For those of you that are unfamiliar with Jewish holiday of Passover, allow me to tell you the basics and why it sucks to celebrate with an eating disorder. Passover is the story of when Moses and the Jews leave Egypt and the plagues happen. In a nutshell. Point is that for eight days, we cannot eat bread. Or anything with the five basic grains in it. This makes not losing weight (especially when exercising) nearly impossible. Usually I use this holiday as a means of easy weight loss. I mean it isn't my fault we have this tradition. But this year was different. I didn't want the weight loss. I know what it would mean to my life right now if I lost weight and the consequences were not worth it. Needless to say that after the first five days... the scale was not happy with me. So, I was then faced with an important decision: keep Passover and possibly lose gymnastics or break Passover early and gain the weight back. I will admit that this put my mind in a very weird crossroad. I felt immense guilt over the idea of breaking Passover early. It is a huge deal to not keep it. But the weight loss scared me and so did the thoughts that were coming with it. So, that night I made the decision that the idea of Pikuach Nefesh (preserving life above all else) was able to come into play here. If I lost more weight and went down the rabbit hole again, I might not make it out alive this time. And that wasn't worth it. That is what made this year's Passover so special for me. The breaking of tradition and dealing with the guilt was me proclaiming once more that I can get free from all of this. After all, Passover is about freedom and keeping the Jewish people alive. If I had kept it both of those things would have been gone for me. I know it.
Holidays and traditions are important but don't let them take away your recovery
Stay Strong
xo Aria
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