Get Through December Day Four- All Those Cookie Exchanges

I hope you had a fantastic weekend and a great Monday yesterday. My weekend was great. We have an annual Latke party. I’ve been doing this for 17 years! Since before I got married and had children even. It’s evolved over the years– it used to be a nighttime event with just adults on a weekend, but now we rent a bounce house every year, have a bunch of neighborhood teens in the backyard to watch the children, it’s a daytime event and the adults hang out in the house while the children play out back. I was surprised to find out that the kids look forward to it every year as much as the adults do! It’s so funny how things change and evolve and grow in different ways. Monday was of course a big tired day for me… but no rest! I took my 5 year old on his school’s annual holiday field trip to decorate the San Francisco Ferry.

There are so many fun and annual traditional parties this time of year. And one of the big ones is The Cookie Exchange. It’s such a beautiful concept, people making the recipes from their ancestors past and then sharing them together. But of course when food is not easy for you, a cookie exchange isn’t a fun time to socialize, it’s an anxiety provoking situation filled with stress and anguish. It’s also a time where people either wind up bingeing and continuing the binge or restricting then coming home and bingeing because they were white knuckling so tightly all day or worse, they skip it, skip seeing all their friends, relatives, loved ones because the food angst is just too high.

TODAYS TIP

PERMISSION is the word, followed by INTENTION. You give yourself permission to eat cookies that day and think about what intention you want to have around it. This is a personal decision, what you intend. Permission is great because it takes away the set up of restriction and self punishment. Here are some examples:

“I will go to this cookie exchange and I give myself permission to eat whatever I want. However, I will NOT binge. My intention is not to binge when I get home…”

“I will go to this cookie exchange and I give myself permission to choose any 3 cookies I want. If there are more that I want to taste, I will cut them in half so that I still have the equivalent of 3 cookies but I get to sample more…”

“I give myself permission to go to this cookie exchange and eat what I want but my intention is to focus on the company and chat with people and not to fixate on food…”

“I give myself permission to eat what I want, but my intention is to leave feeling comfortable in my body, not overstuffed or uncomfortable…”

PERMISSION and INTENTION — when you give yourself permission, it makes the self-punishing, paradoxical black and white thinking go away. When that goes away, you have a big component that creates binge eating disappear. Intention insures that you have agency and can make decisions about what you want rather than letting the compulsion lead you into a place that you don’t want to be.

TODAYS INSPIRATIONAL QUOTE

The really magical things are the ones that happen right in front of you. A lot of the time you keep looking for beauty, but it is already there. And if you look with a bit more intention, you see it. –Vik Muniz 

I believe that this quote is so relevant to ED recovery because of how we tend to look at our bodies. We often say “I’ll be better when…. I’ll do this thing when… I’ll have a boyfriend/girlfriend when… I’ll exercise when… I’ll get a new job when… I lose all the weight… I am toned… I have a perfect body… My BMI is normal….” or whatever story it is that you tell yourself that implies that you’re not beautiful right now. Your beauty and perfection is right in front of you. Every fold, every curve, every dimple, every scar, every crease, every wrinkle, every roll, every grey hair, every deep line… all perfect and where it should be. Find the beauty that is right in front of you. Instead of looking in the mirror to search for what’s wrong, look in the mirror and see if you can find the beauty in the mundane or even in the supposedly imperfect or flawed. Find your beauty in your pimples or cellulite or dry skin or wrinkles or whatever it is that is perceived as a flaw and just look at it as piece of art or an objective state. Notice that beauty is all over you and everywhere.

Need extra support? This is a great time to join the 5 Week Program. Right now and through the end of the month, I will be doing doing extra Facebook Lives as sort of support and group therapy and teaming up with buddies so that people can text each other through the holidays for extra extra support.

Right now, for the month of December $497 when you pay in full.

Get in now- and you will be part of this forever without ever having to pay another cent, even as more content, interviews and information are added. Join today and it’s yours forever. This is a lifetime program and monthly payment plans are available to make it easily affordable.

Those of us who deal with binge eating behavior can often hide when we feel like we’re not doing well. We think we’re supposed to be okay and perfect all the time. Ironically though, eating disorders THRIVE in isolation. So if you’re struggling, please don’t do it alone. We are better together and we are stronger together. When you sit in your ED alone, it’s difficult to find recovery because it’s just you and ED. But when you have support, when other people know what you are going through, the part of the eating disorder that gets bigger and stronger when it is left alone to grow, that part is pushed out of the way. YOU ARE NOT ALONE! And you’re not the only one. If you are feeling lonely, depressed, anxious, or like you can’t do this, please reach out for support.

Go Back to Day 3!

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