Living With an Eating Disorder *Warning, may contain triggering content*

I have struggled with disordered eating (atypical anorexia to be specific) and body dysmorphia since my sophomore year in high school. It is something that comes and goes through different times in my life. I want to write about it for two reasons. 1) so others with similar struggles don’t feel so alone and 2) to hold myself more accountable for my decisions around food and exercise. This time of year my job is very busy and I always end up losing a few pounds over the holiday periods. But that is not solely because of how busy and active my job is. I use that busyness as an excuse to skip meals and live in a calorically depleted state. And when I do eat, there is a calorie counter in my head that thinks about each calorie I put into my body and how many calories I think I am burning each day. Then, when you add on aspects of life that feel completely out of my control, I then control my calorie consumption even further. When I feel out of control of life, controlling my consumption of food makes me feel like I have power over something. Every morning I look into the mirror and lift up my shirt to see if my stomach looks flat enough to be an athlete. I pinch the rolls on my stomach constantly throughout the day. I weigh myself every morning hoping the number continues to go down, even though I know that the number on the scale doesn’t make me a better or worse person than I am. This obsession with looking like an “athlete” or being skinny enough to be loved will never be healthy. But how do we change the way women look at their bodies?

Too many of us consistently pinch our stomachs...

 

From an early age we are told that we are too skinny or too fat. Too curvy or not curvy in the right places. We are told we have to eat less than men even though there are many women who need the same, if not more calories than men. When there is an example of a successful woman, talk seems to center around what she looks like or if she’s hot or not rather than the conversations being centered around who she is and what she has accomplished. We are trained from an early age that our looks are our greatest asset. No matter how successful we are, we only amount to what we look like. I can accomplish great things, but in the end of the day still feel shitty about myself because of what I “see” in the mirror. Even when I’ve been at what I though was my ideal weight, I always found something that wasn’t perfect. But that is the battle of body dysmorphia, what I see in the mirror is not the reality of what is there.

 

So what am I doing to overcome this? Whenever I think about depriving myself of calories I check my intentions. Am I not eating because I’m not hungry or have sufficiently fueled my body, or am I depriving myself because I am terrified of gaining weight. Without fuel the body cannot survive or thrive. I think about the many times in my daily life that I rely on my body to be strong, and for my body to be strong it needs to be fed properly. When I look into the mirror I try to find something that I am proud of about it. I try to look at how strong I am, rather than the shape of my body. I try to tell myself the story of the strong and powerful woman in the mirror, not the body shape that is reflected back to me. I try to look at food as fuel and energy, rather than as the enemy. I try not to compare my body to other women because their body is theirs and mine is mine. It takes daily reminders to change the way you think about yourself. Positive self-talk must be consistent for it to be effective.

 

There is a lifelong journey ahead of me to learn to love my body for what it does and what it looks like. It takes daily thought to have a healthy relationship with food. Each one of us are more than what we look like.

Embrace your body and see it's strengths