Featured Tool: A Plan of Eating

We talked the other week about getting your mind off food, but how? One way to do that is with a food

plan. When you know ahead of time exactly what you'll eat, that can take away the obsession of making choices about each meal or snack. You can get a food plan and nutritional support through a therapist, dietician or nutritionist, doctor or sponsor.

 

Some people plan and commit to even the amounts they will eat, weighing and measuring every morsel. They have the increased freedom of knowing the amounts they're eating are just right—not too much, not too little. This is a highly individualized approach and not right for everyone. And for many people, weighing and measuring are things they do for a limited period of time.

 

A food plan creates a boundary around the food—your food is figured out for you. Having boundaries around food can carry over into the rest of your life and help you have boundaries around relationships. As we talked about the other week, this will be really helpful when you need to say no or "not now" to a request in order to protect your self-care plan.

 

And just like the boundaries in our relationships need to change over time, your food may also be changed or "tweaked" with the support of a professional, a trusted mentor or a sponsor. 

 

Stay tuned for the next post, where members of the White Picket Fence Counseling Center team will reveal some of our own self-care routines, and talk about what we do to keep them up.