It doesn’t happen often for me anymore; I don’t often have moments or days when I really take a closer look at what’s going on in my life and see whether or not there are some remnants of disordered thinking and behaviors lurking in the corner.

I used to. There were times when recovery was a lot more new that would lead to questioning every little thing:

• If I had a sinus infection and was feeling dizzy with the pressure, my first impulse was to question whether I’d eaten enough or if I might be dehydrated.
• If I became completely engrossed in a project at home or at work and I realized that hours had passed without eating, drinking, or stepping away for a break, I’d start poking at the corners and trying to figure out whether there was something that I was consciously avoiding.
• If I was out with a group of friends and everyone else was drinking more than I was or ordering dessert and I wasn’t, I’d tick through a list of internal questions in an effort to verify whether or not I was abstaining because it felt right for me in that moment or because I was making some sort of effort to avoid consuming the extra calories.
• If I picked up a book that had some sort of theme of overcoming depression or recovery, I spent some time checking in to make sure that I wasn’t looking for answers to some sort of problem I hadn’t even realized that I had.

On many levels, I think that these regular check-ins were less about mindfulness and being aware of my own experience than they were about self-doubt. Illness had robbed me of so much – including self-awareness – and I had spent so much time denying/covering what I was doing that it seemed entirely too easy for those patterns and behaviors to come back into play.

Last week I wrote a post about diet season being upon us in full force. Since then, I’ve pretty much kept the TV and radio off and have limited my newspaper reading because, frankly, I was getting tired of being angry about all of the messaging. I’ve seen too many people struggle with chronic dieting/restricting – but I’ve also seen the flipside of that: I know a lot of people who have healthier relationships with food but who don’t always choose the options that are giving their bodies what they need. And that’s led me to another check-in on where I’m at. It’s probably worth commenting at this point that after all of the emotional hits I’ve taken in the last few months, I can’t keep denying that I’ve sunk into a fairly deep depression – which is alarming in and of itself.

But there’s something else going on that I haven’t really talked about – except with my partner. I’ve had a lot of limitations to my ability to work out during the past months. I’ve had a lot of body changes that were expected, but are still a little jarring. I’ve also realized that the dietary guidelines I received during treatment aren’t exactly meeting the needs of my body any more – and that means that I’m making some minor tweaks here and there.

I know that this is something that healthy people do. I know that it’s in my best interest to do it. I also know how quickly making one small change can lead to another, to another, to another, and to another until the whole thing spirals out of control – and that’s the part that scares me right now.

Fear is never a good reason not to do something that must be done. Doing what we’ve always done gets us the same results. When changes are necessary, they must be made – no matter how awkward or terrifying they may seem. I’ll check in with myself – probably more than necessary – throughout the process, but I’d love some feedback: when you are in recovery, how do you go about making changes that some could see as triggering to the behaviors you’ve overcome?