Global pandemic be darned, the holiday season has arrived! With the festive spirit and cheer of the holidays often come stress and anxiety, especially for those in eating disorder recovery.
We hope that this season brings you connection with friends and family (even if you won’t physically be in the same place!) or time for reflection on growth or goal setting for the coming months or years. May these few recovery ideas help you successfully navigate this year’s holidays in recovery.
This year’s holidays may not be like the ones we used to know. Amid pandemic restrictions on travel and in-person gatherings, more caution and creativity will be the key to safe plans.
Not only can we make our holiday plans more COVID-friendly, we can also make them friendlier to those with eating disorders. For people experiencing these illnesses, anxiety related to holiday eating, socializing, and changes in routine often make this season the most challenging time of the year.
The best gift we can give our children and other loved ones affected by eating disorders is genuine, informed support. Consider these suggestions to help your teenager with an eating disorder navigate the holidays ahead.
Episode description:
Kezia Reeder is a former Emily Program client and staff member and a continual advocate for eating disorder recovery. In this episode of Peace Meal, she joins host Dr. Jillian Lampert to describe her holidays with an eating disorder.
“I feel like I was constantly stressed from Thanksgiving through New Year’s Eve,” Kezia says. “It’s supposed to be a time of celebration and… in the United States, a lot of our celebration centers around gathering for a meal.”
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Valentine’s Day may be commercialized and over-hyped. For some it’s an obligatory gift-giving day, for others it’s a reminder of a broken heart or an unclear relationship status. But for those who do choose to celebrate, the holiday is an occasion to recognize love in all its forms.
This Valentine’s week, we’re exploring love in the context of the relationships we have with ourselves. Like other types of love, self-love is an action we practice and develop, one cultivated through self-compassion. And self-compassion bestows physical and mental health benefits worth celebrating in this season of love and beyond.
Lose weight. Exercise more. Eat “healthy.”
These resolutions seem as synonymous with the New Year as the midnight ball drop and fireworks display. Amid popping corks and clinking glasses, we hear the same tired promises each turn of the calendar year, as if they’re verses in “Auld Lang Syne” themselves.
As New Year’s marks the passage of time, so too it shows our sociocultural pressures and values. In the most popular resolutions, we see society’s expectations—the “goods” and goals worth pursuing in the name of personal betterment.
In a culture preoccupied with weight and food, it is no surprise that New Year’s resolutions frequently reflect these obsessions. Striving to lose weight—arguably the most popular resolution each year—is to affirm our cultural fixation on thinness and view of weight loss as a universal good. And while exercise and eating patterns can indeed influence health, many resolve to make these changes with the primary or sole goal of losing weight. Weight is mistaken as a proxy for health.
The busy season is here.
In holiday calendars full of shopping, baking, decorating, and wrapping, many people are also squeezing in routine check-ups and impromptu visits to the doctor. Clinic lobbies and waiting rooms are hosting college students home on winter break, workers using holiday PTO, and insurance holders maximizing healthcare benefits before the year’s end.
