Food-Related Baggage

"It would be awesome if all of our

unique food-related baggage were something

we could eventually abandon

like so much unclaimed luggage at an airport

in some distant city.

Unfortunately it tends to find us wherever we go,

no matter how many times we assert

that we’ll never put on that

stupid ugly self-hating dress ever again.

Backsliding is inevitable

and it is okay when it happens;

disordered eating patterns don’t evolve

because a person is unintelligent or lazy,

they evolve as coping mechanisms

and even survival tactics.

We can’t expect ourselves to just forget the means

by which we’ve managed to get through the hard stuff,

because in most of our lives the hard stuff doesn’t stop coming

just because we’ve made efforts to address

an eating disorder or any other addictive behavior."

I stumbled across this quote sometime last fall (and I honestly don't know the source), but it seems to hold a much stronger meaning with me now than it did back then.

Recovery is difficult for many of us because we are forced to unlearn our old coping mechanisms and then slowly learn new, healthy coping mechanisms. Anytime a person practices something for an extended period of time, such as an eating disorder, it simply becomes second nature.

During the time of my eating disorder, I often felt that others saw me as unintelligent or lazy because I remained stuck in a self-destructive cycle. Why couldn't I just STOP?!

Life never stops and it is constantly changing. Although many of us with eating disorders do our best to avoid change, it is impossible to do so without consequences. So, even though food-related baggage isn't something we can necessarily abandon, through recovery, however, we are given daily opportunities to deal with it in a much healthier manner.

Progress.