body image

“In all the years I've been a therapist, I've yet to meet one girl who likes her body.”
― Mary Pipher

i am a woman who hates her body. i have spent years talking about body image, teaching young girls to love themselves, and yet, here i am, admitting to the world, that i hate hate hate my body. 

“You are imperfect, permanently and inevitably flawed. And you are beautiful.” 
― Amy Bloom

intellectually i get that i am more than my body. intellectually i can understand that it is my mind, my personality, my love, that makes me who i am. but emotionally, i am my body. this body that doesn't move the way i want it to. 

“You are not a mistake. You are not a problem to be solved. But you won't discover this until you are willing to stop banging your head against the wall of shaming and caging and fearing yourself.” 
― Geneen Roth

i am constantly trying to reinvent myself. and banging my head against the wall of shame. i am constantly judging myself and my body. holding up the image of myself against the thin bodies around me. 

“To lose confidence in one’s body is to lose confidence in oneself.” 
― Simone de Beauvoir

my lack of confidence in my body and in myself is overwhelming at times. i want to hide away inside my house and never be seen. being seen is my worst fear. and i have to be seen every day, which really sucks to be honest. 

“A cultural fixation on female thinness is not an obsession about female beauty but an obsession about female obedience.” 
― Naomi Wolf

this post is about my journey from self-hatred. 

i wish i knew where the journey was going to ...

“Even the models we see in magazines wish they could look like their own images.” 
― Cheri K. Erdman

our ideal image of beauty is false. i get that. i don't want to look like pages from a magazine. but i do want to look like the thin women i see walking down the street. and i know that they want to look like someone else as well. we all have parts of us that we wish we could change.

“Every woman knows that, regardless of all her other achievements, she is a failure if she is not beautiful.” 
― Germaine Greer,

i have always wished to be beautiful AND smart. and if i had to choose, i think i would choose beautiful. which is sad. but it's the truth. 

“Weight (too much or too little) is a by-product. Weight is what happens when you use food to flatten your life. Even with aching joints, it's not about food. Even with arthritis, diabetes, high blood pressure. It's about your desire to flatten your life. It's about the fact that you've given up without saying so. It's about your belief that it's not possible to live any other way -- and you're using food to act that out without ever having to admit it.” 
― Geneen Roth

i spent years flattening my life - using food to numb my feelings. over the last year i have been learning to feel my feelings and i am happy to say that i no longer turn to food. i eat when i am hungry. i eat meals. i eat snacks. and i don't binge. 

unfortunately, it's taking my body a long time to catch up with my actions. i feel like i am stuck in this body that no longer represents my behaviours.

“Every weight loss program, no matter how positively it’s packaged, whispers to you that you’re not right. You’re not good enough. You’re unacceptable and you need to be fixed.” 
― Kim Brittingham

i have dieted for years. lost weight, and then gained it back. because dieting didn't address my problem. dieting told me that i wasn't good enough - told me that i needed to be a better version of myself and that if i deprived myself i would get thin. and i was never thin enough. but i was deprived. and then i would "cheat" on my diet and feel like crap. and i would figure, well i screwed that up, i might as well keep eating. 

and eating. and eating. and numbing myself to all my emotions. 

“Eating – overeating – saved me. It comforted me when I was at the mercy of grown-ups who didn't know how to give what I needed. Food was something to which I had ready access, and with it I cleverly fashioned a survival mechanism that pulled me back from the edge of insanity. – a young MacGuyver of angst and junk food.” 
― Kim Brittingham

i learned from a young age that food would soothe me in the ways that the adults around me couldn't. and now i have unlearned to use food to soothe. 

but there is so much more to unlearn.

this is my journey, and welcome to it ...

“I have a body, 
but I am not my body.
I have a face, 
but I am not my face.” 
― Iyanla Vanzant

be kind to yourself, 

xoxo

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the rules

having an eating disorder involves having rules around food and eating. often the rules are complex and to the outside world ridiculous or nonsensical. 

****NOTE: the rules only apply to me. I don't pay attention to what other people eat or how other people eat. 

here are my rules:

1. never eat crunchy food in front of other people. it makes too much noise and draws attention to the fact that i am eating. 

2. never eat messy food in front of other people. messy food is anything that gets on your hands, teeth, or lips. no powdered sugar, no jam, no creamy sauces, nothing sticky, nothing that could get on your hands. 

3. chicken wings are a non-negotiable item. they must never be eaten. meat on a bone is a mostly never item. but chicken wings, especially with sauce, are never ever ever ever allowed. 

4. salad must be consumed without dressing. dressing is a sauce. sauce is messy. messy means drawing attention to my eating. 

5. fruit and vegetables are acceptable items to eat in public. it's better if they are cut into smaller pieces rather than just eating them whole. but whole is acceptable in certain circumstances or when cutting them is not an option. 

6. doughnuts ... doughnuts are a no-no in public. however, if the rule is broken and i am to eat one, there are certain rules applied to said doughnut. first, it must be fairly plain. no powder, no filling. second, if it has icing on top, then i must tear a small piece off the bottom and put it on top of the icing and then tear that piece off making a little sandwich. i can then eat that bite-sized piece. third, all donuts and other pastries must be plain and eaten in bite-sized pieces. 

7. sandwiches are to be eaten by tearing off small pieces, like the above description of the doughnut. biting into a sandwich is entirely unacceptable. 

8. soup? don't even think about it. i might slurp, thus drawing attention to my eating. or it could drip on my chin. no way i am taking that kind of a chance in public. 

9. there are sometimes exceptions to these rules when faced with public settings. however, it is completely uncomfortable to be in these settings and i am aware of every bite. 

10. nothing brown because it can get on my teeth and people will see it and then they will know i was eating. attention drawn = bad.

11. if given a choice, i would always eat alone in private. but eating is such a social experience that i force myself to eat with other people despite my discomfort. 

and now you know how completely insane i am. welcome to my world of food and eating rules. 

do you have rules? what are they?

be kind to yourself,

xoxo

...

a weighty topic

i want to write about being fat. 

i want to write about how my weight has always been the business of my family, my doctors, and strangers. 

this is a photo of me at age 7. i thought that i was enormously and hideously fat. my food intake was commented on; monitored .... i believed that my stomach was huge. that my thighs were huge.

i was embarrassed about how fat i was ....

... look again at that photo. look how thin i was! and i was convinced, by the people around me, that i was fat and ugly and worthless and undeserving.

and these feelings became a self-fulfilling prophesy. 

and now, 30 years later, my body continues to be everyone else's business. 

no matter what doctor i go to see. no matter what medical concern i have. the answer i am given is always to "lose weight" as if i haven't tried. 

i have been offered bribes by people who claim to love me, or who are supposed to love me, that if i lose weight they will buy me things. 

radical t said: " I don't think people get that no matter what we [women with PCOS] go to the doctor for, certain doctors will always bring up the weight. it is the last taboo..."

doctors believe the myths about fat people too. 

i want to write about the comments that strangers make. about men bumping into me and telling me "move it fat bitch" or just randomly making comments. yelling "fat ass" at me. i want to write about the time i went into a restaurant and heard some teenagers say "she better only order salad."

i want to write about how i can't eat junk food in front of other people. 

i want to write about the shame i feel when i shop with someone who can go into any store and try on clothes and i can't. i want to write about how embarrassing it is when someone says, "that would look good on you, go try it on!" and i know that it is 4 sizes too small and that it's the biggest size in the store. 

i want to write about trying to squeeze into booths in restaurants. i want to write about the discomfort on an airplane. 

but there are no words for these thoughts and feelings. and i can't write about them. they are self-loathing feelings. they are self-hating thoughts. they are words thrown at myself from all sides. thoughts: fat. ugly. lazy. stupid. being fat means you suck. being fat means you have no willpower. being fat means you sit and eat junk food all day. being fat means that you eat macdonalds every day. being fat means you are lazy. 

WIDELY HELD AND ACCEPTED BELIEFS ABOUT FAT PEOPLE:

• fat people have no willpower
• fat people are sad
• fat people have low self-esteem
• fat people are unhealthy and are going to die young
• fat people eat uncontrollably
• fat people don't know why they are fat
• if fat people really wanted to lose weight they could
• fat people are lonely
• fat people are ugly
• fat people can't find love

the truth is that being fat is an outward expression of my inside wounds. each pound, a story of pain. if i were to keep a food journal and publish it, thin readers would be shocked at what i eat. i LOOK like i eat fried food all day long followed by chips, chocolate, and doughnuts. 

but that isn't what a typical day of food looks like for me. 

i start with a cup of tea. my stomach gurgles and rumbles and wants food. but i punish myself for being fat and i refuse to eat. i like the feeling of control that i have by deciding what goes into me. eventually i give in and i will eat either yogurt and fruit, or toast with peanut butter. then the morning turns to noon and i start to think about the fact that i have to eat some sort of food for lunch. and i practice that messed up control of not eating as my stomach calls out for food. noon becomes 2pm and i start to feel a bit weak and dizzy so i give in and eat something. maybe soup, or salad, or more toast. sometimes i don't give in and i make more tea instead. dinner time comes along and i don't really feel hungry, but SC is hungry so i cook something. maybe chicken and vegetables. maybe some rice. (brown rice for me). at some point in the evening, my stomach begins to yell at me for not feeding it throughout the day. so i have a banana or i cut up and apple. 

once in awhile i will allow myself to have a couple of chocolate mini-eggs. i used to eat the entire bag at once. but since i have given myself permission to eat them, i only need to have 2 or 3 of them because i know i can go back for more another day if i want to. 


Zed read this post for me. i was curious about her thoughts. she said: 

you've hit the nail on the head with how you feel about food and fat. so many people feel the way you do, believe me - WE ALL DO! the self loathing and hatred is a very difficult thing to get over. when I'm out and about, doing errands, shopping whatever - i feel invisible. people can't see me. or they choose not too. most of the times i don't mind, as i have a hard time dealing with strangers as it is. but then i wonder - am i invisible? can people see right thru me? or do they choose not to look at me because looking at me makes them feel disgusted and they feel more worthy than me. am i really less of a person because i am MORE of a person? hard things to deal with. but i try. i make myself go out and be in the world because i matter, no matter what my size is. i dress a certain way because it makes me feel good and attractive and better about myself. and FUCK what everyone else thinks!! i refuse to hide from the world because i don't look like what 'they' or 'society' says i should look like! that's my thoughts on this very contentious issue!

being fat isn't a choice. and i have tried many times to not be fat. but i shouldn't have to. and i face enough hatred and judgment from myself. i don't need to experience it from strangers on the street. 

I leave you with this thought:

be kind to yourself, regardless of your size, regardless of how you see your size ...

xoxo

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