Positivity, Safety and Support
Hi All,
This is a strong reminder that Iceberg is a place of support and a place of positivity. Please respect this at all times.
You are here to help yourselves and to support one another. So, in light of this, please respect yourselves, your fellow Icebergers and the time and effort that the moderators put into maintaining this site.
Please respect Iceberg as a safe zone and not a venting zone. There are many places on the web available for destructive condition speak, Iceberg is not one of these places. If you are struggling with specific foods or nutrition, please seek help with your therapist or genuinely seek support on Iceberg. However, please do not use Iceberg as a diary for your daily struggle with meals, this reinforces behaviours rather than recovery.
On Iceberg we are dedicated to recovery, not to serving the condition. Iceberg is a community, and each and every visitor is a member of that community. As a community, we believe in recovery, freedom, living, beauty, happiness, joy and much, much more.
Please embrace these values while you are here.
Thank you
Iceberg Moderator
I just would like to repeat “Please respect Iceberg as a safe zone and not a venting zone.”
It is an illusion that ventilating is helpful, ventilating is so helpful as stirring dirty water, and it can cloud your solutions. What we focus on will grow.
When food is on our mind, it does not mean to focus on food, it is often a sign that it we need to focus on the other parts of life.
So, let’s reinforce recovery and let’s reinforce Life…
And as IM said – let’s embrace these values – that is what our Iceberg is about….
Thank you for reading it and thank you for being the member of this community
M
Thanks Iceberg Moderator for your post.
Personally speaking, posting about my nutrition is not something that would have helped me on my journey to recovery. When having a 'bad day' re nutrition I think what was most productive was to turn this into what do I need to do for myself? What am i missing in my recovery (emotionally/ in my lifestyle etc)? Behaviours are a reflection of emotions so I think it is very important not to lose sight of this - focusing on the food more just reinforces the food!!
I also feel that the word mealplan is something that I would have seen as very unhelpful in terms of improving nutrition and lessening behaviours in my recovery.
I often wonder to myself, where did this word even originate from? It was not always used and was not something reinforced by our therapists and now the word is very regularly being used... 'Mealplans' are not helpful for recovery. Neither is writing down what one plans to eat. This only reinforces condition, the victim end of condition and the value of 'sickness', the false belief that ED is about the food.
In the centre, C gives 'nutritional options'. Never at any stage are we told exactly what to eat. This is therefore not a 'mealplan'. The word 'mealplan' is synonamus with pre-planning, trying and failing, and I also believe it reinforces the false belief that the condition is about food. It is pressurising word. The condition is a manifestation of emotional distress (ED = Emotional Distress, as someone very well put it in group on Tuesday!). Obviously, it is very important for us to work on nutrition in recovery, but even more important is working on ourselves, learning to love ourselves and learning to live and love life. THAT IS WHAT WE TRUELY DESERVE!
Maybe we could all work on physcolinguistics here on iceberg a bit more - what sounds lets stressful? 'Mealplan' or 'nutritional options'? Personally, I find 'nutritional options' is far more helpful a phrase and also it is a far more represenative a phrase as that is what C actually gives us. She gives us 'nutritional options'.
We are all fighters here on Iceberg. The people in this community have such courage, talent and love - instead of portraying ourselves as people who eat x, y and z, why don't we focus more on LIFE, on WHO WE ARE, express are opinions. That for me is far more representative of recovery and us, than any 'mealplan'!!
Sorry for the rant, but this is just something that I felt was important and I have been wanting to get off my chest for a while. I don't think it helps anyone and almost introduces an element of competition of sickness and victim thinking onto Iceberg. Since the people on this community are fighters and not like that, I think we could acheive so much more together by directing our attention elsewhere.
Wishing you all a great evening.
Martha x x
I really like the sentiment in your post, the trend has been towards over focus on following mealplan and i in condition will drift in this direction very easily, condition loves it and loves the failures and muck ups in this area. You're dead right, time to re check the focus, back to who i am, develop me and life etc, less talk of food, back to what are my values, dreams etc. No power to condition there. Great stuff Martha, thanks
kiz
thanks IM this is what i was trying to say the other day.....
Yea I never thought about that = but I was laughing when i read that Martha - A plan to eat hahaha & a plan about what to eat - why would this have ever existed? ya know in times before the "meal plan" if pple were just eating when they were hungry,stopping when full why would they need a plan
Maybe some dude was having a dinner party & he was planning a menu - & he thought it might be cool if every day was like a dinner party but then just like some other fun things - it can get taken to an extreme. Funny to think about though - imagine
a sleep plan: Like you don't just sleep when you're tired you research lotsa different sleep plans & you make a big plan about sleep & plans to plan to sleep in a more ambitious way
or
a talking plan:Not talking when you want to but planning to only talk between 9am & 11am and then 2pm & 4pm
or
a laughing plan (a plan about when to laugh & when not to laugh & enormous guilt when you break the plan & laugh accidentally at somehting that is REALLY FUNNY - that would be terrible cuz it's outside the realm of the laughing plan & therefore outside the concept of perfection
a crying plan
a drinking plan (even if you're thirsty you can't drink cuz pen & paper plans are cleverer than the body
a picking things up plan (Like you can only pick things up with your hands if it's on the plan)
a sneezing plan: Holding sneezes until times in the day when it is most ideal to sneeze cuz if you don't do that you are out of control
Anyway it's all a bit mad. There's a thing called intuition & when you find it you don't always need a plan - it gives pretty good direction
Powerful reply Martha powerful very very powerful and inspiring and sure evidence of the talk getting not just walked but drill marched. Nutritional options - my god doesn't that just lighten the load completely. And as for Lee - hilarious!!! Particularly the sleep plan!!!!! That's an attitude I've tried myself - how bizzare the mental control of food really is - we could just as easily apply the logic to anything else. To be honest everyone, I'd been feeling very confused and worried by posts relating to mealplans because I thought there was this big part of recovery I was neglecting and that my therapist had been negligent in not prescribing me with one. And the thought of having to follow one scared the crap out of me - one mistake or alteration and condition roars on in. Didn't want to ho back there. Thanks everyone for all of ur claification.
Hi icebergers,
As has been said already, as a nutritionist, I hate the phrase meal plan for all the reasons mentioned above. Comparing nutrition advice is SO unhelpful in recovery. Just because somebody has been advised to have x,y or z DOESN'T mean that they are sicker/less sick than you. There are many, many factors that have to be taken into account when working on nutrition with an ED sufferer - way too many to go into here - and each person's nutrition session is very individual to them.
Please, focus your energies into your own recovery - nobody else is living your life or responsible for the choices you make in your own recovery.
Take care all.
C
thanks for throwing that out there, if our conditions are diff then our recovery and needs will be different.... for some reason just hearign its not to do with sickness has helped loads, dunno why. and lee i love sessions where condition ideas or thoughts are turned into quite funny things and ya managed to do same here thanks=) im seeing more life is not a plan and life every day changes for me so yes nutritional options for that particicular cirimstance is more fitting i think. seeing it as choices has changed it in my head too like now i feel like i am takin g back controlof my healthy and life yes i still need some sort of structure til i can do it from intuition and know what my body needs but choices for me stand for success either way and pride in taking responsability for myself and my recovery. i know for me havin a plan doesnt work, depending on work and stuff i can finish later than other days, some weekends i have to work, but its flexible like the choice to laugh. best thing i was told was an example that if your body needs something it will tell you, and yes strucut helps but sometimes it might ask sooner or later, i give up control of my body .... i am open to flexiblity now learning from work, from my friends from life in general. and tonight throwing out the rule book more and going with the flow who knos what ill wear or where ill go or what time ill head out, slightly scary but it will be more fun, this is what life and fun and living is about.... time to live and let go of plans.
Kizzy, Glad that helped. Thanks for your nice reply. ;)
Joyce, I agree! I thought the same thing re therapists for a while until I actually clarified a while ago. It's a wonder what one tiny word can do - powerfully negative!
C, thanks for your input. That's a really good point about the fact that we are all people with unique nutritional needs, nothing to do with 'how sick' or 'how bad a condition', its about catering for each person on an individual basis really, and doing what is best for their unique set of needs. Thanks - I think thats a very important point.
Lee, that had me in fits! The laugh-plan is my personal favourite - but the sneeze plan was also a bit of a winner. An absolutely ridiculous concept if ever there was one!!!
Martha x x
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