The Size of Your Body is Not Your Business

This month Tara and I are talking body image. We spend a good deal of talking talking about how body image develops and ways to challenge the thin ideal. I realized after the fact that we didn't lay down some basics about what body image actually IS, so here is my definition:

Body image includes what you believe and feel about your body as it relates to beliefs about a body ideal, for sure, but also how you feel in your body, how you sense yourself in space, multisensory messages, and how you interpret and respond to those messages. Under this expanded definition, body acceptance and body love can often come not just by challenging harmful body beliefs, but also by learning to interpret body signals accurately and respond to your body and meet its needs with compassion and love.

I can think of no better New Year's resolution to replace the old paradigm of "lose weight" than "meet my body's needs with compassion and love."

You deserve it, dear hearts.

Is it *really* about control?

"My eating disorder gives me a sense of control."

"I feel totally out of control around food."

Today I want to address some of the most common things I hear in eating disorder recovery: that the eating disorder has taken your control and used it against you, by giving you a sense of control or a sense that you have none. I also hear how powerless many of you feel to battle the eating disorder, and often power and control are muddled and confused as synonyms.

Let’s clarify. Power is your ability to act. Control is your ability to create or dictate outcomes. Control is a tool of power, but having power is not dependent on having control. You can’t use control, the same tool of the eating disorder, to gain power over it. You have to regain a sense of your inherent power.

You were not powerless at birth. While it’s true you were dependent on others for survival, for comfort, and for love, you used what power you did have to get your needs met. You cried. You demanded attention. You definitely influenced the people caring for you. This was your power.

Whether you call it a need, drive, instinct, or even a value, we are wired to seek power, to be powerful. In our developing years, our power, our ability to act and to influence others, serves our survival. As you began to walk and talk, you exercised or practiced your power through tantrums, saying “no,” and through crying. Again, you did this to get your needs met, to get comfort and loving attention. This personal power becomes the basis of your autonomy. In fact, as adults, having more autonomy seems to satisfy this need for power. Studies have shown we actually seek less influence over others when we have more autonomy. I think this is because power needs an object, and in healthy power, the object is you.

Unfortunately, personal power can be abused and distorted in a myriad of ways. Maybe the grownups who were supposed to take care of you didn’t do such a great job. Maybe they ignored your needs, made fun of your needs, or met your basic needs but without any love or comfort. So many of you have grown up feeling powerless because those around you could not or would not meet your needs for love and belonging. So, you started to seek power through control: control over others, control over emotions, control over food and/or body, control over your home, your routine, you name it! Again, this is because power needs an object, and in unhealthy power, the object is control.

Let’s look at a few domains of power and their interplay with disordered eating (this by no means is a complete list):

Ownership

When you own something, you can do with it what you like. Some of you may not have ever felt like you own your body, like it truly belongs to you. Control over eating or body size can become a substitute for your true power to attend to and respond kindly to your body.

Attention

Power needs an object, but it also needs an audience. Sometimes these are one and the same. Sadly, all attention is not created equal. Punitive attention, violent attention, or no attention at all are forms of invalidation and can drain your personal power, giving you the message that your needs are foolish, an intrusion, wrong, or unimportant. Think of attention from its root, to attend. This means to be present, to be helpful, to look after, to manage (you get the drift). Maybe you didn’t have the best examples of healthy attention while growing up, and the eating disorder was there, was trying to help, and took on the management of your emotions (albeit in a way that has cost you your physical and emotional health).

Position

Most people see a position of authority as a position of power. These power positions include the ability to make a request knowing it will be respected and followed. Some power is clearly bestowed – like a job title of CEO in the work place – and some power positioning is more implicit or dictated by culture – like family and gender roles. When you encounter this form of power, you usually respond with deference or dominance. Yielding control, or attempting to yank it back. You may have given the eating disorder a position of authority on all things food and body, and you go back and forth between listening and following its orders and fighting for control. My answer is to unseat that eating disorder voice from the position of authority and give the power back to you.

Gatekeeping

Another form of power is controlling access to something. Bouncers, receptionists, specialists, and librarians are all examples of roles involving control of access to something: the club, the manager, the knowledge. In healthy personal power, you are the gatekeeper to your body, your time, your energy, and your other resources. When this is abused, you instead become the gatekeeper of your secrets and of your vulnerability.  

What is necessary for recovery is empowerment.

What you need isn’t more self-control, but more autonomy. More personal power. More freedom to discover your own values, to set your own boundaries, to make your own meaning, to respond to your body with kindness. Where you feel out of control, you need MORE autonomy, not less.

I hope you are taking steps to increase your power.

For the record, getting help in your recovery is a major step in increasing your power.

Ready to feel more powerful? Contact us for more information about our services.

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?

Hell-a-daze vs. Holidays

It may not be a shocker for me to tell you that the holidays are a time of intense anxiety and stress for all of us, but particularly for those suffering from eating disorders. Work parties, family gatherings, and holidays traditions seem cruelly centered around food and eating, so it's not surprising that many people in recovery relapse during or immediately after the holidays. 

For this month's podcast, Tara and I are tackling holiday survival: pet peeves, planning, and picking yourself back up. (I know, I know, we were supposed to talk about body image... next time!)

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.

EDulting: Calories Count

In this month's podcast, Tara and I are talking calories. Your body needs energy to recover, and that energy doesn't come from yoga or rest or a great massage. It comes from food. From calories. Unfortunately, we live in a culture where dieting is so pervasive, we don't even know we're dieting. I had a client tell me yesterday, "I don't diet. I eat 1100 calories a day." You guys. Anything below your body's recovery/ongoing requirements (generally speaking, 2500/day for an adult 5' and taller) IS dieting and will only suppress your metabolism. Our bodies are far more complex than a simple equation of calories in vs. calories out. In this episode of EDulting, we attempt to explain this complexity, as well as the struggle to accept it in recovery. 

If you find this podcast helpful, please rate it on iTunes. Thank you for listening.

EDulting: Intro to EDulting

EDulting is a podcast exploring the real life, every day struggles with eating disorder recovery while breaking down different recovery concepts and strategies for those struggling with (or loving someone with) an eating disorder. This is the first episode.

This podcast is hosted by me (Ryanne) and an author/mom/student/recovery badass (Tara). In doing this first episode, I learned that the closet in my office may not have the best sound, that I talk a bit too fast, and I mumble a bit as well. Work in progress, right? I also learned to let go of some perfectionism and just do the damn thing, get it out there, and hone the craft as we go. I hope you will learn something about us, about ED, and about yourself. 

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?