When reflecting on all the Christmas’s I experienced with an eating disorder, YouTuber and our friend Jodie Porteous puts it best:
Having an eating disorder is living hell anyway, but having an eating disorder at Christmas time, is fucking unbearable 🙁
— Jodes (@just_jodess) December 18, 2018
This is because when you have spent your whole year battling with your mind, body and every morsel of food that was lucky enough to touch your lips, there is nothing more terrifying than being confronted with the “eat until you pop” philosophy that tends to go hand in hand with this holiday.
I was planning to write a list of all the foods to look forward to initially when writing this post, but then I thought that might be stomach churning and insensitive for someone who cannot bear the thought of being pressured into indulging. So I’m sticking to positive thoughts to have instead, as a way to distract you from the fear that may fill your body when you sit at the dinner table on the 25th. I’m not one for chanting affirmations at my naked self in the mirror each morning, but I do find that if I try my best to think positively through difficult situations, I can at least see that there is light at the end of the tunnel.
1. Think of how far you have come
Whether you have only just developed an eating disorder, or whether you’ve been struggling for over a decade, these illnesses have their ups and downs but it can be helpful to focus on the positives. Maybe you ate one slice of bread more than the day before as you battle restriction, or maybe you only purged once instead of five times. Or maybe you’re having a really bad day and everything feels like a massive fuck up. At least you are still here. You’re still trying and that’s incredible.
2. Know that recovery is possible
People do recover from eating disorders. It is possible. You might be feeling awful right now, but in a few months time you might not – you never know. Recovery is easier said than done, but sometimes it can help to know that an eating disorder isn’t your life or who you are as a person.
3. You deserve to eat
You shouldn’t feel guilty for eating at Christmas, or at any time during the year. Your body needs fuel to survive; that is fact. You deserve to eat and to eat well.
4. Present giving
I personally hate giving presents (I’m terribly self absorbed), but if you love seeing your loved ones’ faces light up as they opened up the present you pretended you weren’t getting them, focus on that. Take care with the wrapping, spend your hard earned cash and let people know you’re thinking about them.
Not that money can buy love…but sometimes it’s nice to give.
5. Spending time with family
Providing your family members aren’t toxic, or pointing out your weight (see last post for tips on how to deal with that) see Christmas as an opportunity to spend time with people who you love and who you don’t get to see as much as you would like. Play Articulate, get into a fight over what to watch on the TV and laugh at your dad who has fallen asleep by the fire. That’s what Christmas is all about, isn’t it?
6. Spending time with friends
Go to the pub with your friends and get shitfaced. Tis’ the season!
7. Time off work
Fuck work and your boss who yelled at you over a typo in an email. Enjoy the time you have off by planning to do nothing (or whatever else you want to do).
8. Know that this holiday is a money making scheme
Society tells you that you have to eat and drink loads over Christmas, so they can sell you food and drink…and then they tell you that you have to diet and “work it off” in the new year, so they can sell you diet books. It’s a business formula based on making you hate yourself, and knowing you don’t have to abide by these so-called rules is incredibly freeing.
9. You don’t have to binge because you are told to
Again, the idea that we have to binge over Christmas is a marketing tactic, but can be incredibly dangerous for anyone with binge eating disorder or bulimia; it definitely was for me. I know it’s not as simple as “you don’t have to binge so don’t”, but it helps to tell yourself that this food is actually available all year around, and so you don’t have to starve yourself and then go nuts when it comes to Christmas. Focus on your mental health and try your best to eat how you feel most comfortable. If you binge, that is fine, if you don’t, that’s fine too.
10. Our book comes out in January
