everybody's grand

Hey everyone! Happy New Year to you all, wherever you are and whatever state you are in this New Year’s Day. I hope you all had a great Christmas. I spent the majority of it eating, drinking and celebrating with family and friends and I have to say that I loved every minute. Ok, ok! Excluding the fairly shaky flight from London, losing my purse in a nightclub and realising I had no sellotape on Christmas morning for the one present I had to get, I loved every minute. This year was probably the first year for a good while that I didn’t spend any time on Christmas day silently mulling over what I was eating and drinking in my head, wondering when I could get some exercise in and generally being tormented by the voice of my eating disorder (ED). In recent years, he certainly has been a bit quieter but this year, he didn’t come to the party on the 25th. I was delighted to be without him for the first time since I was about 14! I’m the grand ole age of 23 now so this has been a long time coming.

Putting Christmas behind us now (don’t worry, the tree is still up until the 6th!), I wanted to talk about New Years. I personally have never been a big fan of New Years for a few reasons. During the first year or two of my eating disorder, it was a time when the voice got pretty strong, telling me things like ‘you need to make up for how lazy you were over Christmas’, ‘you need to eat less to compensate’, ‘you have to give up X,Y and Z come January’ and the pure and simple ‘Amy, you’re just shite’. When I was beginning my journey of recovery, the beginning of a new year wasn’t too pleasant either. I still had these voices lurking in the background but I also had plenty of people around me trying to help me to get better. However, though I was physically becoming healthier, my mind was still all over the place. To sum it up, the beginning of a new year just signified failure to me. I wasn’t able to cling to my eating disorder anymore but at the same time, I felt that I was no good at recovery. Additionally, living in a bubble for a few years left me without much interest in other things in life so I felt that I was in fact, useless at everything. I was a robot just doing what either ED told me or what doctors and my loved ones told me. Yet I still was not as happy as I should be. New Years became a case of #betterlucknextyear for quite a while.

Just to clarify, I think, at the beginning of the recovery process anyway, surrendering control to professionals and loved ones is necessary until you learn to recognise and fight the ED voice on your own. If I didn’t let others take over my life a bit for a while, I wouldn’t be here today. In saying that, I’m delighted that I am now finally back in the driving seat.

So as 2016 begins, instead of all the shoulda, woulda, coulda thoughts, I am trying to tell myself to just be. It’s not a case of ‘New Year, New Me’ but ‘New Year, Same Me so just bloody well deal with it’ ;).

I am writing this post to try to encourage others to do the same. All around me, I am hearing and reading a lot about New Years Resolutions. A LOT of these are, unsurprisingly, focused on health, diet and exercise. While I think that it’s great for people to aim to look after themselves a bit more, the language around these plans is what scares me. ‘I have to’, ‘I should’ and ‘I need to’ exercise/ eat well/ lose weight are not good enough reasons unless you are chronically ill and your life is at risk. Why not take up a new form of exercise because you would like to? Why not say that you will TRY to eat more fruit and veg? If you do need to gain or lose a bit of weight for the good of your health, why not try to learn a bit more on food and exercise and learn to approach it in a balanced manner?

Doing things because you feel that you HAVE to, not because you want to, is only going to set you up for failure in one way or another. Many people will just give up on their resolutions altogether. The small minority who may stick to it rigidly are unlikely to be happy. Realistically, who is going to be satisfied living a life that where they are governed by a diet and exercise regime that is completely inflexible.

Seriously, I have been there! Not blowing my trumpet (because I wish I was never there!), but I was so ‘good’ at sticking to these rigid rules that it became detrimental to my physical and mental health.

I spent five months living in Paris and never touched a croissant; I went to Denny’s Diner in California many a time for breakfast and ate cereal for breakfast instead of the delicious mounds of pancakes they are so famous for (please don’t judge me!); I avoided nights out with friends and decided to be alone or go to the gym instead; Most regrettably, I refused cake at my Granny’s house so many times, despite the fact that she bought it in especially for me (if you ever do get the internet, sorry Granny!)

I wish I had spent that time doing what I enjoyed doing and living in a more balanced way. But hey, I have at least 80 years to go ;). I can make up for lost time now.

As always, my post is long-winded but there is a message I want to get across. Don’t spend the beginning of this year, or any time, beating yourself up over what you should, could or have to do. This is not a case of ‘make your own rules’, it’s a case of throw the rule book out the window and drive over it several times. If you do not have a driver’s licence, get the dog to urinate on it or perhaps, put it in a shredder? Up to you! There are no rules 😉

Eat food because you like it, run because you want to, spend time with people because you love them. Learn to do what you enjoy. I am still taking classes in this but with each lesson, life is becoming brighter.

Happy new year to you all!

Amy (and Pud!)

x

PS: I found ED actually. He came back kicking and screaming in the few days after Christmas, which I was kind of expecting. However, after some rest and thinking, I decided to kick him right in the nuts, figuratively speaking, and felt much better. To anyone out there in recovery, this will become possible for all of you one day! You got this.