A common dynamic I’ve noticed in the eating disorder recovery world is this idea that if you want to eat a nutritious diet and be physically fit you are clearly disordered in your food/exercise approach.
There is a fine line (that looks different for everyone) when it comes to what is disordered or not in someone’s food/exercise approach.
Just because you care about nutritious eating and being physically fit does NOT mean this is inherently problematic!
(In other words, how you are relating to nutritious food and exercise may be disordered right now, but it doesn’t have to be that way).
I find that dietitians and other eating disorder professionals who approach their work with clients in such a black-and-white way tend to turn off and lose trust with a lot of clients who genuinely care about these things, even if they are struggling and experiencing health and fitness in a disordered way at the current moment. This can manifest from everything from direct interactions with clients (“you are disordered for wanting to eat/be healthy” vibes) to marketing (i.e., always showing photos of eating disorder dietitians eating cupcakes, as if anything else would be “disordered.”)
Maybe you are someone who truly does enjoy training for races and going to the gym, but these activities have become overly obsessive and disordered in how you are engaging with them. That does not mean that these activities are inherently bad, need to be “off-limits” for forever, or that you can’t engage with them in a genuinely healthy way in the future.
