We all know those people who seem to be put in our lives just to trigger our eating disorders. You know the ones, the people who can’t help but mention the calories in their snack bar, how many miles they ran yesterday, or how carbs are the number one threat to society? Yeah, those people. Some of them are our family members and friends, some of them are the people we work with, and some are the random people in line while you pick up your morning coffee. Regardless, they’re everywhere! We obviously can’t control all of the people on the planet, but we can choose who we have in our inner circle.

So many of my clients mention friends and coworkers they spend time with who constantly trigger their eating disorders. They mention them all the time: “Sarah is training for a marathon, which is making me feel super lazy.” and “It was hard to eat today when Laura never eats lunch”. Whenever I hear these comments, I think, Jeez, you need new friends!  Obviously, that is easier said than done, but not one of my close friends adheres to a strict diet. I just have no interest in spending my free time with people who ascribe to diet culture and talk incessantly about food and exercise.  In fact, I often tell my clients there is nothing I would rather talk about less than food. It’s a part of my job so it’s necessary, but the thoughts and feelings around the food are far more important to me. I was explaining this thought to a client this past week when I came up with the following analogy which she helped me develop.

Say you bought your first home; you remodeled the entire thing, from top to bottom. You picked out everything – all the fixtures, trims, paint colors, and then carefully selected each piece of furniture. As your final accent rug is delivered and you put it in place, you invite some friends over. When they show up to your front door, they are holding kindling, lighter fluid, and matches. They tell you they’ve got a better idea for your home – make it into a massive bon fire! You decide to let them in, after all they are your friends!

More than likely, you would never do that, right? Well, that is what you are doing when you invite people into your life who ascribe to diet culture. You are saying, eh, to hell with this life I’ve built for myself, I’m going to risk it all in the name of friendship! The home in this analogy correlates to our lives in recovery and includes our bodies, minds, souls, relationships, hobbies, and passions. In recovery we have carefully resurrected and recreated these facets of ourselves. Think about that the next time you are with one of these people. Are they helping you burn down your hard work, or are they contributing to your recovery and overall life?

For some of us, we don’t have the luxury to kick diet-loving folks to the curb and in that case it’s important to remember that you are playing with fire. How do we control a fire? We have fire extinguishers, we have smoke alarms, we are careful with how close we get to the flame. These are some of the skills we need to employ when spending time with the diet lovers in our lives. We need to make sure we don’t get burnt by not eating with them or not spending time with them alone. We need to listen to our own internal “smoke alarms” and use some positive self-talk or leave a situation that is triggering. We cannot sit and let it all burn by engaging with their diets, exercise, etc. We have to know and truly believe that we have tried things their way. We have tried to control the food, we have tried restrictive diets, we have tried excessive exercise, and it led to illness, obsession, and misery. We must remember that their way will burn our “homes” completely to the ground.