Inspired by a very brave client...
When you're feeling lost,
When you're feeling scared,
When your eating disorder is drowning you and it feels like there is no way out,
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Does anyone else have trouble stopping eating when they feel full? I have recently decided to re-tune into this, because I've noticed how easy it is for me to eat past the point of comfortable fullness when I'm fully enjoying food without any restrictions or limits present. Which I am completely okay with, and I don't allow any guilt or shame to enter the equation at all. However, I do notice sometimes, that the "overfull" feeling I might experience can be distracting or cause difficulty with falling asleep, or even digestive upset. So I decided to give this some attention, and guess what I've rediscovered?
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Weight stigma hurts individuals and society as a whole. We need to be more mindful of the language that we use, and what we imply under the surface.
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This week, I had a plan to write about getting rid of old clothes that no longer fit and finding some new stuff that made me feel good, as being an amazing act of self care. However, my recent mood and the contents in my head that I'm ruminating over have prompted me to write about something that's a little heavier, but that a lot of people can relate to - grief. Because this week, grief caught me totally off guard and smacked me right in the face.
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A lot of those old issues have resurfaced in recent months, most likely because my birthday and the passage into the next decade have been on my mind. I find the parallels to the diet cycle ironic - just like dieting to lose weight leads to a constant preoccupation with food, the anxiety around turning forty has laser-focused my attention on all things age-related. And since our bodies are often our dumping ground for uncomfortable thoughts and feelings, a lot of the anxiety around mortality and aging has been funneled into my own body insecurities.
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In any population, weights are distributed along a bell curve the same way that heights are. There will always be people at the higher end of the weight spectrum, and the lower end as well. In other words, in any population, there will always be be fat people and there will always be thin people, and lots of people of all shapes and sizes in between.
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I am patiently waiting - actually longing - for the day when this is no longer the norm, and we can start to accept and embrace a wide range of bodies as normal, healthy and attractive. When we can start to focus on behaviour changes and creating healthy habits that are entirely separate from weight.
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Fill in the blank: When I lose weight....
What do you think will happen? Be honest with yourself. Because in order to permanently change any behaviours that you find problematic, you have to become really clear on what you are expecting to find on the other side. Once you do this, you can evaluate if the expectation is reasonable or sound, or even real.
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Women (and men) fight with food everyday. We fight with our bodies. We fight to change our weight, and it's a struggle that's never ending. We fight to achieve standards of perfection that keep shifting. We fight to lose weight because society tells us we're not attractive or healthy enough. We fight because health professionals tell us our weight needs to fall in the left side of 24.9 on the BMI chart or else we are putting our lives at risk. We fight because the US government has declared a war on obesity. We fight a tug-of-war between nourishment and pleasure, as if it has to be one or the other. We fight our cravings for "unclean" foods because we are, after all, one French fry away from developing heart disease.
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This past weekend, I had the honour of participating in Eating Disorders Awareness Week here in Edmonton. I was asked to sit on a Q&A panel with three other esteemed colleagues at an Eating Disorder Symposium that was attended by health professionals and future health sector grads.
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