Garden Salad

Recipe #3: p. 248, Garden Salad
shredded carrots
diced cauliflower
frozen peas or chick-peas
chopped celery
chopped tomatoes
chopped cucumbers
chopped lettuce
roasted sunflower seeds

"Good cooks don't need many salad recipes.  The best salads are simple collections of raw vegetables with only a light touch of dressing."
                       --Longacre p. 243

I am definitely NOT a good cook.  There is potential for me to be a good cook one day, but for years my battle with Anorexia Nervosa (AN) has always limited my chef-abilities.  Therefore, I will include the Salads section in my adventure in cooking through the More-with-Less cookbook.

Last week, plans changed unexpectedly on the day I intended to make this salad, and as is true for many people who suffer with Eating Disorders (ED), change can cause me anxiety.

In the past, my main means of dealing with stress, anxiety, anger, tension, and any other feeling that I deemed as "negative" was to restrict my food or work out extra.  Now that I actively seek recovery and reconciliation in my life and with my body, these are not my main coping mechanisms.

But sometimes I still try to control situations that cause me some anxiety by manipulating food and my menu.  I decided that it was too complicated to try and make a recipe on my usual day of Monday and told myself that I would make two recipes this week.

As usual, my intentions were good, and I even had the ingredients for both recipes.  But by Sunday night, I had allowed options for other meals to enter my mind.  Once I allow myself to think about changing a meal or eliminating calories or adding a few more minutes of exercise, it's as if it is then something that I have to do.  It morphs from a possibility to a requirement.

So, Monday morning it no longer felt like an option to make two recipes.  And it even seemed silly and irrational.  I told myself that no one is really following this Blog very closely and won't know if I made a recipe last week or not.  I told myself that Monday is my busiest day of the week, and it would be too stressful to try and do a second recipe. I told myself that it would be easier to just eat the garden salad that I had already made on Sunday and not have to think about trying two new foods at one meal.


 Unlike with recipe #2, Apple Snack, I had already decided that I would actually eat this salad and had even decided that I would eat one piece of each ingredient that was in it instead of only eating the ones that I have arbitrarily labeled as "safe" for me to eat.

At 6:00 our friends arrived, I had already heated the baked potatoes and black beans, and I felt very little anxiety about eating my garden salad.  I did have guilt and feelings of failure that I hadn't followed through with making the new bean recipe that I had planned to make, but by the time I sat down at the table, I had allowed myself some grace and moved on.  The conversation was fun, I liked the salad, and our four kids all played well.  After they left, I enjoyed watching a little TV and reading, and then I went to bed.

Tuesday morning, I didn't work out extra or more intensely, and I didn't spend the whole day trying to figure out how to "undo" the calories that I had eaten the day before. 
 
I can tell that I am further along in recovery  because a situation like this would have seemed virtually impossible for me a few years ago: eating something not labeled with a calorie-amount, not obsessing about what I was eating while I was eating it, showing myself grace when I didn't do something as well as I could have, and not obsessing about something I had done and trying to make up for it later.

But being further along in recovery has also been my excuse in the past for not continuing to move forward.  I justify to myself, and people around me, that I did something different, I took a risk, I ate "more".  It has been a way for me to do something but not really do anything at the same time.  It allows me to stay stuck.

I was reminded this week as I started reading The Life Model--Living from the Heart Jesus Gave You, that recovery is not something that I can achieve on my own just because I am working really hard.  As the authors say, "The time-honored Christian approach to pain and wholeness involves our activity as well as God's: His work in us is to bring redemption to all of that traumas that have broken us, and our work is to strive for maturity as we progress to wholeness." p. 16-17

My prayer for today is that I allow God to bring redemption to the pain I have experienced and caused due to the AN as I work to mature in my faith and relationships as I move toward wholeness.