Normalizing eating does not happen overnight, therefore you need to take things easy and not be too hard on yourself.

Remember take baby steps and make small gradual changes, this is the way forth for recovery.

Because normal eating is the main goal for recovery - making the transition to normal eating is your top priority. Structured eating involves making yourself available to do planned eating at planned times each day.

Starting to normalize food intake can be scary. You should consider this stage an experimental stage. Remember if you are dissatisfied with the results you can always resume back to your former eating style - although, I can assure that you will not want to do that!

Helpful tips before you begin

• Try not to react to small fluctuations in body weight
• Keep your food plan simple - obsessively counting calories can cause compulsive food behaviors
• Take things slow
• Only eat what you feel comfortable with at this early stage
• Remember food planning is work-in-progress aimed at normalizing food intake and normal eating behavior
• By keeping a record of all your food in your food journal, you are able to self-monitor and look for problems and obstacles in your meal planning as you go along.

Creating a structured eating plan

Creating a plan involves planning meals in advance of what will be eaten, when and how much.

Planning your meals and snacks in advance

Planning meals and times in advance takes the stress and strain away from deciding what to eat and when.

To do this you should plan tomorrow's meals and snacks the night before.

How to do this

1. Print off your planning sheets meal planner
2. Think about what you will eat for breakfast, lunch and dinner and what snacks you will eat in between
3. Choose foods you feel comfortable eating, avoid trigger foods at this early stage
4. If you do not have your food available, then it is a good idea to do a grocery shop
5. Packed lunches can help - plan them and prepare tomorrow's meal
6. Plan the times when you will eat breakfast, lunch, dinner and your snacks. See the print off for examples
7. Try to keep as close to your structured plan as possible.

Self-monitoring

Use your food journal daily to enter in all foods, binge episodes and times.

If you are binging then try to increase the amount of food you are eating at meal times

Review

Each week review your progress and eating patterns. Ask yourself the following:

• Am I still binging?
• Is enough food being consumed during meals and snacks?
• Am I timing my meals and snacks accordingly and not leaving no longer than 3-4 hours in between?