knowing vs. *knowing* that eating your fear food is okay
I spent yesterday baking my favorite cookies and listening to Christmas music. It was glorious.
My favorite Christmas cookies are these molasses spice cookies that are from my “Silver Spoon Cookbook.” It’s the cookbook I watched my mom cook and bake from every single day growing up that her mom collected and hand wrote all the recipes for. Then at my bridal shower, my Munner and my mama presented me with my very own copy. All the recipes handwritten. *Cue the tears.* I’m not sure if I’ll ever treasure another gift more.
Taste testing is one of the best parts of baking!!! I swear I prefer the raw batter and dough most of the time, HA. I can’t be alone in that, right!? As I was baking Jared and I were coming up with dinner plans which ended up being dinner out with friends at Jack Brown’s for beers, burgers, and fried oreos. Yet another nonchalant, little moment that was drastically and infinitely impacted by my choice to recover. There was not a moment of hesitation, doubt, or distress. Not for a second. And I share that to extend hope that one day your days will be filled with nonchalant food experiences, rather than painful ones.
To get there you will have to know that eating your fear foods is okay and you will have to K N O W that eating your fear foods is okay.
Knowing your fear foods are okay
This is the brain knowledge. The language I’ll use with clients is memorizing our recovery flashcards.
“All foods are good foods”
“My body cares less about what I eat than my ED does”
“All carbs break down to sugar – there’s no difference between fruit sugar and sugar in cookies”
“My body needs mostly carbs”
“Calories are just energy and my body needs energy”
Learning about physiology, food, nutrition, and metabolism is an important part of the recovery work. After all, someone needs to fact check ED like yesterday lol. It’s likely though at some point in your recovery, you’ll need more than the memorization of these recovery flashcards. There’s a difference between knowing and K N O W I N G.
K N O W I N G your fear foods are okay
This is the bodily knowing. The deep, in your bones experiencing that the foods you once feared are okay. This comes from several (not just one or two times) opportunities to eat the food and sit with any and all feelings that proceed. Prior to this point, a lot of recovery happens in the head – learning and memorizing all the ‘right’ things. Now it’s time to assimilate the head with the heart and the hands…getting into your body and your feelings.
You literally must eat your fear foods over and over until it’s just another food.
It’s just another food that is sometimes enjoyable, sometimes not.
It’s just another food that you eat to fuel your body, or eat just because.
It’s just another food that contains carbs, fats, and proteins, and calories.
It’s just another food that sometimes will be really filling, sometimes not enough.
It’s just another food that sometimes you’ll want more of, or sometimes wish you’d taken one less bite.
Retraining your nervous system to register this food as a piece of food, not a threat, takes opportunity, time, and understanding. Find the opportunities by seeking out more meal and snack outings, engaging socially with those around you, lingering a little longer in the grocery store to buy foods you typically wouldn’t, or even hiring an eating disorder dietitian to do food exposures with! Take the time to journal after the fact or connect with yourself through a body scan. Starting with the tip of your head, working your way down to your toes taking inventory of where you are feeling any sensations. Do you notice your mouth watering anticipating another bite? Do you feel a fullness rising to the base of your throat signaling a pause? Do you feel a wave of calm rushing over you as your blood sugar returns to normal? Those are a few examples of what you might experience. The ED keeps us so much in our head or exacerbates through anxiety what we may feel in our body, it wouldn’t surprise me if neutrally seeking out somatic information could be hard or confusing at first. Again, working with an ED dietitian or somatic therapist could be really helpful if taking the time to really sit in the experience feels daunting. It’s crucial that you’d offer yourself some self compassion and understanding doing this work. You’re literally leaning into your fears and taking a chance on something that feels scary. There isn’t getting it ‘right’ because there is no wrong. It’s just a human eating food – the experience was never, ever designed to be ‘perfect.’ There are far too many variables in the eating experience for perfection to be on the table.
Here’s the recipe for my favorite cookies. I used butter instead of Crisco and just about double all of the spices, adding about 1 tsp of nutmeg too.
In the comments, let me know your favorite holiday recipe 🙂
