Hello Beautiful.
I know what it feels like to believe that you will never be able to get to a place where you love your body.
Or even like it.
I know what it feels like to look in the mirror after yet another failed diet attempt, after another shopping trip that reminds you that you are not the size you want to be, after another vacation where all the photos come back as symbols of your unacceptable shape and size.
I also know what it feels like to get to a place where the turmoil of a terrible relationship with my body is a thing of the past. Where I can get dressed in the morning and not worry about how my clothes are going to fit. Where I can eat what I want and not worry if I am 'going to gain weight.'
Where I can gain weight and not really be phased by it. Where I can gain weight and not really notice.
I am not some magical unicorn. I don't have any special gene that has blessed me with the ability to love my body. In fact, I would say my life was more stacked in the opposite direction. There was more of a probability that I would struggle with my weight, my body image and my relationship with food for the rest of my life than there was a probability that I would turn into someone who genuinely loves me.
Lets take a few steps back though, to see if you can relate.
Me And Eating Disorder Were Star Crossed Lovers:
I started hating my body pretty early on in life. By the time I was in middle school, I was aware that it did not look the way it 'should' - ie. it was not thin enough, long enough, lean enough. It did not allow me to have the kind of body confidence that the popular, thin girls seemed to have.
I was the classic tail of a girl who can't stand herself, and thus plummets into a long battle with eating disorder, body image issues and all the typical expressions.
But even before the idea that there could be a wrong way for my body to look, my body FELT wrong.
I had stomach aches from the day I was born, all the way through my childhood, my adolescence and into my early adulthood.
My body, from as early as I can remember, was a kind of evil, fun inhibitor.
My friends could eat whatever they wanted, they could run around and have fun. My body seemed to want to stop me from being normal at every turn.
I could not eat the ice cream cake at the birthday parties. I could not snack on pizza and pasta and chips without fearing the consequences of gastric distress.
Combine that with the teachings of the church that my body was somehow 'evil.' That it was something I must learn to discipline, subdue and bring under my control. The idea that my flesh was here for the sole purpose of leading me off my path of righteousness, constantly trying to tempt me to away from being the 'good girl' I so desperately wanted to be.
Puberty Pushed Me Over The Edge
Then, when puberty hit, the proverbial straw that broke this camels back was placed. I felt dirty. I felt shame. I felt totally and completely out of control.
I gained weight, got stretch marks, boobs, a butt and hips all seemingly over night. Six months after I started my menstrual cycle I grew some very painful cysts on my ovaries.
So for me, my entire life with my body had been sewn with the over and under tones of shame, embarrassment, lack of control, pain and the constant threat of being made evil, bad and wrong.
The whole experience of being in a body felt wrong.
There was not a single element that felt right for me.
If that were not enough, I was also energetically sensitive to the point that I internalized the pain and negative emotions of everyone around me. From birth I was under the false impression that it was job to fix the sadness, depression, anger, anxiety and generally uneasy emotional climate of my home and school environments. And where did I feel all of these negative emotions I had no actual power to fix? You guessed it, in my body.
In my heart.
In my gut.
In my throat.
Congestion, heaviness, fuzziness, discomfort.
I, unknowingly and instinctively, did everything I could to manipulate myself so that I could make everyone around me happy. I tried to be quiet, needless, happy and enjoyable to be around. The only problem with this was, the harder I tried to be this person, the less I seemed capable of expressing these characteristics. In fact, the harder I tried to be good, the more I would act out. The more my emotions would get the better of me. The needier, sadder, more desperate I became.
Arriving at the conclusion that all of my problems in life - all my discomfort in social situations, all my pain, all my stress and emotional vulnerability, all my shame, guilt, obvious lack of goodness - could easily be blamed on my body, and therefor 'fixed' if my body would just get in line, an eating disorder was the obvious next step.
It seemed so rational and logical at the time. It seemed like the solution I had been searching for all my life. It made absolute perfect sense.
All the thin people I knew seemed happy. They seemed well liked. They seemed free. The only discernible difference between them and myself seemed to be the body. If I could just get thin, all of my issues would magically disappear. I was sure of it.
Yes It Was About Control, And No It Was Not About Control:
Often when people look at eating disorders or weight issues in general, the idea that it is 'all about control' comes up.
I agree with this to a degree. There was certainly an aspect of myself that felt like I was out of control.
I could not control the pain I was in all the time. I could not control my irrational reaction to life. I could not control the personality that made me needy, desperate and therefore undesirable. I could not control how others around me felt or treated me.
But I could control the amount of food I was putting in my mouth, and eventually I could control my weight - and that was basically the same thing to me at the time.
At the same time, as I look a little deeper, I see that what I REALLY wanted, what I was really craving - was acceptance. Love. Validation. I was looking to be seen. Heard. Felt. Acknowledged in my experience.
Control was a far cry from satisfying. It was a good distraction. But it was no kind of solution. Because it was not really addressing any real issue.
What Actually Helped Me To Start Loving My Body:
Self validation.
Introspection with the intention of learning to LIKE what I found, rather than fix what I found.
Evaluating my life, and allowing myself to slowly but surly create a lifestyle that actually works for ME - one that is not all that 'normal' or 'conventional' - and learning to be OK with that.
Going in and healing past traumas. Not allowing all those negative beliefs I had been carrying around about myself for so long to stay rooted. I made the conscious choice, over and over again, to choose self love, self approval, and to replace limiting beliefs with more positive ones. Even in the face of evidence to support how shitty I was. I decided enough was enough. I got to decide how I saw myself.
Owning up to where I was, and not making that wrong or bad.
Letting myself be who I was, without apologizing for it.
Tuning into my emotions and acknowledging them, not making myself wrong for feeling them.
Validation.
I also had to let go of a lot. A lot of foundational, core beliefs that I had held about myself and the world from the time I was old enough to have thoughts and beliefs about myself and the world.
I had to choose to believe positive things about the way that I naturally am, even in the face of other people believing negative things about the way that I am. I had to take all the bullying, all the being told I was 'too this' and 'too that' and I had to say "You know what, I LIKE IT." You can hate it all you want, you can think it is wrong all you want, at the end of the day, I have to choose how I am going to feel about myself, and I choose to feel good.
I had to release a worldview that supported my self hate, and adopt one that supported my self love.
It is a process I am still learning, and I am ok with that. I am not headed towards any kind of perfect goal place. Just learning, every day, how to love, accept and validate myself deeper and deeper.
Once I started, the process carried me.
All I had to do was open the door to seeing things in a new way. To stop trying to force my square peg into a life of a round hole. I had to let go. I had to re-evaluate. I had to change.
I had to change - not by body. My mind. My insides. My perspectives and perceptions.
I had to change my reactions. My knee jerk responses to myself.
I had to open the door to a new life. Once I did, the new life carried me. It still carries me.
I am in no way 'finished.'
I still have rough days. Down days. Down weeks. But I am more and more OK with that. More and more accepting that there is nothing wrong with me. I am allowed to feel. To express. To hibernate, be loud, be sad, be scared - I am allowed to be human.
I am allowed to hunger. I am allowed to consume. I am allowed to take up space.
Bit by bit, I found my love for myself.
Bit by bit.
<3
