Boredom = overanalysis = relapse = frustration

I am new to the board and have had an eating disorder (restricting calories and obsessive exercise) since December 2007. I finally sought professional treatment in February of this year and have been having a few up's and down's since.

I a a 5ft 8.5inch female and currently weigh 112lbs. I am aiming to get to 120lbs which is close to the heaviest I have been ever (i.e. when I was healthly 3 or so years ago). The lowest I got to was 106lbs.

Does anyone else find the problem that when they get some 'down time' whether it be from study or work and just the general business of life their mind starts to revert back to old ways and start to overanalyse things i.e. how much you have eaten, the fact you haven't exercised etc? I have recently had a quiet patch of a few weeks at work and this has been the main cause of a relapse for me. I have been back to my dietician and she has put me back on a meal plan but I am struggling a bit with this - I have a positive day then a bad day as we all do!

I have not managed to put any weight on in the last few weeks but expect that's because I just need to try harder to stick to my meal plan.... sometimes we just need people to reinforce this or give us the 'permission' though - do you know what I mean?

The other issue I am struggling with - maybe more than the eating part - is the lack of exercise I am doing... that, coupled with the fact that my boyfriend has been advised to exercise more as he needs to lose weight is creating a lot of anxiety for me at the moment.... Does anyone have any tips on this - any advice for me???

I have tried pilates and yoga but don't find it is a good enough stress release for me. As such I am trying to limit my cardio to 2 x 30min runs per week but as soon as I get time on my hands and a bit bored I really want to push this....

Any words of wisdom, encouragement, motivation would be appreciated!!!

Tessa thats really reassuring what you said way above about cutting out the exercising and your weight.  When you managed to relax and stop exercising did your weight not change at all?

Im still struggling with that side of things, I feel that I must be active nad exercise, its more a chore every day and the more I do it the more I feel I need to the next.

Tessa thanks so much for being so honest and sharing with me. I think it helps to hear how others are coping to find out if we can use similar strategies ourselves. I find it really helps me to spend time with my mum as she is definitely my 'sanity check' and she offers excellent logic and encouragement and tells me things 'like they are' when I need to hear them and that helps me a lot. The only problem is that I don't live with or near my parents so only see them maybe once a month but phone calls and e-mails are good too. I have honestly thought about taking a few days off work to just spend with my mum to try to re-motivate or progress the recovery process but unfortunately I cannot do that due to work commitments at the moment.

Thanks also for the info re: exercise and it does make sense how you explained it. It is essential i think for us to cut back on exericse and let our bodies dictate what they need to eat to be healthy to just survive then reintroduce exercise later when we are in tune with the 'bare minimum' food intake and the make sure we add on extra due to doing exericise.

Betty1302 I can sympathise... as you can tell I am still struggling with the exercise thing and am really trying to find something else to distract me... I have recently gotten a keyboard as i used to learn piano when i was younger so am trying to play that a bit but somehow it just doesn't give me the same feeling as exercise... Stick it out though - once we all start to relax on the need and pressure to exercise the sooner recovery will come...