In this guest column by Andrea Roe, she talks about her experience binge eating during family holidays. Vacations are the hardest time of the year for people with eating disorders. Here’s Andrea’s experience:
While I struggled with eating disorders, and all through my recovery process, vacations were always the most difficult time for me. I got nervous whenever a family holiday approached. I was scared of what would happen. I was scared of losing control. I was scared of all the food and what it would do to me.
In my family, vacations meant family dinners. But not just one family dinner, we had a couple of family dinners for different family holidays. And there was food EVERYWHERE– and all kinds of food. And even worse, when the dinner was over, there were always leftovers and we would have cookies and cakes in the house for the next couple of days to follow.
I also hated eating in front of people. Even though most of them did not know about my eating disorder, I felt like as if they were watching me. Sometimes my relatives would tell me what to eat and say, “You have to try a piece of this cake and try that one too!” And if I said no, they would ask again and maybe make comments like “one piece of cake does not hurt” or “you are young, you don’t have to worry about your weight”. Oftentimes it was hard for me to stay strong and say no.
Sometimes I even pretended I was sick so I would not have to join the dinner table or go to someone’s dinner. I felt bad for doing this but I knew I would feel even worse if my eating habits got out of control.
To be honest, I can’t think of too many family holidays on which I did not binge. Sometimes I made it through the family holiday dinner fine enough– and was proud of me for that accomplishment- but then there was all this food left over for days, lying around in the kitchen, and at some point it just happened… I lost control and started binging.
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