The Urge to Move – Update

I would love to know if any of you guys have been struggling with or can relate to the feeling that all day, you must be either doing something productive or moving your body.  Recently, I have been doing so much better with not restricting and listening to my body and its hunger cues. With that, I feel like there has been an increase in my desire to move my body.  Of course, there is the natural movement that I think is healthy and in balance but I find that around three pm I hit a low point and I feel the need to excessively move.

I cannot be doing nothing during the day, I cannot relax or take a breath.  The only times when I feel I can rest are in the mornings when I first wake up and in the evenings after my day is done.  This leaves for a physically and mentally exhausting day in which I am constantly pushing myself to tick something off the to do list, to move my body as much as I can, or to being doing something that my eating disorder deems appropriate, an activity that is not “lazy.”

What becomes so tricky, is the fact that its becoming harder to just enjoy my days.  Relaxing no longer gives me the pleasure that it used to because my brain is screaming at me to get up and do something.  I have to write blog posts either in the morning or at night because during the day, I cannot tolerate sitting down for a lengthy amount of time.

I think the first step to overcoming this is just noticing it, and I have definitely taken toll of the urge and its power over me.  I know when I am tired and when I should sit down so I am working on blocking out times in the day when I need to rest. I have found that planning this out has made it easier, almost as though relaxing is my “homework” so to speak.

I am still working on it everyday, and it is still incredibly hard.  As I am writing this post in particular, it is no longer the morning and I am feeling quite compelled to get up and do something active.  I am sitting in my desk chair in my room and have just taken my dog for a walk, so I decided it was time to sit down and write about the urge to move.  It is hard to feel as though you are doing “nothing,” to feel like you could be doing something more productive or more beneficial for yourself. What I often have to do is reframe the feeling and realize that sitting down is actually very good for me, even essential.