New Year, New You
Mike Kraft is a member of The Emilee Connection Adult Eating Disorder Support Group. He is a former sports journalist working hard on his recovery from anorexia. He is intelligent, witty, kind, and determined, and he has some tried and true tips to share with individuals working on recovery.
A new year means New Year’s resolutions. While we shouldn’t wait until the beginning of a new year to make changes in our lives, the new year for so many symbolizes a fresh start. For some, it’s eating healthier and exercising more. For others, it’s being more spontaneous. And for others, it’s being more fiscally responsible and better organized. At the beginning of the new year, everyone is trying to improve themselves in some fashion.
My New Year’s resolution started well before January 1. It started back in late September when I decided to get help for an eating disorder that first entered my life 18 years ago when I was 14 and a freshman in high school. Now, a fully-fledged adult at the age of thirty-two, I have fought – somewhat unsuccessfully – my eating disorder tooth-and-nail all these years. Prior to my hospitalization in September of 2022, I was previously hospitalized in 2009 at the age of 19, again in 2019 at the age of 29, again in 2021 at the age of 31, and once more for the first of two times in 2022. Along with my hospitalizations, I have also sought treatment at The Healing Connection’s partial hospitalization program in 2015 and 2019, and their intensive outpatient program in 2019. Also in 2019, I spent two months at New York Presbyterian.
What I’ve learned from my journey is that no two eating disorders are the same. Everyone with an eating disorder is unique, and therefore what might work for someone in terms of recovery may not work for others. As a male, I struggled to find much success in a treatment facility because so many of them build their recovery programs with adolescent and teenage girls in mind because the highest percentage of their clients fall into that demographic. It’s rare to find a treatment facility that knows how to reach adults, especially adult males like myself. I’ve been in treatment where I’ve had to read research studies that only referred to patients with eating disorders as “she” or “her” instead of “he/she” and “his/her.” It’s hard not to feel like you don’t matter when you read stuff like that. Any treatment facility in the world can heal you physically because every treatment facility is going to refeed you as part of their program and they are going to weigh you every morning to track your progress. It’s the mental aspect of recovery that has to be more individualized in order to give someone recovering from an eating disorder a chance at a full recovery and not just a partial one. I’ve found in the past that even when I was weight restored, it was more because I had to and not because I wanted to, and therefore I went back to my old habits the moment I was no longer under the watchful eye of a treatment program. The same can be said for a lot of people who have suffered relapses in the past. That’s why it’s critical to find a road to recovery that suits your specific needs. Again, no two people’s eating disorders are exactly the same and therefore they shouldn’t be treated the same. Below I have listed a number of recovery tips that I have found helpful this time around in my recovery efforts. Some may work for you, and others might not, but it doesn’t hurt to offer a helping hand to those looking for answers.
1. Don’t do it alone – you will never overcome an eating disorder if you try to do it by yourself. Even the most headstrong and stubborn individual isn’t prepared for all the tricks an eating disorder has up its sleeve. You might be able to do it by yourself for a couple of days, but eventually the anxiety will become too much and you’ll quit. That’s why it’s critical to have a team that you meet with every week. I have my primary doctor, dietitian, therapist and another doctor who specializes in eating disorders. I meet with the specialist every week to have my vitals checked. I meet with my dietitian every week to discuss any challenges I’m having with meals or any questions I have as well as to make any adjustments to the meal plan as needed based on my numbers from the vitals check. I meet with my therapist every week as well to deal with more of the underlying issues that may have led to my eating disorder and finding ways to cope with the negative thoughts during difficult moments. And I meet with my primary doctor once a month to have additional testing done like blood work. In the beginning stages of recovery, the vital checks and the dietitian are the most important parts because the physical issues need to be addressed and then the mental issues can be explored at a later period. But eating disorders cannot be defeated alone, especially if you have suffered from one for a long period of time. You are always going to lose that battle if you go in alone. Having supportive parents that are willing to help with meal planning and attend parent support groups is also incredibly beneficial. My mom designs a meal plan catered to my caloric requirements and also prepares the food. Over time, I will begin to get more involved in the meal plan and cooking my own meals, but in the beginning stages, it’s better to reduce any unnecessary anxiety around food.
2. Focus on adequacy, not fear foods – Treatment facilities tend to be fixated on the idea of fear foods and then get upset with you when your unable to complete a meal with a fear food as part of the meal. I’ve never understood the obsession around eating foods you are uncomfortable eating as long as you are able to eat enough calories and a balanced diet to restore to a healthy weight. I’ve been in treatment facilities where every day there was either cookies, slices of pie, slices of cake or some other form of challenging food on the plate. It’s unnecessary to eat a fear food every day, especially early in the recovery process when the focus should just be on ensuring that you are taking in enough calories to maintain a healthy weight. There are countless people in the world who don’t have eating disorders that don’t eat foods that people with eating disorders find challenging, like desserts, pizza, pastas and trail mix. And you don’t need to eat those foods to live. It only becomes a problem if someone is fearful of an entire food group. For me, I find mashed potatoes challenging, but I have no problem eating a baked or sweet potato. I don’t like trail mix, but I enjoy peanut butter. My meal plan rarely includes anything like cookies, brownies, pies, donuts or pizza, but once in a blue moon I’ll request them. And I’m able to find the nutrients found in those food items in other food items I’m more comfortable eating. As long as you have a wide variety of food in your meal plan, challenge foods shouldn’t be a primary focus. Forcing someone with an eating disorder to constantly be eating fear foods is like making someone who is afraid of the dark spend a night in a cemetery and then throwing a bucket of venomous spiders on them for good measure.
3. Ditch the tracking apps – I’ll admit that this one is extremely difficult for me. We live in an age where all the information in the world is just a click away. And that includes nutritional information. It’s hard not to track everything you’re eating when the information is right in front of you at all times. You no longer need the physical package to find the nutritional information for any given food item. Now you can either go on the food company’s website or type it into one of the many food tracking apps to find everything you’d want to know. I have always been a number’s guy. As both a sports fan and a writer, I am heavily invested in numbers. They were a big part of my job, but even before that, my favorite section of the newspaper was the sports page dedicated to the box scores. I’ve always obsessed over numbers and found them fascinating, which ultimately caused me problems down the road as I became less obsessed over sports statistics and more fixated on the numbers found on nutritional labels and the scale. Tracking apps can be great for people without eating disorders who are either looking to lose weight or maintain their weight or eat a more balanced diet. But it’s not ideal for people with eating disorders who are weight restoring. I have found that my anxiety is lessened when I don’t know the exact number of calories, fat, carbohydrates and sugar for a given day.
4. Drink liquid calories – Liquid calories are your friend during weight restoration. Consuming calories from liquids means not having to eat large quantities of food in short periods of time. I have always been uncomfortable around liquid calories. During the height of my eating disorder, I only drank cold water, hot water and zero-calorie drinks like Coke Zero and Diet Lipton Green Tea. The only liquid calories I would consume would be in the form of skim milk in my cereal. I shied away from all the lattes, frappuccinos, mochas and whatever other beverages you could purchase at a Dunkin’, Tim Horton’s or Starbucks. The only time I would ever consume liquid calories is in treatment. But with having such a high daily caloric requirement, the volume of solid food I would have to consume without the aid of liquid calories would be extremely uncomfortable. I don’t drink supplements like Ensure or Boost, but I do drink 2% milk and apple juice every day. Each day, I consume 4.5 cups of milk and 2 cups of apple juice, which lightens the load on the amount of solid food I have to eat to satisfy my daily caloric requirement. While the liquid hits your stomach faster than solid food, it also passes much faster than solid food. Other liquid calories to consider include hot chocolate, non-diet sodas, chocolate milk, smoothies and milkshakes.
5. Choose higher-calorie food options – Much like how liquid calories can be your friend during the weight restoration process, higher-calorie food options can also lessen the burden on the feeling of fullness that is inevitable during recovery. Avoid lower-calorie options because it just means that you’re going to have to eat more. Instead of standard sandwich bread, use oat nut bread that has nearly twice as many calories per slice. Use full-fat spreads instead of reduced-fat, like mayo, butter and cream cheese. Eat premium ice cream or ice cream sandwiches instead of light ice cream. Eat yogurt with 1 or 2% milk instead of skim milk. Add a slice of cheese to all of your sandwiches. All of these options add up over the course of the day and will lead to having to eat fewer items.
6. Meal plan and have scheduled meal times – Life can be unpredictable at times. That’s why it’s important to have a meal plan ready before each day, so you can have everything you need in your refrigerator and pantry. If creating a meal plan yourself feels too overwhelming, have a family member do it. A meal plan keeps you honest because it tells you exactly what you’re supposed to be having at a particular meal. Without a meal plan, you are far more likely to eat less than what is adequate. How you structure your meals is up to you and your personal preference. For me, I prefer to have my breakfast and lunch be my bigger meals and then have my afternoon and evening snacks as well as my dinner be lighter because I don’t like to go to bed on a full stomach. I prefer having larger breakfasts and lunches because I have the whole day to digest them and I’m at my most hungriest at breakfast. It’s also important to designate times for each meal, spacing them out appropriately to allow the previous meal to digest. I always leave at least 2.5 hours between each meal or snack.
7. Make goals for post-recovery life – Recovery is challenging and it takes a long time, but you have to have aspirations for yourself when recovery is over. I always made the mistake of thinking that everything was going to be magically better once I hit a particular number on the scale and my recovery was over. But that is not the case. No one hands you a briefcase with $100 million in it and no one walks up to you offering you your dream job when you’re finished with recovery. Life starts when recovery ends, so that’s why you need to set goals for your post-recovered self. While it’s important to have recovery-specific goals during recovery, you also need to have something else to be striving for that can only be achieved with a healthy body and mind. It needs to be something that you wouldn’t be able to do if you continued to be sick. Goals could include getting married and starting a family, traveling to your dream destination, or regaining your independence.
8. Wear “real” clothes occasionally – One of the many obstacles during recovery is the inevitable moments where clothes you’ve been wearing for years start to get tighter. It’ll happen with shirts; it’ll happen with pants; it’ll happen with underwear; it’ll happen with sweaters. It’s pretty common practice for those restoring weight to gravitate toward sweat pants with elastic bands and over-sized sweatshirts to hide the feeling of weight gain. I use this strategy as well, but it’s also important to wear “real” clothes on occasion and deal with the mental anguish it may cause at first. It’s better to wear clothes like form-fitting shirts and jeans a few times a week in a safe environment in your own home throughout the weight restoration process instead of waiting until a moment where you are required to dress more formally, like at a wedding or family gathering, because a drastic change in the way your clothes fit may trigger an immense emotional response that could derail your progress. You are going to have to dress formally on a regular basis during post-recovery when you’re either at work or in school, so it’s best to experience the change in the way your clothes feel as it’s happening.
9. Attend support groups – Sometimes we feel alone during our recovery journey or there isn’t anyone in our lives that understand what we’re going through. Anytime we try to explain what’s going on in our head, we’re looked at as if we’re speaking another language. Attending a support group can help recovery efforts in a plethora of ways. It can make you feel like you’re not alone, as you’re surrounding by people who know exactly what you’re going through and can offer you advice. It can also be a place to vent your frustrations if you’re having a tough day or a tough week. Support groups aren’t a major commitment, as they typically only meet once per week for an hour or two, and you’re never pressured to speak if you don’t want to. You can just attend and listen to others talk. But attending support groups can help build a bigger support system to aid in your recovery journey.
10. Come to grips that this is going to be difficult – Recovery isn’t easy, and it never will be. Unfortunately, that’s the hard truth. If recovery from an eating disorder was easy, everyone would be able to do it successfully and eating disorders wouldn’t have the highest mortality rate of any mental illness. It’s important to understand that recovery is going to be the hardest thing you’ll ever do in your life and it’s going to be a long drawn out process and it’s going to take every ounce of energy you have to make it through. There are going to be good days and there are going to be bad days. Recognize the good days and learn from them. Recognize the bad days and learn from them. Don’t beat yourself up when you’re having a bad day because that’s only going to lead to more bad days. I started my recovery efforts at the end of September and I still experience bad days more than three months later, but the number of bad days are fewer and further in between. It does get easier, but it takes time and you have to be patient. Yes, clothes aren’t going to fit you the same way they once did. Yes, the number on the scale is going to be more. Yes, you’re going to experience GI issues from time to time. Yes, you’re not always going to be hungry going into a meal or snack. Yes, there are going to be days where all you want to do is go back to your eating disorder. No, don’t listen to those temptations. The reward at the end of your road to recovery is far greater than anything the eating disorder could ever offer you.
- Mike Kraft