Disrodered eating and body image

This month I want to bring awareness to women and body image.

I struggled immensely with eating disorders for more than a decade. I fought every single day with my thoughts, my body, and my mirror. My entire life consisted around calories, how much I would allow myself to eat that day, or how much I could exercise to burn it off.

If I didn’t have enough self-control, I would binge, hating every inch of my being and purge. It took a drastic turn when I could no longer run or take part in the sports I was in and ended up in the hospital. I was alone. I had no support and I lied to everyone around me about my addiction and disorder even though it was very apparent I was sick.

As a woman I now understand how I got there, aside from my childhood trauma. There is an extreme pressure to be a person we are not, everywhere we turn.

We have social media influencers, and models painting a perfect picture that is false. Photoshop, editing and other tools, trick us into believing what a perfect body should look like. There is advertising throughout every city, in magazines, on TV, and countless ads that tell a story of how we can be more sexy, beautiful, enticing… etc.

And now there is a new world of plasticity around us. We are in constant comparison with what is real and what is fake.

We are set up to believe that we are not enough, from the moment we arrive on this earth. There is influence all around us, telling us to chase a state of perfection that is not achievable.

So, how the F**k do we break free? How do we change our perception of self and have a healthy relationship with food, that empowers us to feel confident in our skin?

It wasn’t until I embarked a journey of self-love that my life changed. My realization of the damage I did to my body hurt me, as if I hurt someone I loved. This is because I started to show up for myself. I started to love all parts of me and slowly the thought of hurting me, became less and less appealing.

Subconsciously, when we feel that we aren’t enough, we are creating that reality for us. I may have not wanted to consciously hurt myself and cause damage to my body, but my subconscious knew my self-hatred and it showed up through my disordered eating and body image issues.

Once we start to go inside ourselves and figure out why we don’t feel we are enough, or why we don’t love ourselves, we can start to internalize these symptomatic issues that show up, (body dysmorphia, eating disorders, body image issues) and work on viewing the external world, (social media, ads, Tv, etc.) that is validating our subconscious self-hatred, in a new way.  

I never thought I’d see the day, that I would have a healthy relationship with food. That I could eat a dessert and not feel guilt. That I wouldn’t live my day-to-day life, not thinking about every single calorie and morsel of food that I consumed or picking a part my body each morning.

But here I am, showing up today, to show you that the impossible you feel today, is the possible that lies within tomorrow. I am here to tell you, I know the pain, the stress, and the struggle of being a woman who just wants to be accepted as she is. You can learn how to eat for your body without the constant worry and restrictions, with the right tools and support.

If you are a woman on the other end of this page, I want you to ask yourself, “When was the last time I felt freedom in my body?”.

We all deserve to live a life that embraces the beauty of who we are, no matter what shape or size. 

Are you ready, and willing to choose you?