Cooking and Grocery Shopping In Recovery

I recently saw an article of tips and tricks about grocery shopping when you have an eating disorder. Of course I clicked on the link, but I was surprised to find that almost everything on the list was exactly the opposite of how I prefer to approach food.

People’s strategies for recovery are as widely varied as they themselves are, and different people find different approaches to meal planning, shopping, and cooking helpful. So I thought I might throw out some of what’s helped me become more comfortable with the process of getting food from the store to inside my belly in the hope that others might find something useful in it.

I’d also love to hear other people’s tactics. The more we can share with each other what’s helped us, the less alone and confused anyone has to feel. So here are my strategies for the actual shopping and cooking processes while in recovery.

1. Plan ahead. I never ever go into a store without a list of everything that I need, and I try very hard not to buy anything that isn’t on the list (unless I look at it and realize I meant to put it on the list). This helps me to feel less out of control while I’m in the store, it ensures that my grocery trips take less time, and it means I can focus on crossing things off of the list instead of on all the food around me.
2. Buy in bulk. Some people really don’t like this one, and I understand. There are times that it’s overwhelming to me to have too much food in my house. But I really prefer to have fewer trips to the store, and so I buy lots of frozen veggies, grains that don’t go bad, and other things that can last me up to a month so I don’t have to venture back to the store for as long as possible. Again, your mileage may vary on this one, and if you feel really overwhelmed with having too much at once then it can be really helpful to start with a smaller store rather than a Cub or a Rainbow.
3. Produce and other things that go bad: approach with care. For a long time I wouldn’t buy anything that would go bad because it felt like too much pressure to eat it right this instant. If you have worries about things going bad then it’s actually possible to buy mostly long term things (frozen is your friend). My strategy has been to slowly introduce more perishables. I started with milk (because I need it for my mac and cheese) and have now worked up to such amazing buys as spinach. You don’t have to get a lot of any of these, or even a wide variety of perishables. You can make your basic diet one that doesn’t spoil and add on fresh things for more nutrients as you feel comfortable.
4. Recipes aren’t necessary but they can be helpful to come up with fast and easy things. You in no way need to follow recipes exactly, especially if there are more ingredients than you want to deal with. I recommend doing some brainstorming before going to the store for things that will be as easy and fast as possible. I find the longer I have to commit to cooking, the less likely I am to get my meals in.
5. Cooking in bulk can be great! I love to make extra pasta or rice so that I have a couple additional meals and don’t have to worry about cooking for a few days. Decreases stress, increases ease.
6. Eat things that taste good to you. I don’t buy frozen meals even though in many ways they would seem ideal for me. I don’t like how they taste. Instead I try to get things that I want to eat because that will increase my motivation to cook them and put them in my stomach.
7. With that said, also be aware of things that feel too anxiety provoking. I try not to have chips around too much because I eat them mindlessly and it causes me a lot of stress. That doesn’t mean cutting those foods out entirely, but rather being careful around them so that you can eat them with minimal stress (I only buy one bag of chips at my monthly grocery run so that I don’t feel overwhelmed).
8. If you’re going to go grocery shopping with someone else, communicate how you shop and what they can do to support you. There are lots of people out there who like to wander and browse in the grocery store, so don’t assume that everyone wants a list or can be in and out quickly.
9. I prefer to buy things that are not pre-portioned so that I can decide how much I am hungry for.
10. Eat before you go! Shopping when hungry means everything will look good and it can get overwhelming really fast. I also try to build in some downtime post shopping trips so that I can calm any stress that might have built up.
11. I prefer to have a few standbys for cooking that are as easy as possible and feel completely possible no matter how bad of a day I’m having. I always keep those around. For me it’s ramen noodles, mac and cheese, and chic’n nuggets.
12. I also try to make my cooking in general simple. I like to do variations on the same theme. Most of my food comes in the form of grain+veg+sauce all mixed together. That means I only have to figure out three choices for any given meal, but also allows me all kinds of different flavors.
13. When adding new things, don’t try to do too much at once. I never have enough protein in my diet, so I’ve been working on that, but I don’t try to do many things at once. This week I added protein smoothies to my diet. A few months ago I started adding fake meats to my basic meal template. One at a time is easier to keep track of, less stressful, easier to adjust if it starts stressing you out, and easier to grow accustomed to.
14. There is no need to be a perfectionist. For a long time I didn’t want to cook because I didn’t feel confident about it and I hate not being perfect. But my food doesn’t have to turn out like the food on Iron Chef. It just has to turn out like something I want to eat. It can be ugly, I can make mistakes, and I can experiment without being some kind of failure.
15. Spend money on food. I know that sounds privileged and stupid, but it’s an important shift of mindset for many people with eating disorders. For a long time I refused to budget any money for food because I didn’t see it as a necessity. But eating becomes much easier if you like the way your food tastes and if you can buy things that you enjoy, which means putting food as high on your budget priorities can go a long way. This is also part of why I allow myself to eat out more often than I probably should. My health is worth the money.

That’s what works for me at least. I hope some of it is helpful, and remember: if these things don’t sound useful for you then you don’t need to do them. Do what works for you.

 

The Role of Exercise in Eating Disorder Recovery

For people with depression, anxiety, or really any form of mental illness, a common refrain from well-meaning friends and acquaintances is often “well just exercise. That will help you feel better”. It’s true that there is good evidence that regular exercise can improve mental health (although there are many problems with simply prescribing exercise). However trying to incorporate exercise into a recovery and treatment regime becomes infinitely more complex in the context of an eating disorder. Over exercise is often a symptom of eating disorders, and for many people trying to recover it’s also a trigger for other self-destructive behaviors.

Because exercise is an important element both in healthy weight maintenance and improving mental health, but is also a triggering and potentially dangerous activity for someone with a history of overexercise, people in treatment for eating disorders must walk a delicate tight rope when it comes to their exercise regimes. This has been a particular struggle for me, and I’ve been looking for ways to bring exercise into my treatment in a positive fashion.

There are a few techniques that I’ve had some success with, but if anyone has more suggestions, please share in the comments. The first way that I’ve found to improve my relationship with exercise is to stop using the word exercise to refer to movement. This opens the way for all kinds of “exercise” that don’t involve going to the gym and using equipment that loudly announces your calories burned to you every time you look down. I swing dance and I rock climb and sometimes I just throw dance parties in my room and sometimes I try to just go for walks or have squirt gun fights with my friends. The more that I can find things that I enjoy which also happen peripherally to involve movement, the better.

The reason I try to use this technique is because the moment my brain is convinced that I am “exercising”, it becomes convinced that I need to hit certain markers of acceptability: burn a certain number of calories, exercise for a certain period of time, stick to a certain regime. If I don’t use the label “exercise” to describe what I’m doing, but rather focus on “fun activity, preferably with friends”, I get a lot more mileage out of the activity and don’t fall into a negative spiral that tells me I am not acceptably fit. Looking for activities that fit this mold also lets me double dip on my activities: not only do I exercise but I also find some depression fighting positive activities, and potentially social time as well.

Something else that has worked well for me is to accept that sometimes a complete break from exercise is necessary. I find exercise extremely helpful with anxiety and don’t like leaving it entirely behind (especially as I’ve been pretty active my whole life). However when I’m compulsively exercising every day, it can be much harder to try to slowly lower the amount of exercise that I’m doing while still doing some. In many ways it’s easier to simply say that I can’t be responsible about my exercising at this moment in time and I need to take some time off. This has the added benefit of giving me LOTS of extra time to do other positive things with my day.

There are a lot of ways that cutting exercise out of  your life for a time can backfire. How do you deal with all the anxiety you worked off before? How do you accept loss of muscle mass or increase in fat? How and when do you begin to add exercise back in without swinging immediately into over exercise mode again? Especially if you’re doing this while you’re trying to increase your caloric intake, it can take a serious toll on your emotions and your motivation to continue treatment. Unfortunately, this is one of those places I don’t have the answers: I’m struggling to find ways to begin incorporating exercise again without it becoming unhealthy.

One helpful way to deal with feeling guilty about not exercising or feeling extremely compelled to started exercising again is to find some friends who aren’t big on exercise. This doesn’t mean you have to dump your friends who are extremely fit, but there are people out there who aren’t particularly interested in physical fitness and are perfectly happy with their lives. I am a big proponent of distract until you’re in a healthier place, and finding people who will encourage you to do other types of fun and interesting things, model other versions of healthiness and happiness, and generally not bring up exercise as something you have to do is a great way to build a life that doesn’t circulate around exercise.

The final, and perhaps most difficult thing to do if you’re working on overexercise is to make sure that you’re not paying any money for exercise. What I mean by that is if you’re paying for a gym membership or classes or a personal trainer: stop. I’ve found that when I’m shelling out money I feel obligated to “get my money’s worth”. You can always go to the local rec center and swim some laps or go for a run or a bike ride. But those ongoing expenses are a constant pressure to get to the gym and make it worth it and I’ve found that pressure nearly unbearable.

Of course all of these are just suggestions that I have found helpful, and won’t work for everyone. I’d love to hear other suggestions in comments, especially from those who have found an exercise regime that works for them.

Follow Up: From Criticism to Construction

It’s been about a week since I put up a post detailing some of the discomforts I felt with my local dance community and sexism. And I have to say that I’m entirely heartened by the response. I’ve had some people here or there throwing the responsibility for fixing it back on me, but overall people just want to discuss and improve, and that’s GREAT. I feel entirely lucky to be among a community that’s willing to listen to some random girl with a blog.

So one of the responses that I got quite often was “what can we do better”? Now I’m just one person, and so I can’t solve all the problems myself. I don’t necessarily have solutions for all the problems I pointed out, and I would really like to start a community dialogue so that we could draw from more minds and more backgrounds to get all the best ideas. I know that other people out there have ideas that I won’t think of, and I’d like to hear them, as well as hear more about other people’s negative experiences so that we can try to address a holistic picture of sexism in the dance community rather than MY picture of sexism in the dance community. Because of this, I’d really like to invite others to continue commenting, suggesting, and conversing about the issue, and I would really like to facilitate some sort of in-person forum to discuss these questions.

However as I’m not sure that will happen for some time, I do have some suggestions here.

1.Harassment policies at all venues, posted or publicly available.

2.At Heartland the year that I went there was a specifically same sex strictly lindy competition. More of these would be great.

3.More classes that ask their students to switch roles.

4.Classes specifically geared towards experienced students to start fresh with a new part. Oftentimes I think we get stuck after we start in a certain part, and don’t want to put the effort in to go back to the beginning. This kind of a class wouldn’t feel condescending or boring, but would rather meet more experienced students where they are.

5.Potentially a variety of themed dances or songs at events: a gender bender song, a solo jam, etc. I’m not entirely sure about feasibility or usefulness of this one and would like to hear some feedback about it, but I like the idea of having some time set aside for people to try something different on the social dance floor.

6.Invite more same sex teaching couples (when possible).

7.This is more of an individual choice than a community wide effort, but it could be something we could be more conscious of: experienced dancers asking newer dances to dance, and not only asking those of the opposite sex. I know we make a concerted effort to be welcoming to newer dancers, and some of the more experienced dancers also experiment with switching between lead and follow (but generally only with other experienced dancers). But if we want our community to be more welcoming to a variety of kinds of pairings, we have to be willing to model that behavior to everyone right away.

8.More awareness of gender/race/etc equality in our DJs.

The next few are very preliminary suggestions. I would absolutely love and appreciate feedback about the plausibility of these ideas, or variations of them.

9.If possible, some classes that are follow specific, particularly earlier on in dancing, to help follows understand their importance and the benefits of being a follow, as well as to give them more teacher time and focus.

10.Integrated classes between levels: a class with more experienced follows and less experienced leads or vice versa. I think this could help a lot in allowing some of the insights we gain the more we dance to filter down to some of the newer dancers. It could also help new dancers gain confidence. This might also help with the fact that in beginning dance classes we see a lot of simplified metaphors around leading and following. Treating newer or not as talented dancers like they have the same amount of intellect as more experienced dancers can only be a good thing. Even if you’re a newer dancer, you can understand the concept that leading and following are equal.

10a. A potential variation on the integrated class model could be mentors. I know that Peter holds office hours, but he can’t be everywhere at once. If some more experienced dancers would be willing to give a couple hours a week, they could be paired with a newer dancer and given some time to practice or work through things. I think this would facilitate respect between leads and follows, better dancers, and more opportunities for dialogue about the philosophy of dance.

11.More education about rights and space and sexism in the community. I’m really unsure as to what this might look like, but there are definitely some people who really need to be explicitly told that certain things are inappropriate. I’m not sure if this means we have a monthly class about dance etiquette, or when dancers first come in they get some sort of sit down about what’s ok and what’s not…I definitely would appreciate the feedback of teachers here.

12.More discussion around the concept of consent and boundaries. This means understanding that different people have different boundaries and that they may communicate these boundaries to you in different ways. Most of us understand that people can communicate non-verbally: if you go to give someone a hug and they pull away, they are not consenting. We have to respect the non-verbal cues as well. As a strong example of this in dancing, I had a dance in which a leader tried to dip me. I didn’t feel comfortable with it, and so I just didn’t. I pushed back against his lead, and stood on my own feet and basically said “NO” to the move as loudly as possible without actually yelling STOP. However the lead decided to ignore this and attempted to lead the same move two more times with increasing force each time. I know that Shawn has some documents he’s looking at that include dancer’s rights and responsibilities, and I think that posting documents like this, starting a conversation around consent, and exploring what it means to ask for consent is a good start. To leads: you ask for consent every time you lead a move. I give you my consent by either following or not.

An additional piece to this could be to remind follows that while they should follow to the best of their ability, their status as a follow comes second to their status as a human being, and that if a lead leads something they just don’t want to do, they don’t have to. That doesn’t make them a bad follow. It means that they’re setting their own boundaries. YOU GET TO SAY N O. EVERY TIME YOU FOLLOW YOU ARE CHOOSING YOUR MOVEMENT. Remember how much power you have in that.

In line with this, a reminder that clothing is not consent is always great: just because someone is wearing a short skirt doesn’t mean you get to touch her. I realize that sometimes a person might be wearing something that makes it REALLY HARD not to accidentally boob grab or whatever. You’re allowed to not dance with them for that reason. If someone else’s clothing makes you uncomfortable, you can say no to a dance. If you are worried that you might be put in a situation that makes you uncomfortable, you get to say no.

13.Finally, I would like to see the creation of more forums to discuss the philosophy, sociology, politics, and culture of dance so that we can all bring our opinions up and so that we can keep up to date on any issues that might be cropping up. This might mean an internet forum, or it might mean half an hour before one of the events where we hang out and talk, or it might mean a monthly dinner that has an open invite for anyone who comes to dance events.

So thank you to all the people in my dance community for being awesome. I really hope we can continue this momentum and move it into a long term discussion with real impacts.

Related articles

• Losing a Love: Sexism is Pushing Me Away from Dancing (taikonenfea.wordpress.com)