EDulting: Beach Body Bullshit

It's that time of year. It seems you can't shake a sarong without hearing some diet culture BS around getting "bikini ready," and the fad diets are in full force. The unfortunately reality, is that often it's really "relapse season" for many who struggle with eating disorders/disordered eating.

The transition from Spring to Summer brings expectations of more revealing clothing, outdoor activities, and changes from more structure (school, work, kids), to less structure. All of these, on top of the extra media focus on diets and bodies, can be extra stress and triggers for those working on recovery from an eating disorder (heck, for all of us).

This month we tackle these triggers, the frustration with how the fitness/wellness industry is often the diet industry in disguise, and what to say to the haters. 

EDulting is hard, but we can do hard things. 

If watching helps you listen, here is a link to the YouTube video: https://youtu.be/QG20tfRAMMY

EDulting: Embodied Recovery

Tara and I were so pumped to have Tracy Brown, RD as a guest this month on our podcast! Tracy is a somatic nutrition and body image coach and has a wealth of experience and knowledge in helping people come home to their bodies and heal their relationship with food and weight. In this episode we discuss the process of becoming connected with your body during recovery as both a source of important information, of joy, and as a way to live out body acceptance.

Like many practitioners who value embodiment, I believe the self is inseparable from the body, that the body isn't just "a vehicle for transporting the soul," so it's refreshing to connect with someone so like-minded.

(By the way, I hate that phrase. It's often invoked when trying to convey the importance of taking care of one's body, like you would a car. The problem I have with that is continuing to view my body as an object, something to be tinkered with, maintained, and repaired without regard to the essential interconnectedness and interdependency of mind, body, and spirit. Last I checked, your mind and spirit were not dependent on your car to stay alive and learn about the world and yourself.) 

 

Tracy also has some great resources and tools if you want to learn more: 

Body Bashing Decoder: https://tracybrownrd.lpages.co/opt-in/

Hunger & Fullness Guide: https://drive.google.com/open?id=1ogJqVmq5mniDQQ3iFdGSPrSkeOVHSCSc

Training for Professionals Starts June 12!: https://tracybrownrd.lpages.co/nondiet-counseling-skills/

Join "Attuned Eating for Attuned Living": https://tracybrownrd.lpages.co/self-study-membership-site/

What the Hunger?

So many of us have no idea what hunger *really* feels like. Above are some distinctions between physical and emotional hunger. This is very useful if you tend toward eating when struggling with a tough emotion. However, I think there is a third kind of hunger we don't give much lip service to. This is a type of hunger that occurs when you have been restricting. 

"Wait!," you say, "My problem is binge eating! I don't restrict!" Not so fast. Do you swear off sweets (or chips) the day after a binge? Do you resolve to "eat right" and thus hardly eat at all? Are you eating fewer than 2000-2500 calories per day on a "good day?" Then you are restricting. In fact, this restriction (no matter how severe or mild) is what creates this third type of hunger.

I call it "Survivor Hunger." This is the hunger that flips on when you are around food or start eating after several hours (or days or weeks) of restricting. The tricky thing is, it ALSO can feel urgent and overwhelming and can leave you feeling guilty or out of control (even though it is your body kicking into survivor mode. "There's food! We're allowed to eat?! Eat it ALLLLLL, it may never come again!!")

The unfortunate reality is that many restrictive eaters and binge eaters alike will misinterpret this as "emotional hunger," ignore or otherwise distract themselves from it, shame themselves for it, and continue to deepen disordered eating. 

The answer? Before you check for physical vs. emotional hunger, ask yourself if you're eating enough and eating regularly throughout the day. If not, fix that first. You won't be able to listen and follow your hunger cues any other way. 

Want weekly tips to challenge the diet culture status quo?

Your Body is NOT to Blame

In the throes of an eating disorder, the body gets both the blame and the abuse. Body becomes the scapegoat. Sometimes this happens at a level you’re not even aware of. If your body boundaries were violated at some point, through abuse or objectification, you can fall into the trap of thinking your body itself was to blame for the abuse or attack. On top of this, our bodies take much longer to process and heal than our minds. So when the body shows the aftereffects (startling easily, panic attacks, etc.), it can deepen the belief that the body is to blame. To try to “fix” this, you may try to control your body through any means available, including disordered eating, cutting, substance abuse, relentless work, excessive exercise, and more. These efforts, in effect, tell your body to “just get over it.” The thing is, your body can’t get over it. At least not like that.

Your body needs time to process what it’s been through. It’s on this journey with you. To do this, you need to find ways to integrate your experience, your consciousness, your insights with your body. Otherwise, you will remain in battle with your body instead of letting it guide your healing.

What if you struggle with a chronic ailment or illness? Does that mean you won’t find healing? Not at all! Health and healing are not the absence of illness, but a way of being in relationship with your body. None of the therapy in the world can free you from feeling, just like restricting didn’t free you from feeling. Binging didn’t free you from feeling. Drinking didn’t free you feeling. Becoming a marathon runner didn’t free you from feeling. Get my drift?

You will begin to heal when you begin to show your body the respect and care it deserves. When you allow it to be imperfect and respond with love anyway.

We tend to have this expectation that therapy or self-help will lead to insights that will then give the healing we need to change our behavior toward our bodies. I’m guessing you already have some insights about why you treat yourself the way you do. Did those epiphanies change your behavior? Maybe for a little while. Then you find yourself falling back into harmful patterns, now armed with the guilt that comes with the awareness of why you are doing it, the harm it will cause, and doing it anyway. The issue that knowledge not embodied is not yet learned. When you start serving your body, tending to your body, and caring for your body, healing will follow.

Are you ready to start?

The Goal That Sabotages Recovery from Eating Disorders

You probably have a goal that is stopping your recovery in its tracks. This goal has probably disguised itself as something “healthy,” while in reality it is serving illness. In eating disorder recovery, this is your “goal weight," sometimes called "ideal weight."

I’ve heard patients in and out of treatment discuss their willingness to recover “but I don’t want to go above x pounds.” Or overweight patients viewing eating disorder treatment as yet another diet to follow to reach x pounds. Treatment team members themselves often perpetuate this stumbling block by asking the patient set this number, or setting it themselves, trying to appease the eating disorder to keep the patient in recovery. Not a fan. (Read an excellent blog on the topic here.)

See, I don’t care if your doctor/dietitian/therapist is cool with your goal weight because it squeaks you out of the dangerous BMI zone (BMI is BS, btw, but more on that later) or otherwise puts you into a healthy BMI. As long as you have a goal weight, you will relapse. I’ll say that again. As long as you have a goal weight, you will relapse. Here’s why:

1.       I’m guessing that you set that goal weight while you were still in the midst of disordered thinking. How are you sure it’s a realistic, healthy weight for you? (See more here)

2.       Let’s assume it is a realistic, healthy weight. What will happen if your body overshoots it? Sometimes in recovery from restricting, your body will go over its natural set point to repair and reset metabolic processes. If you are holding onto a goal weight, you will freak out when this happens. ED will shout “I told you they just wanted to make you fat!” You will fall back into thinking your body must be controlled instead of cared for.

3.       If you are currently over this goal weight, you will be tempted to dabble with restricting, purging, or other compensatory behaviors “until I lose the weight,” setting yourself up to further lower your set point and keep the cycle going. Or you believe that healing your relationship with food will finally result in that weight loss you’ve been chasing. It may not. You may gain health, vitality, and greater self-love, but there is no guarantee of weight loss. Because lower weight DOES NOT equal health. And visa versa. A higher weight does not equal poor health. There are waaaaay too many factors at play to reduce health to one number.

4.       If you are under this goal weight, there’s a very good chance that you have set a goal weight that is too low to sustain your body’s functions. Because lower weight DOES NOT equal health. Again, way too many factors to deduce your health from one number.

5.       Most importantly, all of your thoughts about ideal weight are meaningless when it comes to the body’s work of healing and recovery. The body will weigh what it weighs when you are consistently taking in adequate calories/exchanges for recovery, no longer doing any eating disorder behaviors, and moving/exercising for fun and function instead of punishment.

I wonder if there are other unrealistic goals that are sabotaging your recovery as well. Like goal weight, these are goals that look like they might be healthy, but in reality set us up to give up when the conditions we set aren’t met. Conditions we set in the midst of our disorder, be it an eating disorder, depression, anxiety, or PTSD.  It’s time to put your goals to the test.

Is it realistic? Give me the evidence. I’m talking, “can hold up in a court of law” facts, not beliefs.

Is it tied to a value? Where is the meaning for me?

Do have the resources/support to meet this goal? How can I get there?

Hold your recovery goals up to the light, and if you find them lacking, make new ones. New ones like, “go camping and have enough energy to hike with my friends” or “feel comfortable enough in my body to dance it out with my toddler to her favorite song.” Create goals that are about the life you want to live, rather than another tether to the disorder that is taking your life.

That is recovery resilience. 

Postpartum Body Image

Today I want to talk about partpartum body image and eating disorder recovery.

I often say that recovery is a process, not a goal. My own history with disordered eating has taken me through restricting, purging, overeating and binging, fad diets, and fitness trends all in the futile attempt to control my body and my emotions. Over the last four years, I have considered myself in full remission. I even came to continuously respect, care for, and usually even like my body, even after my first child was born and I didn’t entirely “bounce back.” (For the record, I hate that term.)

But now…

My body is a stranger to me. After giving birth to twins, there are strange hills of rippled flesh hanging from displaced and damaged muscles. I am trying to be loving. I am trying to be kind. I am wondering when I will feel at home in this new body. I make myself look in the mirror, my own exposure therapy. I make myself touch my stomach softly while marveling at the two tiny humans that grew there. And I cycle through emotions I thought I had healed. I have a twinge of disgust for the woman who thought she might get out of this pregnancy unmarred. I try to replace that with compassion for her disappointed optimism.

I said to my husband last week, “I have National Geographic boobs now.” He wasn’t thrilled with my word choice. “Do you think you should be calling them that?,” he asked with a grimace. It took some reflection to figure out why this response stung. You see, this term was not meant to be entirely self-degrading. Sure, it was definitely said with sadness and mourning, and a hint of mean to it that anyone with an eating disorder history may recognize.  The phrase “National Geographic boobs” calls to mind - and Google search results - native, tribal women with stretched, pendulous breasts. I suppose this is used as insult in our culture, as maidenhood, not motherhood, is celebrated as desirable.  But I think it stung, because there was a quiet thought trying to bubble up saying, “and what would be wrong with having National Geographic boobs?” In that phrase is also a fair amount of awe and respect. There is a complete ownership of womanhood and motherhood in those images that feels primal and important. This is what breasts are SUPPOSED to look like after birthing and nursing children. This belly is the natural outcome of the gift of growing life. I don’t have to find any of those outcomes aesthetically pleasing... yet (still working on my own internalized messages), but I am trying my damnedest to keep this real beauty, the beauty of life, growth, transition, and motherhood in the forefront of my mind as far more important than whether my body meets any other standard of beauty. I’m trying my damnedest to remember that I can set my own standards of beauty that take into account my body as a whole, rather than the singular aspect of appearance.

Maybe one day in that striving, I will be home in this new body. I can feel it trying to welcome me. I can feel it asking for my care. I can feel the healing that is ongoing, the healing that is still to come. Until then, I can practice responding to my body with care. I can practice being patient and compassionate with my mourning, with my disgust, with myself. To do this, to make it to other side of this transition, I have to use all I have learned in recovery, all that I still teach about recovery. 

Dear hearts, long term recovery is still hard some days, and is still worth it every day. This is the process of recovery.

In Praise of Despair

Bear with me here. When I look back on the changes that have helped me become a better person (still a work in progress), nearly every period of growth was preceded by a period of despair. I'm using despair here as an umbrella term to cover a range from unpleasantness to utter destruction. That despair can manifest in a myriad of ways: a gnawing loneliness, existential anxiety, destructive relationships, disordered eating, overspending, or other self-harmful behaviors. These are the symptoms of despair, the ways it demands to be seen or, more often, attempts to relieve it. It was only in eventually turning to face the despair, to explore it, to excavate it that I was able to change. This is why one of my favorite quotes is from Carl Rogers, “The curious paradox is that when I accept myself as just I am, then I can change.”

The trick here is not to confuse acceptance with affinity. I can accept things I don’t like. When I accept my role in creating some sources of that despair as well as my role in rising above it (or at least learning to live with it more peacefully), then I can make steps toward change. I see this play out in big and small ways in my life and in the lives of the brave souls I have the privilege to explore this with. Despair, like pain in the body, is a signal, a helper, telling us things are not right. If we listen, we have an opportunity to give ourselves what we need to heal. Like knee pain can drive us to the couch to rest and avoid further injury, emotional pain can drive us to retreat, reduce stress, reevaluate, and repair.

As we surrender, whether willingly or kicking and screaming, to this process, despair can somewhat be welcomed as a friend, a signal to pause, to take stock, and empowers us to change. After all, if something caused me no distress or despair whatsoever, why would I be motivated to change? In this way, despair is a catalyst for growth and healing, a part of the process. Now, that’s not to say you will magically start loving being in despair or the unexpected destruction that befalls us all from time to time, but it can provide it some much needed balance. If in the midst of my lament I remember that I can grow grit, self knowledge, or have a chance to treat myself more kindly through it, then it is not all destruction. 

In what ways have your struggles made you more resilient?