Bumps Along The Way

*small note before reading - I don't know if
 any of this post is coherent in any way, 
shape,or form... so I apologize in advanced. 
Well... Now that I've totally talked this 
thing up, let's get readin'!

 

A year ago today I did something that was, arguably, the more terrifying thing I have ever done.

A year ago I hit publish on my post Disappearing Act where I opened up about my eating disorder. The opening up wasn’t the scary part – I tend to have a bad habit of sharing way too much via the internet. No, the terrifying part was that, for the first time, I hit the “share” option that allowed the post to be seen by people that I knew in real life. Upon hitting the publish button, it felt like I was forever changing the way every person who has ever met me sees me. All of this being said, publishing that post is one of the best decisions I have made. The intention behind the post was to not go on and on about my insignificant self (which I have been doing for almost 150 words not…yikes), but to let those suffering know that they are not alone, and to educate those who don’t understand eating disorders in a way that would allow them to view these very real diseases in a more understanding and compassionate way.

So here we are a year later. What’s changed?

I can’t say that I remember what I covered in “Disappearing Act” (I kind of just typed it and hit publish without re-reading it, i.e. talking myself out of posting it), so I’m not sure where I left it or how much I shared about one of the most universal occurrences in recovery.

Relapse.

The road to recovery, regardless of what from, is not a straight path. You don’t just decide to recover and that’s that. No. Mental illness is mental illness, just as an addict is an addict – just because you are no longer practicing harmful behaviors does not mean that you are no longer sick. No.

Something that they don’t tell you about recovery is that it is an ongoing fight. You can be weight-restored (if being underweight was a symptom of your illness… remember, weight does not an eating disorder make, weight is merely one of the many symptoms of eating disorders) for years and still fighting at every single meal – every bite, every calorie.

I know it sounds overdramatic, and there are exceptions to this rule – but by going off of my own person experience and the experiences of others I know, but it’s true.

And relapse doesn’t always present in the same way. Just because I’m not eating X amount of calories every day like I used to does not negate slipping backwards. One may no longer restrict as low, yet their intake of food starts to slowly get smaller and smaller. “I’m fine,” they can say. “Remember how bad I used to be? This is nothing. Everything is fine.”

And sometimes we really and truly believe that.

Have you ever heard of the concept of the “transfer of addictions”? You stop restricting your calories as low, but begin to spend hours upon hours in the gym. “I want muscle now!” You’ll explain. “I’m healthy and fit. I’m lean not sick.” You’ll say as you weigh out every gram of food you  eat as you need to track your macros.

That is not recovery. More often than not, a person will begin to recovery – really try – and then jump ship. They won’t know they jumped ship though, and most of the people in their life won’t either. There are so many cases of a person recovering anorectic developing a binge eating disorder – which is, by the way, a completely valid and dangerous eating disorder. It can take such a long time to notice these new unhealthy behaviors – you need to gain weight, you need to eat a ton of calories. This is fine.

This is just one of many examples of invisible relapses.

One of the scariest parts about relapsing (or never  really fully committing to recovery – just convincing yourself that you are) is how much it feels like failure. Recovery is a very scary place to be – you are fighting so hard, but the fight is in your own head. The people around you say that you’re doing so well. You’re healthy now. You’re so much more fun than when you had your eating disorder.

All of this is being said while you scream in your head BUT I’M NOT OKAY! PLEASE HELP ME! – You never say this out loud of course. You smile. Everything is okay now. Pretend everything is okay. These people are counting on me. I can’t let them down.

I can’t be a failure. Not again.

I don’t know if there is ever a time that a person is more fragile than when they are in recovery. Being in recovery is like slowly thawing after being frozen for such a long time – it takes a long time to thaw, but it doesn’t take much to crack the ice and have it all fall apart far before you are ready.

Okay, that analogy sounded way better in my head… What I’m getting at is that a person in recovery is essentially made of very thin glass – the smallest touch, even an accidental one, can cause the whole thing to crash down.

Only this time you ‘don’t look sick anymore’ you’re ‘recovered.’ I find that the relapse, or even just the minor bumps in the road to recovery are far more difficult to handle than the full-blown anorexia was. As deadly as anorexia is – it actually develops as a way to keep yourself safe. You get to live in your own little bubble of self-destruction. You think about nothing outside of your disease, you feel nothing outside of your disease. It is a comfort of misery. Hey, I’m falling apart – but at least I’m too numb to really care.

Now I’m not numb anymore. I’m in sensory overload. My exoskeleton has been ripped off, exposing the rawness underneath. Every little touch hurts – you feel everything. The entire world becomes a trigger. It’s too much. I’m scared. I can’t handle this.

So you turn back to what you know – your safety. You romanticize being at your sickest in the most twisted way – you know it was horrible.. But you also miss it.

Now you are in limbo, not quite recovered, not quite relapsed. This is where I am right now, and to be perfectly frank, it sucks. It’s all too much and I hate myself and I’m scared of everything and I can’t look in mirrors and I don’t want to go outside – I also can’t return to the way that I used to be. I know better than that. I don’t want to die and I know that, with an eating disorder, you either recover or you die. Yes that sounds morbid and dramatic, but it is the complete truth. Always remember that when you feel yourself slipping – regardless of what it is that you are recovering from.

Wow.. I don’t even know what this post is really about. I wanted it to be about relapse in recovery and how falling backwards  does not make you a failure.

Recovery is a lot like the myth of Sisyphus*. You have this impossibly large burden to carry with you (your illness), it doesn’t just go away, you keep it with  you and fight every day to keep pushing forward – to fight the distorted thoughts from the sick mind – you push and push and push until you get to the pinnacle – recovery.

And then the boulder rolls right back down the hill.

But you try again. You let yourself fall with it a bit. You’re so tired and you have been fighting for so long. You tumble down. You relapse. You feel like a failure – too sick to exist but not sick enough to get help.

Well here’s the thing – if you’re reading this right now, it means that you’re still here. You have hoisted that burden back up onto your shoulder and have started up the mountain again.

This is recovery – this is strength.

*If you don’t know the story of Sisyphus, in a nutshell – basically he betrayed the god Zeus. Now, if you know anything about mythology, Zeus has a sick sense of humor. You don’t want to mess with him because he will destroy you. Sisyphus disclosed on of Zeus’ secrets, and for that he was condemned to push a massive boulder up a hill – once he reached the top, the boulder would roll back down the hill, hitting Sisyphus on the way down – over and over again for all of eternity.

 

Why I Won’t Put A Label On My Diet (And Why You Shouldn’t Either)

Labels seem to be very in vogue these days, especially when it comes to one’s dietary preferences. Vegan, gluten-free, low-fat, high-fat, low-carb, high-carb, primal, paleo, vegetarian, pescatarian, grain-free, fully raw, low-fat-raw, rawtill4,801010, plant-based, clean eating, if it fits your macros…

I could go on.

Now, let me be the first to say that I have not one thing against any one of these diets (okay I have an issue with a couple). For the most part, each diet (when executed properly and intelligently) is actual pretty darn healthy. What I have an issue with is the unhealthy mindset that comes along with the obsession with labeling oneself.

Back in the day, there were essentially three labels that people used in regards to their diets: omnivore, vegan, and vegetarian (you could throw pescatarian into this as well). That was it, clear and simple. Did gluten-free exist? Yes, but being gluten-free was left to those with Celiac. Did paleo exist? Probably, though I don’t know that it was labeled as such.

What I’m trying to get at here is that is seems to me that people just ate food. Every single person on the planet has always and will always eat differently. No two people (should) have the exact same amount of calories or ratios of macro-nutrients each and every day. That just doesn’t make sense. Some people have a natural gravitation towards higher fat foods as they feel better when they eat them, some people avoid dairy because it makes them feel sick, some people feel more satisfied eating lower fat. When a person is in touch with their bodies, they know what to eat and how much of it to eat. If a person really desires some nuts, they should probably eat some nuts. If a person really wants a huge bowl of fruit, they should go get themselves a watermelon. Our bodies do not define themselves as high-carb or paleo, so why do we? Why don’t we just eat what feels good? Maybe what feels good to you just so happens to fall within the criteria of being paleo. Cool. Awesome. But why do you need to put a label on it?

People do not belong in boxes. If I had a penny for every time I have said this in my life, I would probably have enough pennies to afford a bag of organic lettuce at Whole Foods (that stuff is expensive as heck). I try to live my life with this mantra existing as a florescent sign that is constantly flashing in my subconscious mind. As someone with the tendency to collapse into a puddle of self-loathing on the daily, I have a whole lot of trouble with trying to accept myself as I am. I have spent the majority of my life trying to hide the most vital pieces of myself that make me who I am in an attempt to not be judged by the world. I feel that a lot of us do this, I mean, it is human nature to want to belong. So what do with do with this burning desire to fit in?

We attempt to shove ourselves into boxes that we do not quite fit in.

We go to school and try to figure out which “crowd” is ours. Are we one of the preppy kids? An athlete? An artsy-type? A drama kid? An academic? An outsider?

Why the heck can’t we be all of the above?

I feel like putting a label on your diet is basically just the grown-up version of what we go through in middle school. Each diet camp is just another clique and I am so freaking sick and tired of trying to belong.

I find labels damaging, especially to those who are in recovery from an eating disorder or a broken relationship with food. When you are coming from a place where so much of your life was spent trying so hard to be “perfect” when it came to diet, why are trying to recover by finding another way to put pressure on yourself.

Multiple times a day, I hate myself for not being vegan. I eat “vegan” probably 85% of the time and vegetarian almost 100% of the time. Why? This is just the way that I tend to gravitate. I feel a little bit better about myself knowing that most of what I eat did no harm to a life.. But I am not vegan. I can’t be vegan right now, and even if I went 100% vegan some day… I still would never call myself a vegan. Deep down, I know that the second that I slap a label on the way I eat is the second that is the beginning of another downward spiral. Coming from anorexia (though this applies to all who have ever struggled with food whether it an eating disorder or chronic dieting), I put so much pressure on myself to constantly be perfect. This is something that, though I am getting better at practicing self-compassion, I still struggle with daily. The second that a label is slapped onto my diet, I know that it will be all I focus on. Living up to my label will become an obsession in the same way that starving myself was. That is so damaging.

What I am saying here is that I truly believe that we need to reject the labeling of ourselves in all parts of our lives. This could be the diet that we ascribe to, the personality-type we believe we are (creative, analytical, etc.)… All things! Say it with me… PEOPLE DO NOT BELONG IN BOXES. There is no perfect label that you can put on yourself because you are the only you that you are. Your label is unique to you and that is what is so amazing about being a human being. When you realize how incredible it is that you are the only one of you that ever has been and ever will be… God, it is just the most liberating feeling imaginable.

All in all, be who you are, eat the way you want, live the way you want, and don’t fear not belonging to a specific group or label.. You are so much more than just your dietary preferences.

The Bodies Of Others Are None Of Your Business

Today’s post may seem a bit rant-ish (not a word, but I’m going to with it), because, well, I’m heated!

Recently, I have started bringing a book to the gym so that, after I finish my workout, I can hop on the treadmill and walk for a bit while I read. This new routine of mine has been so incredible for me. This past year has been rough for me in terms of being able to focus on… well… anything. I am assuming that this is a result of my PTSD finally catching up with me. Studying for tests became a nightmare. I had to read sentences over and over and over again and no matter what I did, I could not retain anything that I read. I stopped being able to write (this I am still struggling with) without getting distracted and frustrated. All things that I used to find solace and peace in became impossible. Escaping into stories being one of these things, I hadn’t finished a book in quite some time.

I have never been someone with a long attention span. Even as a child, I always had to be doing multiple things at once. I would be listening to the teacher while drawing a picture and whispering to my friend. I would routinely run a lap around the basement while I played Pokemon on my Nintendo 64. However, back then I was actually able to get things done simultaneously. Today, I still have to be doing a million things at once. But I get nothing done. Everything seems so difficult and overwhelming and impossible now. Nothing comes naturally anymore.

But I digress, as this post is not about that.

So I have been reading on the treadmill. I find that if I am walking while I read, I am actually able to focus on the story I am reading and this excites me so much. I am going through books faster than I can afford to buy them, and it is wonderful.

Or it was.

There is a small “Lady’s Only” section of my gym. This area is more private, making me feel a bit more at ease while I walk. Every day, I finish my workout and go over and hop on one of the two treadmills in this section. Funny thing is that, regardless of the fact that I am, for the most part, there at different times each day, this one woman is always there.

This woman is there everyday, plugging away on the same elliptical day in and day out. She is probably in her 50s, and she seems very friendly. She is one of those gym-goers that seems to know each and every person at our gym (or at least those who hang out in the Lady’s Only section) and she is also one of those gym-goers that is quite the Chatty Cathy. Now, this wouldn’t be an issue (though I will admit that it is slightly irritating when people try to speak to you while you are gasping for breath on the treadmill) if it weren’t for the content of the conversations that she strikes up.

“Oh you lost weight.”

“Did you lose weight?”

“Do you think that I lose weight?”

“Do my thighs look bigger?”

“Do my thighs look smaller?”

“I can only lose weight if I starve myself.”

“Muscular girls are disgusting.”

I could go on.

I try really hard to not let her get to me.. But I’m not quite there yet. Maybe it’s due to my experience with an eating disorder, but there is something that is just so deeply disturbing to me about this type of conversation. The questions are typically directed towards anyone who will listen (and are normal responded to in a very uncomfortable fashion) and the comments on other woman’s weigh loss or lack thereof rarely receive much more than a mumbled, “I haven’t lost any. But thank you.”

This goes on every single day, and each day I get a little bit more worked up. However, the straw that broke the camel’s back was one comment in particular.

She was talking to (or at) the woman on the elliptical next to her about her thighs (are the bigger? smaller? the same? I don’t want the to be muscled) and the woman next to her sighed and said, “You don’t want toothpick legs anyway. They are not attractive.” To this, the woman (who initiated the conversation) responded (for too loudly) with, “You’re right. Have you seen that one really skinny blonde woman who comes in here a lot? I don’t think she eats. She must not. She definitely doesn’t eat.”

I had to hold my breath to keep from losing it.

Here is the thing, I have seen the blonde woman in question. She is definitely unspeakably thin, but I never really thought about it. Why would I? In what way does that impact me?

Why on earth are the bodies of others any of your business?

We lived in a twisted culture today that is impossibly obsessed with critiquing the bodies of others. The magazines on the newsstands are clad with huge headlines of, “250 POUNDS *insert celebrity here* HAS LOST ON CONTROL.” “95 POUND CELEBRITY X ANOREXIC AND DYING,” and, my personal favorite, the oh so wonderful “BEST AND WORST BIKINI BODIES,” with huge red circles surrounding the “disgusting rolls” of a woman bending over (because, I mean, skin totally shouldn’t fold over when you bend over) and other revolting commentaries on female bodies. For some sick reason that I cannot quite grasp, people eat this stuff up (not literally though, because women must eat nothing but Special K and low calorie yogurts and 90 calorie snack bars and “sensible dinners”).

I know for a fact that this woman at the gym is not commenting on other bodies to be cruel. She seems to genuinely believe that talking about nothing but bodies and weight and thighs and calories is commonplace. The sad thing? It kind of is.

Yesterday, as I often do, I was browsing Tumblr and came across a before and after photo posted by one of the women I follow on the site. Unlike most before and after photos, the one was not of weight loss, but rather of muscle gain. Below the photo was a wonderful little paragraph about how much better and healthier and happier she felt now. Below that paragraph was a comment.

“I think you looked better before. So much more soft and feminine.”

Obviously this comment lead to a heated back and forth between the poster and the commenter which ultimately lead to this gem of a comment.

“Soooo I like her body one way and she likes her body a different way but he is allowed to say it but I’m not? That’s makes sense 😂”

How does this make sense? Yes, there is obviously a difference between the poster commenting on how she feels about her own body and some random person on the internet commenting on a body that is not her own.

Again, how does what someone looks like impact you in any way?

You never know how what you say about someone can affect them. For my (admittedly skewed) brain, I take someone calling me “healthy” or “normal” as them calling me fat. I know that this is not rational, but it is the way that my mind works and it really can mess with me when someone comments on my body, even if they mean it as a compliment.

I see the way that the women at the gym react when this one woman comments on their possible weight losses. More often than not, they seem more uncomfortable than flattered. Very few people enjoy having their bodies scrutinized (I would say that no people do… But I can’t know that for sure) and sometimes even what are meant as compliments can make someone feel hurt and uncomfortable.

The same thing goes for commenting of what someone is or is not eating. It is absolutely ridiculous to claim that just because a person is thin that they do not eat. This is a result of our messed up diet culture and the ways that the media tells us that the only way to be slim is to “eat mindfully” and use “portion control” and, my favorite, “trick yourself skinny.” Books and magazines and television commercials tell us to enjoy these “guilt free” snacks (because food, the very stuff that keeps us alive, should TOTALLY make us feel guilty) and to eat less and chew gum instead of eating and all of that nonsense that has lead to there being almost no women left who have completely healthy relationships with food.

It is also horrible to comment on what others eat. You may think that you are doing someone a service by complimenting how they, “only eat healthy things,” or, “would never eat xx.” You may also think that you are being helpful when you tell someone how much fat or calories are in what they are eating. You are doing nothing of the sort. You are doing nothing but projecting your own insecurities onto another and making another human begin feel vulnerable and uncomfortable. You are not helping the other person, and you are certainly not helping yourself.

It just boggles my mind to see just how skewed the general public’s perception of what is okay to comment on is. We truly live in a world where people believe that they have the right to offer “helpful” commentary on others simply because they put themselves out there in the world. Surely if they put a photo of themselves online then it is okay to offer your opinions on what is right or wrong about them, right? Surely there is nothing wrong with that.

It’s just insane and this type of behavior has become so normalized that most people barely bat an eye when the conversation turns to being about nothing but weightless or when they begin talking about Aunt Sally’s weight gain or whatever it may be.

Those who live in glass houses should not throw stones. What if instead of wasting all of your life-force commenting on what other people are eating or doing or looking like, you take that energy and aim it towards bettering yourself?

Then maybe this world would be a more positive place.