When my life feels out of control/unstable/chaotic, I look at my body and see it as something that I can control. Insecurities that, despite them having always being there, had nonetheless remained “below the surface”/not something that I felt the need to change, suddenly become magnified, having, after all, always been ‘looming’ in the wings like an unwelcome visitor, just waiting to make a reappearance at the first sign of stress…
When such insecurities arise, I struggle to do normal, day to day things. Take walking into town, for example. As I walk past windows and catch sight of my reflection, I feel nothing short of disgusted about the way I look-my stomach that raises slightly/isn’t completely flat as it once was (albeit, as it was when I was killing myself), my legs that no longer have an effortless gap between them, basically, my whole being.
So disgusted in myself do I feel that I vow to change myself- to make myself smaller, to take up less space.
On a mission to eat ‘healthier‘/to just lose a ‘bit‘ of weight, I know that, the moment that those thoughts so much as enter my head, I’m on a dangerous trajectory/ a slippery slope. You see, actions fuelled by hate, no matter how seemingly ‘positive’ they are on the surface, are always destined for further pain and misery. Why? Because, as the law of attraction states, negative thinking leads to negative results. Telling myself that I need to lose weight because I’m, quote; ‘Not good enough as I am’ or because I’m, again, quote; ‘Too big’ (or any variation on that sort of thing), will only see me declining further and further, deeper and deeper, into a cycle of unrelenting self loathing. Its like an alcoholic who uses drink as their ‘vice.’ An alcoholic will drink to escape the unhappiness they feel, but, as they drink, they will only end up feeling more unhappy than they did to start with and so, they’re trapped in a cycle. Drinking to feel happier, and needing to keep drinking to escape the sadness that the first few drinks brought them…
To expand on the above point further– the point that sees me tying my whole self worth together with my weight and what I look like will mean that, even if I do lose weight and get down to a weight which I think will make me ‘happier’, I will still feel miserable (just like an alcoholic who drinks to escape their sadness will still feel sad), because the problem isn’t with my body at all. If it was, the negative thinking I have surrounding my body wouldn’t only become an issue when going through periods of stress in my life. It would be a constant, with me all the time. The fact that it’s not, the fact that the negativity I feel towards my body can come and go in correspondence with events going on in my life means that, the ‘real‘ problem is not with my body, but with my ability to cope in such stressful situations.
Despite knowing the above to be true (deep down), in the moments when I feel so bad about the way I look and have such a longing to change parts of myself, I’m blinded by the truth. And, with an, I believe inherited addictive personality type like mine, I set myself on a dangerous path of self- destruction, whereby everything that I do has to be ‘all or nothing.’ If I’m going to eat ‘healthy’, I’m going to cut out all fat and sugar from my diet. If I’m going to exercise more, I’m going to make sure that every workout I do pushes me to my absolute limits/my breaking point.
No matter how much I tell myself “it will be different this time”, deep down, I know that it won’t (be different, that is). It can’t be. How do I know this? I know this because I’ve been through this before and so, I know how this goes. I tell myself that I just want to “tone up a bit” and ‘eat healthier’, and yet, despite my desire (if that’s the right word?) to eat ‘healthier’, I end up being at my most unhealthiest.
You see, to be healthy isn’t just about the physical stuff, its about the mental stuff, too. If you feel miserable constantly, have an extremely dysfunctional relationship with food whereby, on the one hand you crave everything, and yet, on the other hand, you fear whole food groups, you are not healthy. At all. In fact, you are the opposite.
Something which I have come to learn throughout my, some what ‘turbulent‘ journey with food and my body, and something which I want to leave as a parting message for today’s post, is this;
Your whole life shouldn’t revolve around food and what type/quantity of it you allow yourself to consume, for that isn’t really living, is it? So, if you’re in that cycle of disordered eating, don’t let the cycle continue. Put an end to it- today, and claim your life back. For;
You deserve to be happy.
You deserve to live a life free from your eating disorder.
You deserve to return back home-
to yourself.
Just allow yourself to go on the journey and,
whatever you do,
just keep moving forward.
<3
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