Holidays can be a challenging time for those dealing with food addiction, compulsive eating and restricting, and other food-related challenges. Yes, you can still maintain your program through the holidays! But it will require planning, intentionality, and support....
The first time I let a craving pass without giving in to it, I shook all over. In spite of wanting food with a desperation I’d never before let myself experience, nausea surged up in my throat. I cried. I felt like a twitchy rodent caught in a trap, and all I wanted...
I just finished cleaning out our bathroom drains. There’s a Lenten lesson in here, I promise. When my daughters were little, I kept their hair shoulder-length. Anything longer was way too difficult to brush without all of us ending in tears. As soon as they were old...
I could just eat that “one more bite.” It’s right here on the tip of my fork, ready and waiting, the perfect last bite to a delicious meal. It’s completely within my power to consume it, to get that “just one more” bite of deliciousness, because who knows when I’ll...
Diet culture is everywhere. We're constantly bombarded with messages about losing weight, eating “clean,” and achieving the “perfect” body. The latest diet fads on magazine covers at the grocery checkout hound us. TV commercials about food plans, diets, food delivery...
Before entering recovery for my eating disorder, hunger was the enemy. I chased after diets that promised, “You’ll never feel hungry!” When those diets didn’t work, I did all I could to avoid ever feeling that grumble and its accompanying pangs. The times I would feel...
Mosquitoes love me. I have been bitten while drenched in commercial bug repellent. I have been devoured just visiting my backyard for less than three minutes. I have even been bitten through two layers of clothing, one of which was denim—while drenched in commercial...
I’ve lost count of how many fellow food addicts have heard me talk about my difficult childhood as it relates to my disordered eating only to have them respond, “But I don’t have trauma like you have trauma.” Then they tell me how they were never abused in any...
In 2018, my family and I were blessed to take a three-week, self-led European pilgrimage. We started in England, where we visited both the Tyburn Convent, built to honor the Catholic martyrs hung on London’s infamous Tyburn Tree, and then the Shrine of Our Lady of...
I haven’t spoken to my mother in over two decades, but every once in a while, when I’m walking through a rainy parking lot in a pair of jeans, I’ll still hear her voice speak from my memory. I hear her tell me that my legs look like stuffed sausages, just like she did...