Thanksgiving in Treatment

Please forgive me for being MIA recently. I have been in treatment since October 29th and did not have the mental capacity to sit and write anything for my blog. Being in treatment has really brought to light just how much change I need in my life in order to recover from my eating disorder. For real. Not just enough recovery to maintain my weight. This time around, I want to be living fully, embracing every day whether it be “good” or “bad”. In order to help accomplish my goals, I want to turn this blog into more of a life journal for myself. Feel free to keep following, but I completely understand if you want to unfollow. This time, I’m writing for me.

Today was Thanksgiving, which is by far my least favorite holiday of the year.Some people talk about how they’ve been restricting for days just for 1 meal. Some people overeat and swear that they will never eat again. I made a decision today. I wasn’t going to complete my dinner.

Being in treatment, the meal was portioned to fit my meal plan. I know I need to gain weight anyway and I don’t want to be in treatment forever, so having a “scary” calorie-dense meal actually would be rather beneficial for me. But there was no way in hell that I was going to give in and eat it all tonight. Because I thought I was too strong to give into the stupid holiday. I wanted to show everyone how strong I was. Maybe I would even refuse the Boost.

We are allowed 30 minutes to complete our meals. We had about 6 minutes left and I was halfway through when I just said “what the F*** am I doing? Restricting does not prove my strength in any way. Nor does it help me or anyone else in the long run. So I shut up, grabbed the fork, and made up my mind. Sure I had about 4 seconds left to spare and I probably got charted for using every table behavior on Earth, but I did it.

Right now, it’s about 2 hours past dinner. And I still have my 700 calorie night snack to tackle (PB/nutella/banana burrito and soy milk here we gooo!).I feel angry at myself for completing, but I also am extremely angry at my eating disorder for all that it has caused me to do and prevented me from doing. I know that I would have felt angry either way. I wish I could say that completing Thanksgiving meal made me feel empowered or strong. But it didn’t. Maybe next year.