Needing exercise while avoiding eating disorder?

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So many of you know that if you have had an eating disorder in the past, you can still be at risk of another bout of the illness in the future. Maybe some of you already have. In which case, what can you do when you do actually need to exercise/diet? As dieting and exercise can be very triggering for people with a history of anorexia or bulimia, etc, how do you guys deal with that catch 22? When do you know when you are going too far or when you are getting too obsessive? How do you stop yourself from getting too stressed out from thinking constantly about food or about your body?

What I'm basically asking is how do you learn good habits without turning them into unhealthy obsessive compulsions?

I'd try to make a detailed (and sensible) plan as a contract that states what you want to do, how often and how many hours you want to spend doing it. Then stick to that for a given amount of time (say 3 months or so, it should be fixed). There should be some flexibility that allows you days off, and you should also state what you'll do in case of an injury (and possibly other eventualities). Don't allow yourself to do less or more than stated in the contract until the given time period is up - then you can make adjustments to the plan.
The biggest problems with this is probably that you need patience (because you can't make the plans to aggressive; this is a long-term approach). Be careful that you're not asking too much of yourself initially - if you don't exercise a lot, you may not know your limits and injure yourself or simply lose motivation.

When it comes to dieting: generally, gradual changes work best - slowly replace some of the "problem foods" with better ones, at a pace that you can endure. There's no point in forcing yourself to eat perfectly if it makes you miserable and you can't keep it up in the long term. So maybe you could do something similar: try making one change in your diet (e.g. "stop drinking soda") and stick with it for 2 weeks. After that you can introduce another change (and possibly revert earlier changes if necessary).