Disordered Eating Vs Eating Disorders

This week was tough for me. When I started to create content for the facebook group about eating disorders VS disordered eating I was feeling empowered and proud of how far

I have come on my own journey. How many people could I help with the knowledge and lessons I have learned through my 12 year battle of breaking through the social conditioning of diet culture and body image? I was excited.

Then I spent mothers day alone and binged on ice cream and felt terrible because I'm lactose intolerant and I knew the reason I was eating the ice cream was not because I wanted to enjoy ice cream, rather I was sad and hated how alone I felt. The self doubt started to kick in and the shame cycle began. 

“What a fraud I thought, here you are coaching others and yet you still reach for food at times to try and fix something that is not fixable. How can you help others when you can hardly help yourself..”

I realize these thoughts are not my own but those of the inner judge that I often refer to in these Feel Good friday newsletters. 

When was the last time you judged yourself about food? What feelings and thoughts came up for you? 

I encourage you to take a pause and write it down. 

Following my ice cream pity party I did some of my own journaling/ reflecting and realized that the new found awareness of my current situation is the reason I am sharing.  Although I am a coach that follows macros and believes fully in the tools and resources I share with you, I still struggle and mess up. I am proud that I can be open and even though it scares the crap out of me I know in my honesty It allows you to really see through the false assumption that just because someone is an expert at something does not mean that they do not have their own battles to face. 

While I no longer live with the beast of an eating disorder, disordered eating still rears its ugly head in my life. I see my friends and family struggling to break free of their own barriers surrounding food and body image and I think to myself.. Where did we go wrong as a culture? Was it when we decided that we no longer needed to hunt for our food? When food became ever so present and ready? Was it when we got inundated with images of the “perfect body”? Or is it everything combined? My gut tells me it was a combination 

So how do we fix it? 

Here are some of the tops tools and tips I have picked up on that helped me just recently through my own little funk 

I watched an interview with Blake Lively last night and she was talking about the amount of attention and pressure that she has lived with over the years of becoming a mother and having people comment and remark on her body and appearance. One part of the interview really inspired me. She said “My body belongs to me, it does not belong to the press, my family or my friends. It is mine and it is personal.” 

Your body belongs to you and no matter what it will always be yours. You do not owe anyone an explanation or reason for how you choose to fuel and move your body, you only owe that to yourself. I invite you to write a love letter to your body and then to food. Write down what you are grateful for, what confuses you and everything in between. 

Please feel free to share your letter with me or your coach and lets start to break free of diet culture!