In the early stages of eating disorder recovery, clear boundaries can be incredibly important.
When everything feels confusing and the eating disorder has become a dominant voice in your life, having a clear yes or no can offer something solid to hold onto. This might mean taking a break from exercise, eating six times a day according to your meal plan, avoiding weighing yourself and body checking, not compensating for food, not skipping meals, not counting calories, eating with support rather than alone, or learning not to negotiate with the meal plan when anxiety arises.
These boundaries aren't intended to punish you or take away your autonomy. They're there to create enough structure for you to begin doing something the eating disorder has made incredibly difficult: feeding your body consistently, loosening the grip of control, learning to trust the recovery process, and allowing your mind and body to heal. Eating disorder treatment guidelines emphasise nutritional rehabilitation and addressing behaviours that maintain the disorder.
Exercise, in particular, needs to be assessed individually, taking into account factors such as nutritional intake, energy expenditure, bone health and cardiac function. When someone is medically ready to return to exercise, ideally decided together with their treatment team, the focus can shift towards physical fitness and enjoyment rather than calorie expenditure.
There is therefore a period in recovery when structure isn't the enemy of intuition; it can be what makes intuition possible again. When the eating disorder is shouting, it can be incredibly difficult to hear your body's quieter signals, and consistent nourishment and support can help create the conditions in which those signals become easier to recognise.
But as recovery progresses, something interesting can happen. You're eating more consistently, your body is becoming more nourished, you're moving away from the behaviours that once consumed so much of your mental energy, and you may be becoming medically more stable. Yet you can arrive at a strange place where the rules that once helped protect you begin to feel restrictive in their own right.
You might find yourself wondering whether you're allowed to want to exercise because you genuinely enjoy it, eat something simply because it sounds delicious rather than because it's on your meal plan, leave food when you're genuinely full, eat more when you're hungry, care about getting stronger, want to feel comfortable in your body, or simply have preferences of your own.
And this can be surprisingly difficult, because you've spent so long learning to identify disordered behaviours that you become frightened of accidentally slipping back into them. You might start monitoring yourself almost as carefully as you once monitored your food, asking whether you exercised for the wrong reasons, whether you chose a meal because you genuinely wanted it or because it was considered healthy, whether you're eating intuitively or secretly restricting, whether wanting to feel fit is just another diet-culture thought, or whether a particular behaviour is normal or a sign that your eating disorder is returning.
Without realising it, you can begin applying the same vigilance and scrutiny to your recovery that you once applied to your illness. And suddenly, recovery has acquired another set of rules. Only now, those rules are about proving how recovered you're supposed to be.
Intuitive eating isn't the same thing as doing whatever you feel like
I think this distinction is really important. When people hear the phrase intuitive eating, they sometimes imagine that recovery means throwing away every structure and simply eating whatever you want whenever you want.
But intuition is not the same as impulse. And freedom is not the same as absence of structure.
Your body has signals. Your mind has habits. Your nervous system has protective responses. Your culture has messages. Your eating disorder has learned patterns.
All of these things can coexist. So learning to listen to your body doesn't mean automatically obeying every thought or urge that appears. It means becoming increasingly curious about where the signal is coming from.
Research on intuitive eating generally describes it as an approach that emphasises responding to physiological hunger and satiety cues, while also reducing rigid rules and allowing food choices based on preference and enjoyment. Reviews of intuitive-eating interventions have found improvements in intuitive-eating measures and a range of psychological outcomes, although the evidence base is still developing and intuitive eating should not be treated as a universal stand-alone treatment for an eating disorder. (PubMed)
This distinction becomes particularly important in recovery. Because sometimes the most intuitive thing you can do is eat according to a structure when your body signals are unreliable. And sometimes, later in recovery, the most intuitive thing you can do is eat outside that structure. Those aren't contradictions. They're different responses to different circumstances.
So, this can understandably feel confusing. The eating disorder has, for so long, operated in all-or-nothing thinking. So to learn how to be in paradox or ambiguity feels threatening and uncertain. But I honestly believe that healing one's relationship with uncertainty can form a fundamental part of sustained recovery.
There is a difference between structure and rigidity
Imagine someone in early recovery who has been told to eat every three hours. At first, they may not feel hungry. They might even feel completely disconnected from hunger.
If they waited until they felt hungry before eating, they could end up going many hours without enough nourishment. So the structure becomes a bridge.
It is time to eat, therefore I eat. Not because hunger has spoken but because the body needs consistent nourishment while it relearns how to communicate.
Over time, something may change. Hunger becomes more noticeable. Meals become less frightening. The person becomes more comfortable responding to appetite. There is more flexibility.
And eventually the question might become: Can I begin experimenting with what it feels like to respond to my body within this safe foundation?
This is one of the reasons I think recovery can be understood as a movement from externally supported regulation toward increasingly internalised trust. Not a sudden leap from rules to complete freedom. More like learning to ride a bicycle with training wheels, then gradually taking them away.
The training wheels weren't the problem. They were part of how you learned.
And movement can be particularly complicated
Exercise is a beautiful example of this. For someone whose eating disorder involved compulsive exercise, exercise may initially need to stop. That can be frightening in itself.
There can be grief or fear about what will happen to the body. There can be anxiety about losing fitness or strange feelings around not knowing who you are without the activity. And then, eventually, movement may become part of recovery again.
But now there is a new question:
How do I know when movement is movement, and when movement is the eating disorder wearing activewear?
The answer isn't simply how many times a week you exercise. Because two people can do exactly the same workout for completely different reasons.
One person might go for a run because they love running. Another might go for the same run because they ate dessert and feel they need to compensate.
From the outside, the behaviour looks identical. Inside, the experience is completely different.
This is why the motivation, flexibility and consequences surrounding exercise matter so much.
Clinicians who work with compulsive exercise often describe features such as rigidity, exercising despite injury or illness, distress when unable to exercise, and exercise being driven by guilt or a perceived need to compensate. At the same time, many also emphasise that, for people who are medically stable and progressing in recovery, a healthy relationship with movement can often be rebuilt over time, rather than treating exercise cessation as the permanent endpoint.
So perhaps the question isn't: "Am I exercising?" It is: "What is my relationship with movement?"
You can ask the same question about food
Consider something like choosing a salad. A salad isn't inherently disordered. Choosing nutritious food isn't inherently disordered. Wanting to feel physically well isn't inherently disordered. Wanting to build strength isn't inherently disordered. Going to the gym isn't inherently disordered. Wanting to enjoy running isn't inherently disordered.
Avoiding a food because you genuinely dislike the taste isn't inherently disordered.
The problem arises when we begin reducing an entire behaviour to a category rather than becoming curious about the relationship surrounding it.
A person can eat a highly nutritious diet with tremendous flexibility and pleasure. Another person can eat the exact same foods with an extraordinary amount of fear, rigidity and self-surveillance.
From the outside, the meals may look identical. Internally, they are worlds apart.
This is why I think recovery requires learning to distinguish between the behaviour and the function of the behaviour.
The function is often where the information is
Instead of immediately asking yourself, "Is this eating disordered?" you might find it more helpful to begin by exploring, "What is this behaviour doing for me?"
If you're exercising, for example, are you doing it because it helps you feel connected to your body, because you genuinely enjoy it, or because you feel compelled to complete a certain amount of movement to manage anxiety or feel okay about yourself? Would you be able to take a rest day, change your workout because your body needs something different, or allow yourself to stop when you're tired? What happens emotionally if you can't exercise, and are you allowing food and rest to support the movement you're doing?
Similarly, when you're choosing food, are you selecting something because you enjoy it, because it makes you feel physically good, because it's convenient, or because you're genuinely hungry? Or do you notice yourself automatically reaching for the "better" option because of what you believe you should eat?
There isn't necessarily a right or wrong answer to every one of these questions, and the intention isn't to scrutinise every decision you make. It's to become more aware of the motivations, fears and needs that might be influencing your choices, without immediately judging yourself for what you discover. And perhaps one of the most revealing questions you can begin to explore is this: What happens if I don't do what I had planned?
Do you feel disappointed but remain able to adapt, or does the change bring up intense anxiety, guilt, shame or an overwhelming need to compensate? Sometimes, the emotional response to changing a behaviour can tell you far more about the role it plays in your life than the behaviour itself.
Flexibility is one of the most useful recovery skills
Imagine you've planned to exercise, but you wake up feeling tired and your body feels heavy. Your mind immediately reminds you, "You said you were going to train."
A rigid relationship with exercise might insist that the plan must be followed, regardless of how you feel, while a fearful relationship with recovery might tell you that you're not allowed to exercise because exercise itself is dangerous. But a more integrated relationship creates space for a different response: "Let me check in. What does my body need today?"
Perhaps the answer is movement, but at a gentler intensity than you had planned. Perhaps it's a walk instead of a training session, strength work instead of running, or simply allowing yourself to rest. And perhaps, once you've checked in, you genuinely feel energised and want to train as planned.
The important part isn't which answer you arrive at, but whether you're able to make that decision with flexibility rather than fear, guilt or obligation. Recovery doesn't mean always choosing rest, just as it doesn't mean always pushing through. It means gradually learning to distinguish between what you genuinely want or need and what you feel compelled to do to manage anxiety, change your body or quiet the eating disorder.
Instead of treating your body as something that must obey a set of rules, you're learning to include it in the conversation. That is what flexibility begins to look like: not always making the same choice, but having the freedom to choose differently.
But how do you know when you're sliding?
This is where things become more nuanced, because diet culture has become so normalised that behaviours which might be warning signs can look completely ordinary from the outside. Everyone seems to have a food rule, a body goal or a particular way they feel they should be eating and exercising, which can make it difficult to recognise when something has shifted for you.
Rather than focusing solely on whether a behaviour looks "normal" or is socially acceptable, I would pay closer attention to what happens to your freedom around it.
Can you change the plan when circumstances change? Can you enjoy a spontaneous meal, go to dinner without knowing the menu, or eat something simply because you want it? Can you rest when you're tired, miss a workout without feeling compelled to compensate, or take a different route without anxiety about disrupting your routine? Can you eat more when you're hungry, or eat less when you're genuinely full, without either experience becoming another rigid rule to follow? Can you enjoy movement for how it feels rather than needing it to alter your body? And can you experience a change in your body without immediately feeling that you need to correct it?
These questions can tell you a great deal about the role food, exercise and body image are playing in your life, because the concern isn't necessarily the behaviour itself, but the degree to which it has become inflexible, fear-driven or necessary for you to feel okay. Something can look entirely ordinary from the outside while quietly taking up more and more space in your inner world.
Recovery, then, isn't simply about identifying which behaviours are acceptable and which aren't; it's also about recognising where your choices have narrowed and beginning to reclaim the flexibility to live differently.
A warning sign isn't always the behaviour. Sometimes it's the loss of choice.
This is perhaps one of the most useful distinctions I would want someone in recovery to take away. There are many perfectly ordinary things that can become problematic when they stop being choices.
- Planning meals isn't automatically disordered. But if you cannot tolerate eating something different, it may be worth paying attention.
- Exercise isn't automatically disordered. But if you feel compelled to exercise despite illness, injury, exhaustion or inadequate nourishment, that's important information.
- Eating nutritious food isn't automatically disordered. But if your food choices become increasingly narrow because of fear, rules or moral judgement, that's worth exploring.
- Wanting to feel strong isn't automatically disordered. But if strength becomes another reason you cannot rest, eat enough or accept changes in your body, something may have shifted.
- Body awareness isn't automatically body checking. But if "checking in with my body" gradually becomes repeatedly looking, pinching, measuring, comparing or assessing whether your body has changed, the function has changed.
The question becomes:
Am I using this behaviour, or is the behaviour using me?
Your body may also give you information before your mind does
This is where embodied work can become incredibly useful.
Interoception - our capacity to sense and interpret internal bodily signals - is relevant to eating disorder recovery. A large systematic review found associations between altered interoception and disordered eating across different eating-disorder presentations, and research suggests that interoceptive difficulties can persist even in people who have otherwise recovered. More recent reviews of interoceptive interventions are promising, particularly around body awareness and emotional regulation, although researchers emphasise that the evidence is still developing. (PubMed)
This means that "just listen to your body" can actually be quite an unhelpful instruction for someone whose relationship with their body has been disrupted.
You may need to relearn the language first. And that doesn't necessarily mean immediately asking: Am I hungry? Am I full? Those can be very difficult questions. You can begin somewhere more neutral.
A different way of checking in with your body
Before eating, exercising or making a decision about your body, pause for a moment and, rather than immediately asking yourself what you should do, begin by noticing what you are aware of. Maybe your stomach feels empty, your mouth is watering, you're tired, or your shoulders are tense.
Maybe there is absolutely nothing obvious. That's okay. You are not trying to pass an interoception test or prove that you can accurately interpret every signal your body sends you. You're simply practising noticing, without needing to make sense of everything straight away.
From there, you might ask yourself, "If I didn't have to make the perfect decision, what would I be curious to explore?" That word, curious, can be incredibly useful in recovery because it invites a different relationship with uncertainty.
Control says, "I need to know the right answer." Curiosity says, "I wonder what happens if I listen." Rather than demanding certainty from yourself, you're creating space to explore your body's signals, your needs and your experiences with a little more openness and a little less judgement.
Try practising "body before rule"
This doesn't mean abandoning your recovery structure. It means beginning to notice the body alongside the structure.
For example:
"It's time for my snack. Before I eat, I'm going to spend ten seconds noticing what I feel."
Not:
"I won't eat unless I'm hungry."
You're simply gathering information.
Or:
"I've planned to exercise. Before I start, I'm going to pause and notice how my body feels, what my energy is like, and whether there is any fear or compulsion around doing it."
Again, not:
"I'll only exercise if my body gives me permission."
You are developing a relationship. And relationships take time.
There is another kind of body awareness that I think is especially important
Pleasure. Recovery can become very focused on avoiding danger: not restricting, not compensating, not exercising compulsively, not body checking, not weighing yourself, not comparing, and not engaging in diet culture. All of these may be important boundaries, particularly when you're learning to recognise and interrupt patterns that have kept you stuck. But eventually, recovery needs to become about more than avoiding what is harmful. It needs to become about discovering what feels meaningful, enjoyable and alive for you.
What food actually tastes wonderful to you? What movement makes you feel playful, rather than as though you're trying to earn something or change your body? What helps you feel connected to your body rather than critical of it? What meals leave you feeling nourished and satisfied? What clothes make you feel comfortable and at ease? What does your body enjoy doing when nobody is watching, measuring or evaluating it?
These questions invite you to build a relationship with your body that isn't organised around its appearance, performance or perceived shortcomings, but around the experience of living in it.
There is a difference between being free from the eating disorder and becoming free within your body. The first involves loosening the behaviours and beliefs that have kept you trapped; the second involves discovering that your life can hold pleasure, spontaneity, connection and enjoyment without everything having to be filtered through the eating disorder. The second kind of freedom often takes longer, because it isn't just about unlearning old patterns. It's about discovering what you want your life to feel like when those patterns no longer define it.
And this is where challenging yourself becomes important
There can be a tendency in recovery to wait until you feel completely ready before challenging a fear. But if you wait until the feared thing no longer feels uncomfortable, you may wait a very long time.
The question isn't necessarily: "Am I comfortable enough to challenge this?" It might be: "Am I sufficiently supported and stable to explore this safely?"
That's an important distinction.
Some challenges should happen with an eating-disorder-informed treatment team, dietitian, therapist or physician - particularly when there are concerns about medical stability, significant restriction, purging, compulsive exercise, rapid weight change, bone health, menstrual disruption, fainting, cardiac symptoms or other signs of inadequate energy availability.
The 2023 IOC consensus on Relative Energy Deficiency in Sport also emphasises that problematic low energy availability can affect multiple body systems, including reproductive, bone, immune, cardiovascular and metabolic health, and that treatment involves restoring adequate energy availability rather than simply managing exercise in isolation. (British Journal of Sports Medicine)
So this isn't a case of: "If you're scared, push through it." It's more: "If your clinical foundation is strong enough, fear can become something we gently explore rather than something that automatically gets to decide."
What might a challenge actually look like?
It doesn't always have to be dramatic. Perhaps you've always eaten breakfast at exactly 7:30, and part of your recovery might involve gradually allowing breakfast to happen within a broader window, rather than feeling bound to a specific time.
Perhaps you've always needed to know the exact calorie content of something, and a gentle challenge might be eating it without looking. Maybe you've felt compelled to complete a certain amount of exercise, in which case taking a rest day and noticing what arises internally could become an opportunity for something new.
Or perhaps you've always avoided eating before exercise because you were afraid of feeling heavy, and a supported challenge might involve learning to fuel your body appropriately while discovering that the sensations you fear can be tolerated. Even something as simple as choosing the food you genuinely want from a menu, rather than automatically selecting the "healthiest" option, can become an opportunity to practise doing things differently.
The purpose isn't to prove that the eating disorder is wrong or to force yourself into situations that feel overwhelming. It's about creating opportunities for your nervous system to have a new experience: "I can do something differently, feel something uncomfortable, and remain okay." Over time, these small experiences can help loosen the grip of rigid rules and create more space for flexibility, choice and trust in yourself.
And then there are the challenges nobody else may recognise
This is perhaps one of the most important parts to understand, because you can look completely "normal" from the outside while struggling internally. You might be eating three meals a day, exercising, having dessert occasionally, avoiding the scales and appearing relatively relaxed around food, yet beneath the surface, your world might be becoming increasingly preoccupied with the very things you're trying to recover from.
You might be quietly choosing lower-calorie options, adding extra steps, thinking about food throughout the day, compensating in ways nobody knows about, or feeling anxious whenever plans change. Perhaps you're gradually eliminating certain foods, negotiating with yourself about portions, exercising because you feel guilty rather than because you genuinely want to, becoming increasingly afraid of weight gain, checking your body more often or finding it difficult to allow yourself to rest. These patterns can be easy to overlook, particularly when the behaviours themselves are culturally normalised or when the people around you have no idea how much mental energy they require.
This is why recovery cannot be measured purely by whether your behaviour looks "normal." The internal experience matters. A behaviour that is widely accepted in our culture can still be unhealthy for you if it is becoming increasingly rigid, compulsive, fear-driven or consuming. And the opposite is also true: a behaviour that looks unusual to someone else isn't necessarily disordered.
Someone in recovery might need to eat more than the people around them because their body requires additional nourishment. They might need more rest, regular snacks, temporary distance from certain triggering environments, or the structure of a meal plan while others appear to eat intuitively. None of these things makes them less recovered. In fact, they may be important parts of what recovery requires at that particular stage.
The goal isn't to make your recovery look indistinguishable from everyone else's life, nor is it to prove that you can do everything without support. It's to recognise what you need, respond to those needs without unnecessary shame, and gradually build a life in which food, exercise and your body occupy less of your mental and emotional space.
Recovery isn't about appearing normal. It's about becoming more free.
A useful question: Is my world getting bigger or smaller?
One of the simplest ways to recognise where you might be heading in recovery is to notice whether your world is getting bigger or smaller. As you move towards recovery, you will often find that more foods become possible, more social situations feel manageable, and more flexibility becomes available to you. Movement might begin to feel enjoyable rather than compulsory, rest might become more tolerable, and you might find yourself becoming more accepting of a wider range of body shapes and sizes. There may be more room for spontaneity, more willingness to change your plans, and more space for the parts of your identity that have nothing to do with food, exercise or appearance.
Gradually, your life begins to open up beyond the boundaries the eating disorder created. When the eating disorder starts regaining ground, however, you might notice the opposite happening. The list of rules gets longer, the rules themselves become more specific, and the exceptions that once felt possible begin to disappear. Your anxiety grows louder, your food choices become narrower, exercise becomes less flexible, and rest becomes increasingly difficult to tolerate. Your body occupies more of your attention, and your day begins to organise itself around food, movement or appearance again.
You might start withdrawing from social situations, planning your life around what feels safe, or spending more time negotiating with yourself about decisions that once felt relatively straightforward. And often, you may notice your world beginning to shrink before anyone else does. That awareness is valuable information. It isn't a reason to panic, punish yourself or conclude that you've failed at recovery. It's an opportunity to become curious about what has changed, recognise where you might need additional support, and respond before those patterns become more entrenched.
Recovery isn't always a straight line, and noticing old patterns resurfacing doesn't erase the progress you've made. Sometimes, recognising that your world is getting smaller is precisely what helps you begin making it bigger again.
Perhaps the goal isn't intuition. Perhaps it's relationship.
I sometimes think we place a lot of pressure on the word intuitive, as though one day we'll wake up and suddenly know exactly what our body wants, when it wants it, how much it wants, and why. But real bodies aren't always that simple, and neither are we.
You can be hungry because you haven't eaten enough, want food because it tastes wonderful, or find yourself reaching for something comforting because you're having a difficult day. You can be physically full and still want dessert because you enjoy it. You can be tired and still want to move, physically capable of exercising but emotionally not want to, or genuinely want to build strength while also needing rest. Human beings are complicated, and our needs don't always fit neatly into categories.
So perhaps the goal isn't to become perfectly intuitive, or to reach a point where every decision feels effortless and every bodily signal makes complete sense. Perhaps the goal is to develop a relationship with your body in which you're willing to listen, willing to respond, willing to question old rules, willing to tolerate uncertainty, and willing to seek support when you're struggling to understand what is happening.
Sometimes the most appropriate response to your body's needs is to follow a meal plan, particularly when you're rebuilding nourishment and consistency in recovery. Sometimes it's to eat the food you genuinely want, even when it doesn't fit the rules you've learned. Sometimes it's to rest, sometimes it's to move, sometimes it's to challenge a fear, and sometimes it's to pause a challenge because you need more support before taking that next step. None of these choices automatically makes you more or less intuitive than another. What matters is learning to respond to your needs within the context of your physical health, emotional experience and stage of recovery, rather than allowing fear or rigid rules to make every decision for you.
Intuition isn't the absence of guidance. It's a growing capacity to participate in the conversation with your body, even when you don't yet know all the answers.
The Grounded way back to trust
Perhaps this is ultimately what recovery asks of us. In the beginning, we often need to borrow structure from outside ourselves because we cannot yet trust what is happening inside. A meal plan, clear boundaries, professional support and consistent nourishment can provide something steady to lean on while we begin to heal.
Then, slowly, as we develop greater safety and stability, we can begin to listen more closely. We learn to recognise the difference between hunger and fear, preference and rule, pleasure and compulsion, movement and punishment, and caring for our bodies versus trying to control them. We begin to distinguish between noticing our bodies and monitoring them, between having a thought and treating that thought as an instruction, and between experiencing discomfort and interpreting that discomfort as danger. And perhaps most importantly, we begin to explore the difference between freedom and fear disguised as freedom.
Because diet culture can sometimes find its way back into our lives through the back door. It doesn't always tell us that we must be thin. Sometimes, it tells us that we should optimise, become leaner, eat perfectly, train harder, maximise our protein, minimise processed food or improve our body composition. These messages can sound so reasonable, particularly in a culture that places enormous value on health, discipline and self-improvement, that we may not immediately recognise when they begin to take up more and more space in our lives.
The answer isn't to become suspicious of every health behaviour or afraid of wanting to feel strong, nourished or physically well. It's to keep asking ourselves whether these choices are genuinely supporting us or whether we've begun organising our lives around them. Is this something I choose, or is it becoming something I feel I must do? Can I be flexible? Can I rest? Can I change my mind? Can I enjoy something without earning it? Can I do something without needing it to change my body? Can I allow my body to be a body rather than a project that requires constant attention and improvement? And perhaps, underneath all these questions, is one that matters even more: Am I becoming more connected to myself, or am I becoming increasingly afraid of myself?
That may be one of the quietest and most useful questions in recovery, because the goal isn't to spend the rest of your life policing yourself for signs of an eating disorder. The goal is to eventually need less policing. It's to develop enough self-awareness to recognise when something is changing, enough compassion not to turn a difficult day into a catastrophe, and enough trust in your support system to ask for help before old patterns become entrenched again. It's to discover, gradually, that you don't need to control your body perfectly in order to be safe.
Your body isn't a problem you must solve before you can begin living your life. It is something you can learn to live in, listen to, care for and experience. Perhaps this is what moving towards a more intuitive relationship with food and your body really means. Not throwing away every rule, trusting every impulse or expecting yourself to become perfectly attuned to every signal, but gradually moving from control towards conversation, from fear towards curiosity, and from rigidity towards flexibility. And eventually, moving away from the constant question of "Am I doing recovery right?" towards something much more spacious: "What would it feel like to live here?"
A Grounded practice: Am I moving towards or away from myself?
The next time you're unsure whether a behaviour is supporting your recovery or potentially pulling you back into old patterns, try creating a little space before deciding what to do. You might put both feet on the floor, notice the surface supporting you and take a few comfortable breaths without trying to change anything. If focusing on your body feels uncomfortable or overwhelming, you can simply look around the room and notice what's there. From that place, gently ask yourself, "What am I noticing right now?" rather than what you think you should be feeling.
You might then explore what you're afraid would happen if you didn't follow through with the behaviour, what you're hoping it will give you, and whether you'd still choose it if nobody else knew about it. Could you change the plan without feeling that you've failed? Could you rest without needing to earn it? Could you allow yourself more food if your body needs more nourishment, or enjoy something simply because it tastes good? Could you tolerate the possibility of your body changing without immediately feeling compelled to correct it? These aren't questions you need to answer perfectly, and they aren't a test you must pass before you can trust yourself. They're invitations to become curious about the relationship you're developing with your body and the motivations behind your choices.
And if you begin to notice that your world is consistently becoming smaller, with more rules, more fear, more preoccupation, less flexibility, more compensation or an increasing need to monitor your body, try to meet that awareness with compassion rather than alarm. It doesn't mean you've failed, and it doesn't automatically mean you've lost the progress you've made. It is information, and information gives you an opportunity to respond. You might need to revisit some of the structures that supported you earlier in recovery, speak to your treatment team, or ask for additional support with a behaviour that is becoming difficult to manage. You don't have to wait until things feel unmanageable to reach out.
That's part of becoming grounded, too. It isn't about trusting yourself so blindly that you never need guidance, or becoming so attuned that you always know what to do. It's about developing enough self-trust to recognise when something has changed, enough compassion to respond without punishing yourself, and enough security to know that asking for support is not a step backwards. Sometimes, it is precisely the thing that allows you to keep moving forward.
You don't have to navigate every uncertainty alone. Learning when to lean on others is also part of learning to care for yourself.