’m in the exact same spot that I am at now”?
00:08:10
The next one is borrowing hope until you have your own. This can be reading or listening to stories of people who are really in the depths of an eating disorder and then have recovered, and really letting someone else’s beliefs, someone else’s possibilities, someone else’s story carry you until you can build your own. I know that sometimes it can be like, “Well, they’re a unicorn. I could never do that” and there can be some of that thinking that comes up.
But I do also believe that there can be times where you listen and you’re like, “Oh wow, if they’re able to do that after that length of time, this has been going on for me for 10 years, but that person, that was 40 years that they were in it, and they were able to recover.” Sometimes those can help you move along and change the perspective a little bit.
00:08:59
Committing to a short timeframe. I think what can often happen when we talk about full recovery, the mind can go into overdrive of like, “Oh my God, how long is that going to take? I’m going to have to be at this thing for years. That just seems so big.” And that can be very paralysing, and that is where motivation can really get shut down.
One of the ways to counter this is, don’t commit to forever. Just commit to the next step, or “I’ll give this a try for the next 30 days.” Or if you have started to put down some goals or started to think about this, “Let me follow these goals for the next week and see what I notice.” I think, as I said a moment ago, what often is blocking motivation is, one, not making a change, but two, it’s because of all the catastrophizing and the ‘what if’ thinking.
One of the things that I say constantly when working with people and as part of the programme is, run the experiment. If all you’re doing is listening to the eating disorder thoughts, at that point you’re just stuck in the land of ‘what if’ and theories. What I want you to experience is, what happens in reality? So “I did this thing for the last month or two months or six months” or whatever, “and these were the actual outcomes” as opposed to “This is what the eating disorder tells me may happen.”
I think it’s really important to run the experiment, because really, action creates clarity. By taking action, you get to see what actually happens, and then with consistency, this then starts to really build confidence.
00:10:38
The next piece is to expect ambivalence and to act anyway. I think we need to really manage expectations and understand that you can want recovery and not want it at the exact same time, and that this isn’t a failure of motivation; it is completely normal. There are parts of recovery that you really probably long for, and there are parts of the eating disorder that actually keep you safe or you want to keep around because at this stage, they’re your best way of being able to cope with a particular thing.
So I think it’s important, especially at the beginning stages, to really recognise that you’re never going to feel 100% ready. If you’re waiting for that, it’s just never going to happen. You want to be ready enough. And ready enough can be “Hey, I did a couple of things you’ve already suggested in this podcast, and now let me get started.” Because I think it’s through, as I said, taking that action.
Another thing I will regularly say is that we don’t think our way into acting differently, we act our way into thinking differently. So it is through that action-taking that some of that ambivalence starts to drop away, because we’re noticing what happens when we start to take action.
00:11:49
Another one is writing a letter to your future self. Again, doing some journalling where you imagine that you’re recovered and imagining, what would that version of you say to you now? What wisdom or what encouragement would they offer you? I think it’s also helpful to do this because so often, people say, “I don’t want to be living with an eating disorder” and I say, “Do you want to have this going on in a year’s time or five years’ time?” It’s like, “Hell no. No, of course not. And yet in the moment, I’m still doing the things that are perpetuating this.”
The reality is, if you keep doing that, you will blink and then a month has gone by, and then six months have gone by, and then two years have gone by and lo and behold, here we are and we’re still in the exact same spot. So I think writing this letter from your future self, even dating that letter from your future self – like, this is two years in the future and then you can start to reverse-engineer that and say, “Okay, if that’s where I want to get to, what are the things that I need to do?”
But using that future self letter as some form of inspiration or of tapping into this different version or part of yourself.
00:13:03
The next one is curating a recovery-focused feed. It wouldn’t be just a recovery-focused feed; I often talk about you really need to create a recovery bubble that you live in. Again, this is especially important in the beginning because so many of the things that you need to do as part of recovery just run counter to everything that we’re messaged about in our society.
Doing things that are leading to weight gain, eating foods that people are considering ‘unhealthy’, stopping exercise – doing things that really fly in the face of what we hear in society, what we’re receiving in our emails or on our Instagram or whatever it may be. So it’s really important to then create this bubble to reinforce you of this helpful recovery content, of “Okay, I need to be doing this because I’m living with an eating disorder and this is actually what’s really important for me. And it doesn’t matter whatever other health advice is going on; this is actually really important.”
So find people who are creators or therapists or coaches or just voices that you really resonate in recovery. And then unfollow the people who are reinforcing the fear or the guilt or the diet culture, or even recovery people that you thought were going to be helpful and then you’re like, “Ugh, actually, I don’t like the approach they’re taking. I don’t like the way they’re talking about it.” Find what works for you and really just let your environment spark that motivation or support your motivation.
00:14:38
The next one, or the final one for this section, is really remembering that you don’t have to fully feel ready to begin. Some days, it’s just going to be that “Hey, I promised myself I was going to do this.” It’s important to then have structure that can carry you through, so you’re not relying on motivation; it’s just, “Hey, these are the things that I’m doing.”
I really want to reiterate, especially with this beginning piece, you can’t wait until you feel fully ready, because that day is not going to come.
00:15:14
The next area or section would be when someone is further along in recovery. It could be, “Hey, I’ve been doing this for a handful of weeks, a handful of months, I’ve now been doing this a year” but they’re still within somewhat of a middle stage, or the messy middle stage. It could be there are some parts that “Hey, I’m actually really far along on this, but there’s this other piece where I still feel like I’m in the thick of it with it.” Something has happened, and this has then led to you having a different motivation or you’re starting to question yourself again or there’s some doubt that’s arisen. But we’re just in this middle stage. It’s not right at the beginning, you’re not fully recovered, but we’re in this messy middle.
00:16:02
The first idea with this is just reframing the stuck feeling. I think often there can be this idea of “If I’m feeling stuck, I must be doing recovery wrong. I need to completely change direction in what I’m doing. Maybe I shouldn’t have even started this in the first place” and this idea of “If I’m feeling these feelings, it must be because something’s wrong.”
Really reframing this to be “No, that’s not accurate. Just because I’m feeling this, doesn’t mean that I’m failing. It often means that I’m integrating something. It means I’m recalibrating something. I’m doing something difficult, and these are very natural feelings and sensations and thoughts to come up as part of that.” So just reminding yourself that actually, it’s completely normal to have these kinds of moments and these kinds of days come up as part of recovery.
00:16:58
The next piece would be tracking the small victories. This would be something that you can be doing all of the time that you can then pull out in these moments. I think what often happens in these moments is it can feel like “Ugh, nothing’s actually changed. Nothing’s got better. All that’s happened is I’ve gained weight. All that’s happened is I’ve got lazy”, all of these kinds of thoughts that arise. And actually, in those moments, it can be hard to connect to what has actually changed.
So throughout recovery, keeping a little journal of what have been all the different wins, the victories, the changes, the positives that have come out of it. It can be really big stuff or it can be things that are pretty small, but having this really long list that you can then turn to and pull out can be really helpful.
So “I ate something without measuring it. I said yes to a spontaneous dinner date. I felt emotions without using the eating disorder behaviour to avoid them. I had pizza for the first time in seven years.” Write down all of these different wins, and that way you can come back to them and they can help when you’re stuck in those moments.
00:18:09
Use recovery affirmations. You can create a document of this, you can create cards that you pull out. I think you can buy cards with different affirmations on them – things like “Progress isn’t linear”, “My worth isn’t dependent on how I feel today”, “Feeling doubt doesn’t mean I’m doing it wrong.” Whatever are the things that really resonate with you, having these affirmations that you can call on, that you can remember and repeat to yourself.
Inside of the programme, in the group area, recently we came up with a whole long list of these different recovery affirmations that different people contributed to. They were like, “These are the ones that really resonate with me.” So now inside the programme, there is a whole long list of different affirmations that people have really liked.
00:18:54
The next one is reminding yourself why you started and creating a ‘why’ list and reading it daily. Again, this could be pulling out the vision writing exercise that I talked about earlier on; it could be pulling out the costs exercise and the costs of doing this, pulling out all the things that were taken from my life. So using those things. But a ‘why’ list of “Why am I doing recovery?”
You could take those other things and create it into this nice, succinct list that “I pull this out and read it every time I need to see it.” It could be “I want to feel free in my body, to laugh at dinner with friends without obsessing over the calories, to be fully present with my kids when we’re having breakfast or at the pool.” Whatever is the ‘why’ of why I’m doing this, being able to have that written somewhere so that you can pull it out in these moments.
00:19:50
The next one is name the messy middle for what it is. This is the phase where it’s supposed to feel messy. You’ve let go of the eating disorder’s illusion of control and so much of the lies that the eating disorder has told you, but you’re still working your way through, and you’re still working your way through to build trust in recovery.
For so many people, the eating disorder was their way of avoiding so many different aspects of their life, or coping with certain aspects of their life. Often, when you remove the eating disorder, we don’t remove any of those other things. We’re now still having to deal with the fact that, “Man, I was in that horrible relationship and I’m still dealing with the repercussions of that” or ”I recently found out I’m autistic, and this answers a lot of questions about certain things that happened throughout my life, and I’m still processing all of this. And I’m now having to process this without the eating disorder, which used to be my go-to way of avoiding these kinds of things.”
So I think it’s important to be able to name this messy middle for what it is, and again, to manage expectations of “This should be difficult because I’m now doing life without an eating disorder and without the benefits that that eating disorder provided for me. So no, I’m not doing anything wrong; it’s just that I’m trying to navigate my way through to find these other ways of being able to cope.”
00:21:20
The next piece would be to celebrate boring recovery. I think this can get more and more true as times goes on. Sometimes in the beginning there can be this excitement around “Yay, I get to eat these new foods” or “Yes, what a relief, I don’t have to exercise.” It’s not that there isn’t often a side helping of fear or shame or guilt or other negatives that come with that, but there can be these moments of celebration or relief or enjoyment as part of recovery. And then as it goes on, some of that can dissipate. It becomes a little more boring. “I just need to keep doing the things as part of it.”
The other piece with this is that often, what you were doing as part of the eating disorder created these real false highs with it. Like if I’m not able to stop moving until that one time in the evening, man, that one time in the evening is going to feel so much better than at any other point during the day. And if the only time I’m really allowing myself to eat this particular food or this kind of meal is these really one-offs, man, that’s going to feel so good when that thing is finally allowed.
It can mean that you’ve created these false highs and emotions and everything connected to this event that now, when you’re allowed to do that all of the time and, yes, we can have cake every day, it becomes a little bit boring, and there isn’t the chaos that can be exciting connected to that. There isn’t the emotions that are connected to that.
And that doesn’t mean that you’re doing something wrong; it doesn’t mean you don’t have motivation. It means that this is just what eating can now feel like. It’s not these huge ups and downs in terms of a rollercoaster. It’s just, “Oh, I had a meal, and then a couple hours later, I had another meal, and that’s kind of it.”
I think a mantra with this is “Boring recovery is peaceful recovery.” Just remind yourself that this is part of this process.
00:23:27
You can reconnect with recovery content and everything I said earlier about the eating disorder recovery bubble and all of that. I think as time goes on, sometimes people can feel like “Oh my gosh, I’ve listened to so many podcasts. I know exactly what the person’s going to say next. I’ve heard all of the stories. I want to do other things. I don’t want to listen to this stuff anymore.” And that’s a really fantastic sign. I want you to have other podcasts, I want you to have other interests. Wonderful.
And there can be times where “I think I need to bring some of that stuff back in. I’m having a bit more of a challenge at the moment. Let me bring some of that back in as a reminder.” So just reconnecting with some of that stuff.
00:24:07
You can make a visual progress tracker. This is something that you can do, again, all through your recovery. Get a big mason jar and fill it with stones or with beads for every one of those small wins, and then you have this lovely visual cue. So you’re waking up each day and each week and each month and you’re seeing this thing grow and grow and grow.
I think what that can then help you with is when that motivation’s not there, you’ve got this lovely visual cue of “Wow, look at everything that I’ve been able to do and the progress that I’ve been making.” This is a reminder that this isn’t hopeless, that this isn’t going nowhere. It is going somewhere. You’re just having a tough moment.
00:24:50
The next piece is anticipate doubt as part of the path. As I said earlier, it’s natural that this kind of thing is going to come up. I think really making space for those kinds of doubtful thoughts – the thought being, “What if this never gets better?” It makes total sense that your brain would generate a thought like that at some point, and then you can create some space for that and then counter it. “What if it does, and what if I keep going with this?” The only way to find out is to stay in it.
I think it’s completely normal to have those kinds of thoughts. Thoughts think themselves; you are not the author of your thoughts, you are a witness of those thoughts. They come into your awareness sand then you are aware of those thoughts. So when they come up, it doesn’t say anything about you, about how much you care about recovery, how much motivation you have right now, that this is a value of yours. It’s just, “Oh, my mind generated this thought.”
00:25:50
And then the final piece with this is letting go of the need for it to feel good all the time. Just really understand that recovery is not about feeling amazing every day. It’s about building the capacity to stay with recovery, even when it is hard. Sometimes we need to change the bar of what success looks like, and success looks like not quitting. So just reminding yourself of that.
00:26:16
The next piece would be when you’re feeling hopeless. Maybe you’ve come up against some challenges and it feels like, “Oh my gosh, this is more than I ever thought I was bargaining for. I didn’t think it would be like this” and it just feels so overwhelming, so hopeless, feels so permanent, all of those different feelings. And again, this could be in that messy middle stage I was just talking about there, or it could be where we started and feeling completely hopeless even though there hasn’t been much of a change in terms of recovery.
00:26:55
Number one with this is just naming the hopelessness for what it is without judging it. “Of course I feel hopeless. I’ve tried many times before. This thing’s been going on for years. It’s absolutely exhausting. I’m living with an eating disorder. It has an impact on my thoughts and my feelings and my memories and my perceptions and all of these things. So of course it makes sense that I’m going to have moments of feeling hopeless.”
Really recognising that “Just because I’m having this feeling, it doesn’t mean that I’m failing.” It’s often that that hopelessness is the brain’s resistance to something new. It’s its way of protecting you. You can then look at it and say, “Cool, this is how my brain is trying to protect me in this moment, and I’m going to do the next thing in terms of supporting my recovery.”
00:27:44
The next idea would be shifting from hope to curiosity. If hope feels fake and “I can’t get onboard with hope right now”, could you try curiosity? “What if it could be different? What would happen if I didn’t give up today?” Just allowing that curiosity, because I think what often happens is you’re getting all of the complete opposite of that, where your eating disorder brain is giving the curiosity connected to all of the worst-case scenarios and that’s why you’re in that place of helplessness and hopelessness. What we’re wanting to do is curiosity about the benefits and the things that could be happening.
Not that that then has to convince you in that moment that full recovery is possible and “I’m going to get there” and all that, but just allowing a willingness like “You know what? I know today’s not a good day. I’m just going to keep going with this. I don’t have to believe anything. I just need to keep going with this.”
00:28:46
The next one would be to borrow someone else’s belief. Again, this could be listening to different podcasts or reading accounts of people who’ve recovered, especially people who swore it would never happen to them, the people where this has been going on for so many decades and they’ve been told that they were a lost cause and it was never going to happen and all of these, and actually they then recovered. I think that can then help to build a bridge and to put things in perspective and hopefully to move you along a little bit.
00:29:19
Reconnect with the tiniest of reasons. I think even going really microscopic with this – again, “What are my whys?” or “What do I want to be different with this?” “To be able to feel an uncomfortable emotion and not use the eating disorder behaviours. To be able to eat a meal with my child and to actually taste the meal because I’m able to be present. To sleep through the night without waking up multiple times to pee.”
Just one little reason that becomes powerful for you, where you’re like, “Actually, that thing, I swore that I would get over this piece. This thing has been going on in my life for the last 28 years. It just can’t go on any longer” and really reconnecting back to that reason.
00:30:03
The next piece is remembering that hopelessness isn’t permanent. I think when we are really in that place, that’s where we get stuck, like “This is how it is going to be for now and forever” and really just remembering that feelings lie, that the eating disorder lies, and that you can write this out, you can say it to yourself, that “This feeling will pass” or “This, too, shall pass” – even if you don’t believe it right now.
I know for me, in my own life, when things are their most difficult, that is a phrase that I consistently come back to. “This, too, shall pass.” And there’s moments where that feels more like I believe it and there’s moments where I’m a little more doubtful, but I think it can be useful to then reflect on, “How did I feel yesterday? How did I feel last week?” Were there other times recently that you can remember where you actually felt differently about this? For a lot of people, the answer to that is “Yes, I did. Last week this wasn’t going on.” So that’s really helpful.
And then if it’s like “No, this is how it’s been for a really long time”, really reflecting on, this is likely the eating disorder that is keeping you in this place of hopelessness. I think we can misstate where this is coming from, and being able to recognise “The hopelessness I’m feeling is because of the state I’m in, and the state I’m in is because of the eating disorder. The way that I move out of hopelessness is I need to do things to actually change my physical state and my mental state by doing recovery.”
00:31:41
The next one is let it be messy, not perfect. Recovery doesn’t require believing 100% all the time. It really just asks you not to quit on yourself. I know this one’s pretty much coming up in every category, but just allowing things to be messy, allowing yourself to have certain doubts and thoughts and continue on. You can cry and eat. You can feel numb and still take the next step. Two things can be true at the same time, where you are feeling all the feelings and still making progress in your recovery and taking action.
00:32:17
The next one is return to evidence. Again, this comes back to some of the earlier things I’ve said – returning to journalling prompts, returning to whys, returning to your wins. Look at journal entries or notes from better days, reminding yourself of past wins, even if they felt small. Collecting any evidence that you can to really show you that things have shifted and that you weren’t feeling this hopelessness not that long ago. I think this gets out of the place of “I’ve got to get hope.” No, we’re actually getting evidence that this is not how it was not that long ago.
00:32:58
Then the final piece with this one is anchoring to the present, not the future. I think so often with the hopelessness is “This is permanent and this is just going to go on forever.” And so much of that thinking, people get lost in the future, people get lost in the past and how it’s always been this way and everything like that, and what is then very helpful is coming back to the present moment. To be able to come back to your breath, to be able to come back to “What do I need to do in this moment?” in terms of “I need to eat or I need to do this recovery goal” – just really coming back to the present moment.
And there’s lots of different tools that I use with clients for doing this. I think acceptance and commitment therapy as a whole is very good at this piece, and there’s lots of tools from it in terms of dropping anchor or expansion exercise or other tools that just bring you back into that present moment.
00:34:03
The next area where I think low motivation can come up is struggling with weight gain and the uncomfortableness with it. Again, this can be happening early on if someone has fairly rapid weight gain; it can be happening later on when there’s a feeling of “But I didn’t think the weight gain would still be continuing on at this point.” But I do think that changes to one’s body and gaining weight and weight going onto different areas and needing new clothes and all of these different things that happen as part of recovery, this can have a really big impact on motivation.
00:34:40
The first suggestion if this is where you find yourself is, one, just naming this, and naming that it makes sense that you’re uncomfortable. If you’ve lived with an eating disorder for years or decades, you’ve been doing things that are linked to shrinking your body, are linked to restriction, and a lot of this is then connected to safety and your identity and your self-worth, all connected to body size.
So recognising, “When my body is changing and I’m gaining weight, I’m having to deal with all of those different things. So it makes complete sense that this is uncomfortable. And this isn’t just about vanity. This is about grief and fear and loss of control and vulnerability and all of these different aspects.”
I think it’s useful to recognise that as well because I think there can then be this other part where “I feel bad about the fact that my body is changing and has changed and I’m noticing it, and then I feel bad that I feel bad”, like “Hey, I’m meant to be a feminist” or “Hey, I’m not vain. Why is this bothering me so much?” Someone almost gaslights themselves, like “I shouldn’t be feeling these feelings. I’m better than this. I’m not this kind of a person” when actually, there is a lot of grief that is connected to this thing that really has nothing to do with vanity, or vanity or aesthetics or how someone looks is a very, very small part of that.
So really being able to be compassionate with yourself and really understanding, it makes sense that this is uncomfortable.
00:36:22
I think the next piece is separating the eating disorder thoughts from your thoughts. The eating disorder brain will say things like, “you’re disgusting, you’ve ruined everything, this can’t be recovery, I shouldn’t have eaten all of this food”, those kinds of things.
The goal here is having a pause, being able to observe that these are coming up, and then being able to name this. “This is an eating disorder thought” and really being able to create that distance between yourself and your thoughts and recognising that just because you had a thought, doesn’t mean that it’s a fact, and that even if something may be true, it doesn’t necessarily mean it is helpful for you to spend time thinking about. And again, this comes back to one of the techniques from acceptance and commitment therapy, which is using defusion, and defusion is how to create distance between yourself and your thoughts.
00:37:15
The next piece is then remembering why weight gain is necessary. Weight gain isn’t this annoying thing that happens in recovery that shouldn’t be happening and serves absolutely no purpose. It’s like, no, it is really important as part of your repair. It’s important for the brain rewiring. It’s important for hormones normalizing. It’s important for your digestion to normalize. For basically every system in the body to repair properly, the body has to go through this weight gain process because that’s the way that it does repair.
So really understanding, “Hey, my body is not betraying me here; it is protecting me. This is what it is meant to do. This is how a body heals.” So really coming back to the science of “This is what is meant to happen. I haven’t done something wrong.”
00:38:06
The next piece to remember is that feelings aren’t permanent. So “Whatever I’m feeling in this moment isn’t permanent, but what I was doing with weight suppression and the restriction was permanent for as long as I was keeping it up.”
You may feel uncomfortable in this moment, but also remembering, you lived in constant fear before. I think there can be this real tendency to have these very rose-tinted glasses about what it used to be like and forgetting of “Actually, no, my days were pretty terrible. It was not enjoyable to be in that state.” And remembering, “My previous ‘comfortable’ weight was a starvation weight or state that came at a cost for my body, and actually, I wasn’t meant to be at that place. The only reason I was at that place was because of all the restriction and the exercise and all the things I had to do to be at that place.”
And realising that the discomfort you’re feeling at the moment in terms of the emotions or the feelings that are coming up, that has a purpose. There is some good that is coming out of this. Whereas the old discomfort that you were feeling, that came at a cost. So really recognising these feelings are not permanent.
00:39:27
The next piece connected to this is to zoom out from the mirror. I think what can often happen, especially when there are changes in terms of someone’s weight, is “That’s where everything goes. All of my thoughts, I’m just so consumed with how I look and what people are going to think and is everyone noticing my weight and my body” and all of these things.
You start to forget actually that your body is just one part of the picture in terms of recovery. Again, it’s worth remembering what else has been improving as part of this. What’s happened with your energy? What’s happened with your ability to connect with other people or to be the parent that you want to be? Or what’s happening in terms of joy and the joyful activities you’ve now been able to bring back into your life? What’s happened with your psychological flexibility connected to things like exercise or connected to eating or connected to not having to do certain rigid rules or patterns of behaviour? What’s happened in terms of your capacity to deal with the ups and downs of life or to deal with difficult emotions?
I know in that moment, it could feel like, “Oh, I’m not very good at dealing with any of those things, I’m not very good at dealing with my emotions”, and again, if we zoom out, we can remember “Actually, I have been much better with being able to deal with these things.” So using this bigger picture approach of “Let me not get stuck on this one thing; let me zoom out and see, if I look at recovery across the board, what has actually happened?”
00:41:07
Values is a component of the work that I do with people. Again, comes from acceptance and commitment therapy, although values comes up in lots of different modalities. Why I think values are important is they become your North Star. They can really help to anchor you in terms of the decisions that you make, and they’re good at cutting through all the noise and all the emotion and all the other stuff going on.
So really asking yourself, “What kind of life do I want to live? What are the values that I want to have when I’m living through my life?” When I’m struggling with this thing, recognising, “My values are about this thing and this thing and this thing, and actually, this doesn’t have an impact on my values. What I can do in this moment to live in alignment with my values is…” whatever it may be. So really just being able to anchor yourself to your values, not the aesthetics of your body.
The thing with this is whenever I do this values work with people, when they look at their values, how they look is not part of their values. There are lots of other things that are really important to them and what they value, and how they look is not part of their values. And it’s not that how someone looks can’t be something that someone cares about or thinks about or has an impact on them, but truly, in terms of what they value as a person and how they want to spend their time on this planet in terms of what is meaningful to them, actually, the size of their body is not that thing.
00:42:46
The next thing is to talk back to the eating disorder voice and do this out loud. I think there can be some real benefits in doing journalling and writing things down in the same way as there can be some real benefits of saying things out loud. Because I think when things just stay in your head, they have a way of ruminating and you going over them, whereas actually by getting it on paper, it changes things, and also saying it out loud changes things.
So being able to verbalize “What are all of the things that that voice is saying to me, and can I talk back to that?” Or imagining, “If I said this out loud to my sister or my daughter or my best friend, what do I notice when I actually say this thing out loud? How do I feel when I hear it out loud?” Because this is really why the saying it out loud or the writing it down helps: it changes your perspective and your connection to a lot of those.
00:43:50
The next piece is treat your body like it’s already worthy. I really think that we need to remember our goal with recovery, especially connected to the body, isn’t that you have to love how your body looks. I want someone to get there, I want them to be able to appreciate their body; it’s not going to happen for everyone. And the goal isn’t meant to be that. It’s that “Hey, I want to stop punishing my body. I want to be able to aim for body respect.”
That really is what it is about as part of recovery: How can I respect my body? How can I wear clothes that fit my body in the here and now, not wearing things that are too tight and make me feel uncomfortable? How can I move or rest in a way that feels good for my body, not like penance or punishing it? How can I feed my body in a way that it deserves to be fed because it needs nourishment? So being able to respect your body irrespective of how you think about how it looks.
00:45:02
Then the final piece that I would have with this – and this is something that comes up a lot with clients – is asking what else is going on. So often, the discomfort with weight gain or with feeling like I’m having a really bad body image day isn’t actually about the body. What often happens is that the body image becomes the answer to every question, but if we go back earlier, there are all of these other emotions that came up, or there are all these other sensations that someone felt within their body.
We need to be able to then recognise what those things were, because what happens is there was this thing that happened, and then it all gets pushed into “and this is about body image, and everything would be better if my body was smaller.” But we need to take that step back, because what happens when people do that is they recognise, “Oh, actually, I’m feeling really lonely” or “Oh man, I’m having a moment of just really wanting some control” or “My job feels really overwhelming right now. I’m working so many hours, and I just don’t know how to get it in” or “I’m having a really difficult time with the kids at the moment. One of them has been sick and then the next one got sick, and it’s just been a lot. And then I also heard that I’m going to have to put my pet down.”
What often happens when I speak to people is they’re telling me about all this bad body image, and I don’t get all of the other stuff first. I have to then ask, “Tell me what else is going on” and it’s only when they tell me that I’m like, “That sounds like a lot to be going through. It’s a lot to be having all of those things going on. I know that this is coming up in terms of bad body image, but I think what’s actually the real driver around this isn’t the size of your body. It’s that these other things are going on and that’s really uncomfortable, and at this point your brain just instantly goes to “This is about my body.”
So having that pause – you can do this as a journaling thing – of “What else is going on?” and really being able to explore this with compassion, because I think the eating disorder often gives you body image and bad body image and struggles about body as this shortcut, and what we’re wanting to find is, what is the deeper thing that is going on?
00:47:28
The final piece I want to look at, which I said was going to go through at the beginning, is: what are other things to depend on instead of motivation?
As I said, motivation is not very dependable. It comes, it goes, and often it goes for a long time. So we want to find things that are more dependable and that you do have more control over.
One, we can depend on commitment. Commitment doesn’t rely on feelings; it’s just a decision of, “Hey, I’m going to keep showing up even on my worst days. I don’t always feel like doing this, but I decided that I will. I made a commitment to myself that I’m going to do recovery for the next six months or the next year or the next two years and see what happens. I’ve been living with this thing for the last four decades; rather than say things are never going to change, let me throw myself into recovery. Let me give this thing a shot, and I’m going to commit to this length of time. And on the days where I don’t feel like doing it, it’s: Hey, I made this commitment, I’m going to see it through.”
The next piece is then accountability with compassion. This is really just holding yourself accountable to do the goals that you’ve set, but doing this with kindness. So “Hey, I’ve got these two or three goals that I’m focusing on this week, and I know the eating disorder is coming up with all the reasons why I shouldn’t do it, and today’s a really tough day and there was this thing that happened this morning and yada, yada, yada. And you know what? I’m going to still do this thing. And I’m going to treat myself kindly when I do that.”
I think often people can sometimes get into the role of “I have to be really mean to myself to then continue going forward with my goals. I have to tell myself how worthless I am and how I never keep to my promises and all of this kind of stuff, and that’s going to help keep me going in terms of my goals.” And I don’t think that’s true. I think you can be holding yourself accountable and do this in a very loving and caring way.
The next piece is to use support systems. You don’t need to be doing recovery on your own and I highly suggest that you don’t do recovery on your own. This is one of the most challenging things you’ll ever do; it’s not a solo activity. It shouldn’t be something you’re doing on your own. Have support systems in place. Rely on a therapist or a dietitian or a recovery coach or family and friends who actually get it, online or in-person community areas. Have different support networks that you are using and systems that you’re using to help you.
There’s a phrase that I’ve heard often that I think is useful. Or I don’t think I’ve heard it often; I heard it once and I repeat it often. But it’s the “I come to group on my good days so I know how to show up when I’m struggling.” I think this is a really important thing to also remember. It shouldn’t be “I’m waiting until shit is hitting the fan and a 10 out of 10 bad day before I ever think about relying on any support structure or systems.” It should be “I’m regularly doing this, and I’m sharing my good days and I’m sharing my wins and I’m also sharing my struggles”, because if you’re only trying to do that at the point where it’s most challenging, it will likely not happen because you’re not in a habit of doing it, and in those moments, your mind is not going to think about doing those things because it’s just not used to doing it.
The next piece is routine and structure. So rather than relying on motivation, it’s like, “No, I’ve got this routine and structure in place.” And I know for eating disorders, we’re trying to move away from a lot of this, so what I’m referring to here is that routine isn’t restriction. It’s really a container for recovery to take root. It’s creating a pro-recovery structure, not an eating disorder structure, so that “Hey, I know that I had my mealtimes, and I may not feel motivated, I may not feel hungry, but you know what? It’s snack time and I’m eating.” It’s having a sleep schedule. It’s having daily check-ins. It’s whatever it is that you need to build into your daily structure so that on those days that there’s low motivation, “I’m just ticking the boxes and I’m making sure I’m doing it. I don’t want to do these things, but I’m making sure that I’m doing it.”
The next piece is using self-talk and using helpful self-talk. Especially around things like “It’s okay to not feel okay”, “Just because I’m thinking something, doesn’t mean it’s true”, “This too shall pass”, stuff that I’ve already talked about. But just being conscious of “Let me be intentional with the self-talk that I’m having” and finding this very compassionate inner dialogue or inner person that you can then be coming back to.
This, again, is an exercise that I work on with people, where they come up with this compassionate inner person that we can name, that we write a job application for so we know all of the different characteristics that that voice would have, so that in those times, we can then pull on that and we can be intentional about “How would that person be speaking to me in this moment?”
Understanding the science. I know I talked about this in terms of the weight gain piece, but this is true in terms of recovery more generally and having that understanding of it takes time for your brain to neurally rewire, and it can resist a lot of the change to start with, and fear and anxiety increase when you’re making changes. So it’s a perfectly normal thing to have happen. Weight gain and mental discomfort, these are normal parts of healing.
So just understanding that this discomfort is a biological part of recovery, and this can then help you to anchor in more logic rather than getting overwhelmed by the eating disorder thoughts or by emotion.
The next piece is values, which I’ve already talked about, really using values to come back to so that you’re not relying on motivation. You’re able to say, “Hey, my value is integrity; I have my definition of what that value means. How would a person with integrity show up in this moment?”
The next one is a future self visualization and thinking, “What would my fully recovered self want to do right now?” Again, we’ve already talked about this in some ways, but really shifting the focus from what is comfortable in the moment to what is aligned with long-term healing. I think it can be easy to just want it to be easy and want it to be comfortable, and I wish it was, but so often that’s just not the case in recovery.
So looking at, “What would my future self have wanted me to have done in this moment today?”
The next one is hope that you borrow or build or reconstruct. Again, listening to different podcasts that people have done about their recovery, going back through your small wins, noticing what’s already changed. I’ve talked about this before, but I think that’s really helpful.
You can use momentum to help when there is low motivation. And what I mean by momentum is recognising, “I have done this for X amount of time and I don’t want to break that streak. It’s now been three weeks and I’ve had breakfast every single day, and I want to keep doing that.” And recognising that “When I go back to the eating disorder, it very quickly becomes the new norm. So even though it feels like breakfast is pretty good right now, if I have two days of missing breakfast, I can somewhat feel like I’m starting all over again.” And that’s not necessarily the case, but “Hey, let me keep this streak going. Let me keep the momentum up.”
The next piece is curiosity, which again, I’ve talked about already. Using curiosity. I so often use the idea of running the experiment with clients, like “Let’s run this experiment and see what happens. Let’s do this over the next two weeks and see what you notice.” Just bringing that back in, because typically when there’s low motivation, I bet when people reflect or when you reflect, “Actually, I’m not being particularly curious in this moment. I’m getting stuck in the eating disorder thoughts.” So let’s bring some of that curiosity back in. Changing not just the thinking around curiosity but the action-taking around curiosity so that this isn’t just a thought experiment but “Hey, I’m curious about what will happen when I do this. Let me do it and then see.”
The next piece is emotional tolerance. Coming back to, instead of needing to feel better or good all of the time, looking at, “How can I learn to feel difficult feelings, feel difficult sensations, and actually be okay with that?” Because eating disorders are anxiety disorders; anxiety disorders are all about avoidance, and that’s what the eating disorder is. It’s just avoiding certain thoughts and feelings and sensations and events and all of these things.
So really, if we’re wanting to recover, coming back to “Hey, I need to be developing emotional tolerance. It’s really important for me to have days that are challenging and see that I can get through it. I don’t need to make them any more challenging than they need to be. Life’s going to provide enough of those already.” But when this happens, not see it as “Oh, I must be failing” but see it as “Okay, cool, this is a good opportunity for me to practise some things.”
To be able to have the discomfort arise in you, to be able to breathe through it or be with it or journal through it or whatever it is, and recognise that that emotion passes, even if it is really intense. I think this is an important thing, again: when you’re constantly avoiding, whether that’s “I’m avoiding this thing even before it happens” or “I’m avoiding this thing; as soon as it comes up I have to do a behaviour to try and distract myself”, you don’t get to see that this thing rises and falls of its own accord. I think that’s a really important thing to be able to learn. And again, you only learn that by being able to be in it and experience it and not doing things to avoid it.
The next one is cognitive defusion, so using things from acceptance and commitment therapy. Using defusion, so “I’m noticing my mind is generating the thought” or “I’m noticing my mind is generating this story.” There are lots of different ways of doing defusion. Again, I talk about this in the free programme that I have, so if you want to get access to that, you can go to the link in the show notes.
The next one is refusal to go back. I think this can be somewhat similar to commitment and to saying “Hey, I’ve committed to this amount of time”, but just recognising, “Hey, I don’t know where this is going, but I refuse to go back to what I was doing before.” This can feel scary, it can feel uncomfortable, but “I’m making a decision that I am never going back to doing the eating disorder. I’m never going back to intentionally doing those things.”
So that alone can then help you say, “What do I need to do? I don’t have to feel motivated, but I know what I’m not doing, so what else can I actually start to do?”
You can make agreements. I know I talked about a commitment, but you can make other mini agreements with yourself. So, “I made the agreement that I’m not going to weigh anymore. That’s never going to happen. Maybe I actually get the scale out of the house. That could be the food scale, that could be the body scale, but I’m getting that out of the house.” Or it could be “We are doing three meals a day, no matter what. It doesn’t matter how busy I get, doesn’t matter what’s going on with the kids, that is happening every single day.”
It could be an agreement of “I’m going to tell someone when I’m struggling. I know I have a tendency when I’m struggling to isolate and go inwards, and I’m not going to do that anymore. I’m going to tell someone any time I’m struggling.”
I think those agreements and having those set out in advance is really important, because I think if you don’t have them in advance, you’re not going to think of them in the moment, especially when you’ve got low motivation. But having them in advance and being able to pull them out on those difficult days.
It can be starting to ask yourself, “Who am I becoming through this process? Who do I want to become through this process?” and really building this identity for yourself. I think so often, people talk about “I’m losing my identity and I don’t know who I am without the eating disorder.” Starting to build this.
I think a big part of our identity is built by the things we do. Someone could say, “I have my identity a lot around music” and it’s probably because they’re going to gigs or they spend a lot of time listening to music or they collect albums or whatever it is. There’s behaviours that happen that make someone then take on that identity.
I think this is so true with both the eating disorder but also with recovery, too. You build in your identity through your actions and how you spend your time, and you can be explicit about this in terms of “Where do I want to go with this? What do I want my identity to be?”, kind of in the same way as the values, and then saying, “Okay, cool, if I want that to be my identity, what do I need to do in this moment?” And again, having this built out in advance so that you can then come back to this during those moments of challenge.
Then the final one that I want to mention is really deciding that you deserve a better life and you deserve a full life and a life without an eating disorder. I think this can be really one of the deepest anchors, where it’s like “Even if I feel unworthy in this moment, I’m allowed to heal. I’m allowed to do my recovery actions. Even if I feel scared, I’m going to choose to live. I’m going to choose to do the things that allow me to do that.”
I don’t think you need motivation in those moments. You just need to believe or just decide or act as if your life matters more than it does staying in the eating disorder.
01:02:25
This was a lot longer than I anticipated it would be. I had a lot of notes that I wanted to get through. But yeah, those are all of the different ways – and this is a non-exhaustive list. There’s probably lots of stuff that I’ve forgotten. But these are ways of dealing with low motivation. If you find yourself in any of those spots, go through this, listen to this again, do some notes while you go through it, pull out the transcript. But yeah, I think these are really important things that you can do and will support your recovery.
Because the reality is, at some point in your recovery, there’s going to be low motivation. It’s a given. So having ways of being able to deal with that when the inevitable happens.
So that is it for this week’s episode. As I mentioned at the top, I’m currently taking on new clients. If you want help in your recovery, you want to reach that place of full recovery, I would love to support you in that. Send an email to info@seven-health.com, and just put ‘coaching’ in the subject line and then I can get the details over to you.
Alright, until next week, I will catch you then. Take care, and I will see you soon!
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