Eating Disorders During The Holidays

This is something my therapist asked me about in our session the other day. How do I handle having an eating disorder during Thanksgiving and Christmas (my family celebrates Christmas. If yours doesn't, insert Hanukkah or Kwanzaa or other holiday here).

Thanksgiving is always the hardest. During Thanksgiving and Easter, we meet with my dad's family. Neither his mother or step-grandmother like to cook, so they always choose to go out to eat at a place called Old Town Buffet (a little tacky, I know, but thats just how they do it). This has been a bit of a binge place and a restricting place for me in the past, so it is really one of my least favorite restaurants.

On Christmas Eve, my family always has Papa Johns pizza and watches the Alastair Sim's version of A Christmas Carol. Then on Christmas Day, we always grill steak (which isn't too bad because I don't like steak anyways).

And then of course there's all the mean time and between time of cookies, cakes, muffins, brownies, cinnamon rolls, random confectioneries, etc...

So basically what I've always done at the holidays in the past is to play it safe and restrict restrict restrict. Not let myself have anything sweet and good because of the fear that once I got started, I wouldn't be able to get stopped again.

I feel like this holiday season, my goal should be to not focus so much on the food and to simply enjoy being with family and enjoy the social aspects that food is merely associated with. After all, that's the whole point, right? Time with family and friends?

I'm not pretending to have this one all figured out, I have in fact only been in recovery for 7 months and this will be my first "recovering" holiday season, but I feel like that's what the goal should be.