Good morning! In case you haven’t noticed, February only has one day left. What?! It’s hard for me to believe that another month is almost behind us, and another week is wrapping up as well. I’m linking up with Clare again on this lovely Friday to recap the last week of February for you all, and I’m giving this Five Things Friday post a recovery spin to finish off National Eating Disorders Awareness Week. This past week has been quite representative of the non-linear experience of recovery for me. I have had days where I have felt fantastic, motivated, and upbeat. I have also had days where recovery felt harder and unhealthy, disordered thoughts and habits crept in. That is true recovery, though. It has pitfalls and successes, but as long as we are moving toward recovery in the big scheme of things, we are doing just fine.
Five Things I Ate
1. Homemade bran muffins dominated in the snack realm this week. It’s crazy to think that I used to be afraid of eating homemade things. These were fantastic and I will definitely be making them again.
2. Aussie Bites are amazing. If you haven’t tried them, they taste like cookie dough. The nutrient density of them scared me for a long time, but I ate a couple this week and remembered how delicious they are!
3. Day old baked goods rarely disappoint. This was a strawberry almond muffin, which I popped in the toaster oven to give it some life and shared with coworkers. Shared food is a beautiful thing.
4. I had a tasty Cobb salad from work the other day consisting of bacon, chicken, egg, kale, tomatoes, cucumbers, and beets. I also added cottage cheese, which made it even better.
5. I have been enjoying these unimaginably delicious dark chocolate sea salt covered caramel corn pieces that we started selling at work. Oh my word. They make a fabulous chocolate boost in the afternoons!
Five Things I Pinned
An interesting read on the many ways that disordered eating affects our bodies.
Preach it, Emma.
Some great first steps toward overcoming fear foods.
I have definitely felt that I’m not doing enough with my life since beginning recovery because I moved home. This is such an important reminder that recovering is hard work, and it is the most important work of our lives.
A wonderful intention to start each day in recovery.
Five Things Making Me Happy
For this segment of the post, I am going to focus on things that I can now do in recovery, which my disorder prevented me from doing for so long.
1. Visiting wonderful friends and enjoying myself!
2. Adding milk to my coffee, because yum.
3. Sleeping, soundly and wonderfully. Along the same lines, dreaming while I sleep. When I was most sick, I did not remember my dreams if I had them at all and I woke up in the early hours of the morning starving and unable to let myself eat. I never, ever want to experience that again.
4. Play games with friends and have fun doing so, even if the games are rather unethical.
5. Going out for drinks with coworkers and eat some of an appetizer because I am hungry, rather than starving until I can go home and eat something “safe”.
That’s it for this week’s post! I hope your week has been fantastic, and you are able to enjoy the weekend. I’m working quite a bit this weekend, but I don’t mind. Recovery has made me able to I focus on my work, truly enjoy my job, and live my life once again. I did not always think it was possible, but with hard work and patience, recovery has proven to be well worth the effort.
Loved and Worthy of Love 
I love reading your Five Things Friday posts. Those dark chocolate caramel bites look absolutely delicious. Will you send me some?? 😉 Your recovery is so uplifting. Even though we struggle sometimes, just think how far we have come. xx
Thank you! You are exactly right – we have come through so much and even though it is easy to get caught up in how far we have to go, it’s pretty incredible what we have already done 🙂
What is the name of your sleep app? Do you like it? Your food looks delicious this week!
Thank you! It was tasty 🙂 The app is called Sleep Cycle and I love it. I don’t usually pay that much attention to the graphs and stuff, but it comes with really great alarms that wake you up gently, when you’re in the lightest part of the sleep cycle. It’s great!
Awesome. I will have to download it today. I have been curious about finding a non fitness tracker sleep app/data method and this looks like the perfect method. Those Aussie bites look interesting too!