Mental Hunger in ED Recovery

It's time for some real talk...

Mental hunger fucking sucks.

⏰ Constantly planning what you're going to eat is exhausting.

🧐 Not being able to concentrate due to thinking about food is frustrating.

🌪️ Dealing with insomnia due to being sucked into a whirlwind of endless food thoughts, well, SUCKS!

Yet even though you know this, you still choose mental hunger over full recovery.

Why?

Because it's safe. It's what you know. And ultimately, what you know is what you trust.

To quote my book How to Beat Extreme Hunger:

Just as darkness is the absence of light, fear is simply the absence of knowledge. I feared my mental hunger would never go away because I had never provided my brain with evidence that a life without mental hunger was possible. I feared endless weight gain because I’d never given my body the opportunity to eat unrestricted and settle at a healthy weight. I feared I was the “magical unicorn” for whom recovery wasn’t possible because I’d never experienced life while being fully recovered.

When I was still debating whether or not to confront the void and trust my body's mental hunger, a little friend named Fear would always convince me to play it safe.

🗣️ Mental hunger is too unpredictable, let's not go there.

🗣️ What if you let yourself go and lose control around food? What are you going to do then?

🗣️ Your body is probably just different. Full recovery isn't going to work for you!

Do you have a voice that's similar?

Well that voice just goes to show how not of an anomaly you truly are.

The voice that tells you to play it safe, to survive in the shadows, to distract yourself from mental hunger because you're the magical unicorn 🦄 is the voice we all have.

There's no getting rid of fear – it's what saved our ancestors, after all! – but there is a way to tame it.

You can only tame the fear when you give it a reason to be quiet.

By continuously giving in to the fear – AKA, honoring the eating disorder's demands – you're reinforcing fear to take the upper hand. 

Where your attention goes, energy flows.

As long as you attend to the fear, it will continue to receive energy to influence you and your decisions.

And aren't you tired of being a slave to fear?

"But I don't know how to recover!"

Well of course you don't know how to recover – you've never done it before!

The only way to find out how to live better – which ultimately equates to gaining knowledge of a better life – is to take the leap and surrender to the journey.

While only YOU can do the work required to achieve your unique version of a free life, you most certainly don't have to do it alone.

My newest book How to Beat Extreme Hunger guides you step-by-step to understanding your body and its cues so you can live a life that's free from feeling triggered, guilty, and food obsessed.

Grab your copy of either the paperback, eBook, or audiobook HERE!