Rules

Every time I talk about treatment, I mention some of the crazy rules or nuances of treatment. These normally get me a "wtf face". I decided I will compose a list of the craziness of treatment. :)

This is a work in progress, much similar to my recovery :)


1. You cannot break your cookie. You must take the entire cookie, raise it to your mouth, and bite into it. It does not matter if the cookie is stale and is too hard for you to bite. The only exception to this rule is if you are at Panera.

2. When you have cereal, you must make sure that all the flakes of cereal and all the almond slices are cleaned from your bowl. You cannot have any food particles remaining in your bowl. If you leave almond slices or cereal flakes in your bowl, you will be redirected to take your spoon and get all the remaining pieces before leaving the table. This sometimes will result in you having to spend about five minutes working on getting tiny slivers of food from your bowl, but that is not what is important. What is important is that you are not acting on your eating disorder.

3. If you are having cereal, you can have Raisin Bran and yogurt. You can have Cherrios and yogurt. If they are out of Cherrios, you can have Frosted Flakes with yogurt. If it is any other cereal, or if you do not mix your yogurt into your cereal creating some weird somewhat gelatinous substance then you must put milk in your cereal. This rule gets very complicated, so I will subdivide.
a) You cannot have yogurt with cereal unless you mix the cereal with the yogurt.
b) If you don't have yogurt, you must have milk. If you have milk, you must put it in your cereal. You cannot have dry cereal and drink milk.
c) Frosted Flakes cannot be mixed with your yogurt if Cherrios are available.
d) You can put extra raisins into your Raisin Bran as your fruit component.
e) You cannot put raisins in other cereals if it "doesn't make sense" to the dietitian. This subdivision of a rule is up to the interpretation of dietitians and online staff.
f) Having dry cereal is "eating disordered".

4. You cannot put your Mini Wheats or Frosted Mini Wheats in the microwave even though the commercials and the box tell you to do so for a "warm cereal during winter months".

5. You cannot put salt in your oatmeal, including non-flavored, original oatmeal, even though it says on the instructions to add salt.

6. You can put fruits in your yogurt if they are fresh and cut up or if they are dried and bite size. Prunes (even if cut up) cannot go into your yogurt. Dried apricots, though much larger than bite size, can go into your yogurt. Apples, bananas, strawberries, plums, etc. all can go into your yogurt and can be cut into insanely small pieces to fit into your yogurt container. Preparation of the fruit + yogurt combo can take up to fifteen minutes. I've seen this happen.

7. You cannot put apples and peanut butter on your bagel, but you can put bananas and peanut butter. Duh, that's so less eating disordered...

8. You cannot make your bagel into a peanut butter and jelly sandwich by having peanut butter and getting jelly.