Eating Disorders and Food-Filled Holidays

Happy Easter to those who celebrate this holiday – whether you’re religious or simply love an opportunity to gather with family and friends, I wish you well!

Today, I’m thinking back to many Easters past and how such food-filled celebratory events terrified me when I was an anorexic.  Questions always raced through my head well in advance of the candy or the feasting:

• How was I going to make sure I didn’t eat?
• How would I hide my food on my plate to make it look like I did eat?
• What would I do if I succumbed and ate “too much”? 
• How could I sneak to the bathroom and weigh myself again and again?
• How could I get out of this all together?

If you’ve never had an eating disorder (in which case you are very fortunate!  congratulations!), such worries probably seem very foreign to you.  But for me, they were all-too-real.  I felt like everyone was watching me, and although it might seem “easy” to blend in with a crowd, it’s tough to not eat when everyone else is doing so.

I feel blessed that today, at 36, I won’t have those same concerns that I had at 16.  Sure, I might have pangs of guilt at eating more than my “fair share” of pie or jelly beans… but I’m not going to go into a depressed, anxious emotional tailspin.  I’ll just make sure I continue with my exercise plan and eat healthfully the rest of the week. 

How will you spend the holidays?  Will it be with Ana or with people who actually care about you?