Are you Cracking up over Chocolate this Easter?

Festivals, celebrations, religious events; you feel thrilled and all together anxious thinking about them. On the one hand, you love the anticipation and excitement of a break from the daily grind; welcoming gatherings with loved ones along with the shared camaraderie of celebrating these markers of life. On the other hand, you dread the impact these events have on your relationship with food with abundant eating, familial expectations and lack of routine all delivered in one go. It is a complex mix to manage. Now it is the Easter break that is on your mind.

Rows of chocolate eggs line the supermarket shelves, their coloured foil simultaneously sparkling and taunting you. Last week, you decided to buy your Easter gifts for family and friends. Coming home, laden with several chocolate goodies of varying sizes, you quickly hid them right at the back of the cupboard out of view. Just having them in the room really unsettled you and they have been silently screaming at you since. Last night, you kept opening and closing the cupboard door, just tempted to have a little, tiny bite. You decided against it; it was too risky. You might eat the whole lot in one go. You know this has happened before, and then how would you feel? How you wish you could feel in control around food.

And if it was only just the food you needed to worry about over the Easter holiday. Bearing down on you, you feel the expectations of yourself, friends, and family. You are planning to stay at your parent’s house for a couple of nights over Easter. You’re not sure exactly why, but you know that this often triggers patterns of difficult eating. You go so full of grand intentions and plan to be very controlled and rule bound. So quickly, you feel overwhelmed and the intentions are sidelined. Food seems to be the whole focus of the day and every meal brings on feelings of anxiety as you try to navigate a way through it. You feel compelled to try out different dishes and not miss out, but then sometimes end up overeating or bingeing and feeling out of control. Other times, you try and restrict and feel deprived as you see your loved ones share and enjoy eating together.  Inside you feel lonely, frustrated and despairing. No-one understands how tricky this all is for you. You find yourself being irritable and cross with those close to you but then also guilty. You don’t want you mood to be ruled by thoughts of food. You long to be able to join in and relax like everyone else seems to be doing.

You may recognise yourself here, and might question the possibility of ever feeling better about food and your eating. At WeightMatters, we can help. We have a warm, experienced and professional team who can support you through one-to-one therapy and nutritional support. We can help you to establish sustainable eating patterns and a healthy relationship with food through combined psychological and nutritional interventions. We can help you manage symptoms that may be affecting your daily life such as bingeing, restricting or purging. We can also support you in understanding why you are using food to cope and to work on the underlying reasons to bring about long lasting change.  Please do get in touch with us today. We look forward to hearing from you.