I know from my own experiences that this time of year can be so so hard for someone with an eating disorder, what with the abundance of advertisements encouraging people to diet and exercise more. I have heard three slimming world adverts on the radio in the space of an hour, encouraging people to join slimming world to discover a new “slimmer, happier you.” Hearing things like this can be really triggering for someone with anorexia. It’s an unusual trigger because you can’t really avoid it. The messages are everywhere. They’re on the radio when you are in the car and in the kitchen when you’re cooking, and they’re plastered all over giant billboards which follow you wherever you go. Although it’s often hard to comprehend, what you have to remember is that messages like this are not aimed at you. You don’t need to diet and exercise to be worthy of food. You deserve to eat regardless of what you ate yesterday or how much you exercised today. Being slimmer won’t make you happier at all. You know how this illness works. You will never be able to diet or exercise enough to satisfy your eating disorder, you will always need to be slimmer, always chasing an unachievable goal. So please don’t get caught up in the trap. Don’t do that to yourself.
I’m a big advocate of setting New Years resolutions because I think that they can help to motivate you for the upcoming year, but if you are making resolutions for 2019, make them focused on self-care, not self-destruction. Why not explore a new hobby, or commit to practicing meditation more often? Things like this are really good distractions and stress relievers. When you get a spare minute, I encourage you all to spend some time thinking about how you can achieve happiness in your life, because I can guarantee you that anorexia will not bring you any happiness whatsoever.
So, to sum the purpose of this post up, although it is incredibly difficult to ignore all of the “new year new me” posts circulating around pretty much everywhere right now, you are beautiful as you are, and you absolutely should not feel a need to diet and exercise just because the media is encouraging everyone to…
Stay safe and happy new year!
Lisa x
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