HEALTH AND WELLNESS
and keep the big picture in view.
2. Please don’t cut yourself off from support. Speaking of expectations, expect that you’ll need more support right now, not less. While it can be tempting to withdraw during a time of self-isolation, a quarantine can be incredibly damaging for your mental health and recovery.
Apps like FaceTime and Marco Polo allow you to stay connected by video and can be great options for accountability and meal support. But if you don’t have folks in your life who are ED-informed, you still have options:
• Both the Eating Recovery Center and Eating Disorder Foundation have virtual support groups! The National Eating Disorder Association (NEDA) has compiled a list of low cost virtual groups as well.
• NEDA has also put together a video series for COVID-specific coping tools, including this video with Jennifer Rollins, MSW, LCSW, discussing recovery during a pandemic.
• There are also a lot of great smartphone apps that can be helpful tools in recovery for you. I’ve also included some of my favorites in this roundup.
• Many eating disorder professionals offer virtual sessions. You can search for one in this database.
• There’s an Instagram, @covid19eatingsupport, that offers live meal support every few hours!
3. Aim for C-level work. Perfectionism in recovery is never helpful, especially not now. My dietitian Aaron Flores often reminds me to aim for “C-level work.” I’ve found the analogy to be really grounding for me.
Not every meal is going to be perfectly “balanced.” Sometimes your snacks will just be whatever you can find in the cupboard or whatever you can tolerate. Sometimes our meals are going to look a little strange because it’s what we could find in the freezer section of the liquor store.
That’s OK. That’s normal.
C-level work means, yes, stocking up on nutritional shakes if those are helpful in keeping yourself alive right now. It might mean calling on others to grocery shop for us if we feel stuck. It means settling for “good enough” when our ED brains are telling us it’s not.
And it definitely means being flexible around our food choices. We’re living in a very different world than the one we did just a few weeks ago.
The important thing right now is survival and staying nourished as best you can (we’re aiming for three meals per day plus two to three snacks — rinse, repeat). The rest we can put on a shelf to worry about later, on the other side of this.
4. Your body knows what to do in a crisis.
There are a lot of “jokes” going around on social media about the weight people might gain in quarantine. In addition to that being fatphobic, it also completely misses the point.
Your body’s only real job is to help carry