Achieving Food Plan Perfection…Yeah, Right.
Throughout my ED career, whether it be in the pitfalls of relapse or the upward crawl towards recovery, I’ve consistently (and constantly) planned the Perfect Food Plan. Daily, I envision that if only I eat this or that and stick to my plan, I’ll feel so much better about myself. Logically, perfectionistic logic that is, it makes sense… follow your plan to the letter and you’ll feel better—poetic, yes, realistic… not exactly… at least not for this food addict.
I do, however, have some errors in my thinking. First, recovery is supposed to be about balance, finding the grey (and accepting it), no black and white thinking. Easier said than done. “Perfect” doesn’t really fit into the category of moderation. Second, I’m still trying to define myself externally, to some extent, whether it be by how well I follow my food plan, or how much I weigh, or the size of my jeans.
While I yearn to follow a food plan so clean that even minuscule crumbs of deviation from it couldn’t be picked up under the lens of a food-plan-falsifier investigator’s microscope, at the end of the day, I always do something to louse it up… even in recovery. That is what is so frustrating.
Perhaps I’m being too restrictive in my food plan… Perhaps I need to give myself a break… Perhaps I need to think about what makes me so afraid to follow the food plan I devise? Ha-Ha! Yes, I think that is the issue. The easiest answer is control. But what is behind the control???
More next post… gotta go be a social work student!