National Eating Disorder Week
It’s National Eating Disorder Week and I’ve literally never talked about my disordered eating. I think there are only a couple of people who know about this, and they’re my BEST friends, and my therapist.
But I preach unconditional self-love ALL DAY EVERY DAY, and so a big part of my own journey with that has been my journey with food, my body image, and learning to become a fat liberationist. And while I am definitely practicing what I preach, I feel like now is a good time for authentic vulnerability. It’s important for you, Beloveds, to know that you are not alone if you struggle like I struggle.
It all started when I was 5 or 6 years old. I was wearing a bathing suit, or maybe a dance leotard…I can’t remember. My mother looked at me and told me to suck in my stomach. “You don’t want to look fat,” she said. It was something that was so impactful for me that I have found myself unconsciously sucking in my stomach ever since. I’m 35 years old, and even now I catch myself a few times a day with a relaxed belly and I have to force myself to stay relaxed instead of sucking it in.
I heard my mother her whole life put herself down, calling herself fat, ugly, out of shape, lazy, all sorts of horrible things that we associate with fatphobia now. It’s a self-loathing that she still feeds to this day. And of course to impressionable young me, that fatphobia sank in deep.
I’ve been restricting food since I was in middle school. I started dieting with my mother and never really stopped. When I’m living alone and unchecked I’ve been averaging one meal a day. I only have an appetite when I’m healthy and happy. So usually I tend to gain weight when I’m happy and healthy, because I’m actually eating in the way that’s best for my body. When I’m unhappy I lose my appetite and then I utilize food restriction to help me feel like I’m working towards happiness (because in a fatphobic world, thinness equates to happiness, right? 😏). In fact, when my partner and I broke up this fall, I literally thought to myself, “good. I’m going to lose 10 lbs with all this grief.” YOU GUYS THAT IS NOT SELF LOVE - IT IS SELF LOATHING.
It’s completely disordered and solves nothing. It actually makes me spiritually and physically ill. Truly, I don’t think I would’ve figured out just how sick I was until I had developed a full blown eating disorder had it not been for the education of fat liberationists and other clients and friends who struggled with EDs. So in case you think your story doesn’t matter, IT ABSOLUTELY DOES.
Obviously, being the healer and activist that I am, I set to work immediately on these shadows when I finally realized what they were. I’m still working through them. Some days are a struggle. Other days are not. The externalized fatphobia I learned to conquer easily. It’s the internalized fatphobia that haunts me still sometimes. And as any fat liberationist will tell you, you can’t truly be a fat liberationist while still committing violence against your own body. But I also recognize that I can be a fat liberationist and still be struggling. I will struggle until I liberate myself as well. I may not be fat, but I know that the violence I commit against myself perpetuates violence against my fat friends, clients, and colleagues.
I’m not angry at my mother. I’m just so sad. I’m sad for her, I’m sad for all people in this Dominator Culture that tells us that our worth and value is solely associated with how conventionally beautiful we might appear (how f*ckable we are to some undisclosed number that we call “the majority of people”). I’m sad that we as a collective struggle to see the Universal Truth that we are ALL inherently worthy just by virtue of our existence, and that, just like there is no such thing as “normal” there is no such thing as “conventional beauty.”
My mom used to say this to me all the time: “EVERYONE IS BEAUTIFUL TO SOMEONE.” I just wish she believed that about herself. But moreover, I wish she, and you, and me, and EVERYONE believed that it’s only our own belief in our own worth that matters, and that beauty is an illusion that has nothing to do with that worth.
If you struggle with an Eating Disorder or Disordered Eating, please contact the National Eating Disorder Association Hotline at (800) 931-2237 or reach out. I got you. 🤍🙏🏼✨
