Advice from EmpowerED for the festive period

Don't miss the short video below from dietitians at Cheshire and Wirral Partnership NHS Foundation Trust with their top tips for coping at Christmas with an Eating Disorder. 

By Expert by Experience Ruth

I have always loved Christmas. I love the colours, the songs, the sense of childlike joy that so often accompanies the holidays.

I look forward to the excitement of travelling home to see my family, to spend time together playing rubbish board games, watching the Muppets Christmas Carol, and coming together to observe bizarre family traditions.

I would love to be able to partake in the other joy that everyone talks about at Christmas – the food. Food plays such a huge part in celebrations and family gatherings, everyone coming together around a long table, sitting on chairs of differing heights with one person usually complaining that they always get the rickety lawn chair, can someone please swap with them this year?? All excited as the kitchen door opens and everything is brought out in a way reminiscent of old Tudor feasts and everyone “oohs” and “ahhs” and congratulates the chef on a job well done. Or sitting around in the living room sharing and swapping the different sweets and chocolates they’ve been given, groaning, and stretching out their bodies, patting their stomachs in a satisfied way and snuggling down for a food nap. 

These are the moments that take away the joy and pleasure of Christmas for me. In the weeks leading up to Christmas, I try and plan how I am going to approach the holiday yet again without allowing my fears and anxieties ruining the atmosphere. How I’ll smile and nod over the dinner table, looking down at my plate thinking “is that too much? Is everyone looking at it? They think it’s too much, I know they do. How do I leave some of this without being rude, or do they expect me to leave some of it?” Trying to follow invisible rules that I am controlled by.

What will I do if someone gives me chocolates? Should I give them away, or will that seem ungrateful? Knowing that if I keep them, there is a good chance that they will become a part of a binge if I’m not careful. Feeling that failure is inevitable before I have even begun. 

And then after Christmas. The weight loss ads and campaigns, people on social media and in group chats talking about the pounds they’ve piled on and feeling like fat pigs. Immediately diving into January, the month of deprivation – whether you go on a “health kick”, or give up drinking, or start exercising excessively. All of it feeding into the disordered parts of my brain and telling me to starve myself because the pressure of everything around me is too much. 

The majority of holidays and celebrations have a foodie focal point – Christmas and Thanksgiving; at Halloween we give out sweets; at Easter we get chocolate eggs; on our birthdays we are given cake. Even Shrove Tuesday is more commonly known as Pancake Day, where we gather and eat together, dripping lemon and sugar onto crepes, spreading Nutella onto scotch pancakes. Food is a way of bringing people together, of creating community, but it is highly likely that for someone you know these times are filled with stress and anxiety. 

In recovery for an eating disorder, you are always working on managing your behaviour. Your reactions to food, your thoughts and feelings surrounding it, and of course what you are actually eating and drinking. A technique I have been taught in therapy to manage my BED is structured eating. To try and eat 5-6 times a day, at regular intervals, and to try and be mindful whilst eating. To monitor my feelings each time and identify triggers for disordered behaviour, and then to find ways of managing the triggers. This work is always ongoing, always developing, and is exhausting. There is no break from an eating disorder because eating is something that cannot be avoided – not without fatal consequences, anyway. But if you are able to find a balance and start to manage structured eating, a holiday can steamroll into your life and set your progress back months. 

Usually – unless I’ve experienced a relapse – I feel like I can manage relatively well. But the holidays enter the ring and I am K.O’d. Work finishing for the year is a particular trigger, without the structure of the days I rely on it’s harder to stick to meal times. There is also a sense of relaxation that takes over when people finish for the holidays, you might lie in – which means I miss ‘breakfast time’, the stress of this snowballs and I miss the next meal, and the next. This leads to periods of restriction and starvation followed by binges. And then the cycle repeats. As it repeats, it is accompanied by negative voices – you’ve failed, you’re disgusting, you can’t do this. 

The disordered space is always harder to climb out of. Christmas is only a few days, but it can take months and a lot of support to pull yourself up and out of its impact. And then Easter is just around the corner. 

We work hard to find ways of managing our behaviours and anxieties during the holidays, but it would be made so much easier if our communities could adjust and adapt with us. Next time you are planning a celebration or party, take a moment to consider the consequences it could have. Setting up a spread separately – where everyone can dish themselves up away from the eyes of others can help with a lot of the anxiety.

If you know you have a family member or friend who struggles with eating, maybe you could ask them where they would like to sit, or if there are any changes you can make to the plans to ease the problems. Letting people know ahead of time what the menu will be and what time you will be eating helps those who are trying to maintain structure and routine, and it will allow them to plan their day accordingly. These are very small changes that should be easy for you to implement but they will make the world of difference to someone living with an eating disorder.

More than that, knowing that you understand and are willing to make these changes will better support them in their recovery, it will help them to believe that they are worthy of love and support, and that the eating disorder is not in charge – but they are, with the love of their communities.