The Safety of the Freezer

This evening, I posted on Twitter, and Facebook, about removing the temptation of a box of Oreo (or the natural-er version of said brand name cookie) cookies by putting them in the freezer.  My subsquent note was how the freezer was a veritable burial ground for foods I don't want to eat.  Resulting comments, IMs and an email have all one conclusion: throw it away.

I'd love to; I think about it often.  When I went vegan I put all the remaining animal product in the freezer, I will buy chocolate, or as in this case, cookies, and put them in the freezer after eating the few I initially wanted.  Typically this happens when I start to freak out about the calories or eating too much.  It is, admittedly, a left over (pun intended) of the worst days and months of an eating disorder.

Recently, this blog has become a little heavy in talking about how I've dealt with, or not dealt with, recovery from what was diagnosed as anorexia, but I prefer to call disordered eating.  Part of the reason for this is like someone in recovery from alcoholism, you are always really recovering.  It is easy to relapse over time, or at least that's my perception--and as I get better, find my energy levels restored and get back into a workout/training schedule I love, it takes me back to that time.  The best I can do is be aware, understand my patterns, respect myself and really, learn to talk about it openly.  My hope is that like talking about some of my other experiences in life, I can also help someone else going through something similar.

So the cookies are in the freezer... as is a stash of Cadbury Eggs I will never eat, some cheese, fish, and who knows what else I needed to hide to be safe from.  It's a device I learned to allow me to keep chocolate in the house -- so long as I knew it was there, I didn't want it and I wouldn't buy it elsewhere.  It's a habit I never fully gave up, and I recognize I probably won't anytime soon. A habit I fully lauded and recommended to others as an effective dieting strategy.

Will I throw out the offending items?  Yes.  It won't be this weekend, it may not be next weekend, but I will. I always do.  And once again, I'm grateful for the great friends out there telling me to clean out the freezer.