“FEAR is an acronym in the English language for 'False Evidence Appearing Real'” - Neale Donald Walsch

So much progress this week. So many positive thoughts. And then I drink a glass of lemonade and my confidence in recovery starts crumbling. Yes, lemonade. Who knew?

I know that "safe foods" and "unsafe foods" vary person to person. For me specifically, all throughout my eating disorder, I have refused to drink calories. Eating them was bad enough, I certainly wasn't going to drink them too. That meant that if it wasn't water or diet soda, I wasn't drinking it. Even now that I am much much healthier and fairly far along into the recovery process, I still have that same old fear of drinking calories. I also made the mistake, after I drank the lemonade, to read the package information (it was from a bottle). I drank 250 lemonade calories.

I freaked out a little bit.

But I didn't throw up. I didn't stop eating. I didn't call myself fat or do a bunch of stomach crunches or anything irrational. I had a wonderful dinner. I am only upset, not because I drank those extra calories, but because I'm bothered by drinking those extra calories. Shouldn't I be past that by now? Even if I didn't have a physical response to the fear of calories, (which is progress) it proves that the fear of calories itself is still present inside of me when I thought that it wasn't. Why am I still worrying about those things? It's lemonade, right? Lemons, sugar, water. It isn't poison. It isn't going to kill me.

I know that, don't I?

I am going to stay positive.

At least I drank it. A year ago, I would have drank it and thrown up immediately. 2 years ago I wouldn't have drank it at all. And I wouldn't have had dinner either.

I have come a long way.

I have to remember that.

And there is no shame in admitting that maybe I still have a long way left to go.