The following is a guest contribution from an intuitive eater who chooses remain a part of the collective. I thank her for her gift this week, she is a star at the process of living intuitive!
“Growing up as an adopted girl with early curves and misplaced broadness (a contrast to my otherwise petite family), I was propelled to a place of unease about my body and became frenemies with the bathroom scale before junior high. Though the absence of physical likeness to others throughout my developing years heightened my insecurities, I don’t claim a body story that is any more tragic, dramatic, or painful than your story. This story is ours. Most of us girls and women (and a growing number of boys/men) spend the better part of our adolescence and early adulthood dodging bullets fired from the gun of an impossible beauty standard. Sometimes we walk away unscathed. Too often we get hit.
The bullets that hit me came overtly (“saddlebags!”) and covertly (“that dress is so slimming”), via fattening (bad) vs. low-cal (good) food distinctions, and by way of “feminine” modeling that included calorie counting and restriction. I was wounded quickly, every day noticing the ways in which I didn’t match the prescribed beauty standard. I was disappointed by the scale, prone to standing too long at the mirror wishing away my bumps and blemishes. I began urgently scanning the aisles of the drug store, seeking diet supplements claiming dramatic results. I chased my daily doses of Ephedra with too much Diet Coke and I limited myself to 300-500 calories per day. After the FDA banned sales of Ephedra (due to the risk of cardiac arrest!), I moved on to new, disappointingly less effective diet supplements and cycled from restricting to bingeing and back to restricting. There were bouts of exercise—punishing and inconsistent—with a focus on calories burned and the loosening waistlines of my clothes. During this time I rarely (and dismissively) considered the cost of my health over the value of being thin. At least fourteen years of my life were consumed by these desperate patterns and I ultimately developed an eating disorder.
I have considered myself a feminist activist since young adulthood and I am someone who has long been able to engage body-positive discourse with anyone, anytime. I have always passionately believed in body acceptance and the rejection of a normalized and harmful beauty standard, but I wasn’t immune to our society’s pervasive messages. Because of the gross contradiction between my foundational beliefs as an activist and my personal struggles, I was full of shame about my disordered eating. By the time I reached my mid-twenties, I was hungry, angry and confused. I didn’t have any skills or knowledge to properly regulate my food intake and I was riddled with anxiety whenever I attended a group event involving food. I didn’t trust myself. I didn’t know how to eat.
This battle became so painful and exhausting that I eventually allowed myself to explore a healthy ideal. I desperately wanted to nourish and love my body, so I started talking and I asked for help. My own recovery is complex and multifaceted, but one of the most productive strategies I have discovered, that allows me to live as I think, is the practice of intuitive eating. These books, Intuitive Eating (Tribole and Resch) and Mindful Eating (Chozen Bays), came to me at the beginning of my healing journey and their teachings have been life-saving.
Per their advice (and after much practice), I have learned how to differentiate between fullness and satisfaction and I’m tuned into my body’s messages of hunger before everyone around me is offended by my stomach’s growling. Food and eating no longer scare me, nor are they tied to my emotional center in an unhealthy way. I love socializing around food and I experience joy while sharing a good meal. I now have a more diverse and accepting palate because there aren’t any rules, other than to give my body what she is asking for and to listen to her when she says “no thanks.” My intuitive eating practice works in tandem with intuitive activity, which includes running, biking, swimming, and playing with my dog in joyful and meditative ways. My physical and emotional needs, in combination with my new knowledge, have propelled an internal dialogue that drowns out any unhealthy “shoulds” or “shouldn’ts” and smashes good/bad food dichotomies. I am no longer in a continuous state of crisis, and my health is unarguably of greater value than chasing the prescribed beauty standard.
Today I have a stronger connectedness to my body than to negative societal norms, and I feel so grateful to have learned how to prioritize my wellness. I yearn for each of us to be empowered (and to learn the skills) to connect with ourselves AND our meals in heartfelt ways. I want this—freedom, wholeness and health—for everyone. Beauty standards and food rules are impossible, and intuitive eating has reinforced to me that subscribing to them is optional. I believe we can—and should—change the standard, starting with ourselves, and in partnership with each other.”
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