I've had this post on my mind for a long time. I would like to share more of my story of having had a severe eating disorder on this blog, mainly because I have had a relatively successful recovery and believe that I have a lot of hope to offer to those who are struggling. There is fallout that haunts me, however, even 25 years later. While some may consider this a private matter, I have had enough conversations with others to know that my struggles are fairly common, and sometimes it's nice to have someone reach out and share in the midst of the craziness. It's grounding. And it's always nice to know you're not alone. So here goes. Body dysmorphia is a serious disorder. It takes a number of forms, but one is viewing oneself very inaccurately. This could have to do with weight, or the size of your nose, or the positioning of your eyes. For some, it becomes an obsession. Often in anorexics, it manifests as an inability to see accurately the weight loss that is occurring. For some, when they look in a mirror, they don't see an accurate reflection, kind of like looking in a funhouse mirror where your body gets all distorted. You see fat that isn't there, or a head that's too large, or a nose that's too big. For me, since the onset of my eating disorder, it has always been an inability to see myself accurately - thin or otherwise - in mirrors and in photos. I have thought many times over the years that I feel like I live in a house of mirrors with crazy distortions all around. Let me say this: you don't have to have suffered through an eating disorder to have a variant of body dysmorphia, or at least a sense that you aren't good enough in some way. I would posit that our media with its crazy distorted presentation of what is beautiful/attractive/sexy has seeped into the subconscious of most of us, and the conclusion must be, for 98% of the population, "I don't measure up". Some people shrug off the images and don't care so much. Others figure that if they can't attain perfection, they may as well just not care at all and stop taking care of themselves. And others, a minority, really care, internalize those images as a personal standard, and feel genuinely bad about themselves. This can be devastating to self esteem, interpersonal relationships, and daily functioning, this preoccupation with perfection. And bear in mind that this affects men as well as women. Back to my story: I don't remember much from that year, my 8th grade year. That is probably partly due to the passage of time. But it is also due to the fact that I was starving myself and I'm quite sure that my poor developing adolescent brain was not functioning properly. I was on a strict, self-imposed, low-calorie diet, with no fat, little protein, mostly carbohydrates, and way too much exercise. From the beginning of 8th grade in September 1988 until May 1989, I went from 125 healthy pounds to 75 emaciated pounds. Here's a memory I DO have. It's winter of 1988. I'm standing in front of a mirror, with my sister standing behind me. At this point, I have lost nearly 30 pounds and currently weigh around 95 pounds, but I literally can not see myself as thin. My sister is worried. She is trying to help me see what I can not. I am standing in a bra and underwear looking in the mirror and she is pointing out bones to me. "See your ribs, Em? And see that?" she asks as she points to my highly visible rib cage and my xyphoid process, a sharp little bone that pokes out at the base of my sternum between my breasts. I look, fascinated. I see the bones, I see the ribs, I see the xyphoid process...it actually grosses me out a little bit...but I can NOT see thin. I see normal, healthy, maybe even chubby. But I do not see thin. This perception persisted as I hit 90 pounds, then 85, then 80, then 75. I would have sworn to anyone who asked that I was still heavy, even as I wasted away. Even as my hair fell out, and my fingernails grew ridged, and my lips turned blue from cold by the end of the day in my middle school. I knew, from the responses of others, that was a little crazy. Well, okay, more than a little. I learned not to say much about it. But I still believed it. Once I started to recover, and re-feed, and my brain function normalized, I began to recognize my thinness. I could see it in photos, and sometimes in the mirror. It was strange - there were good mirrors and bad mirrors. Some were safe, some were not. I wrote in another post about my abandonment of weighing myself for years after my disorder, as I was scared about that starting a relapse. Without my weight as an index, I was reliant upon my perception of myself based on mirrors, photos, and what others told me throughout high school and college. Unfortunately, I couldn't depend on mirrors. My lack of a clear image continued. Looking back at photos now, I can see that my weight fluctuated a good deal, and I was slightly overweight through high school and college. I felt okay, though. I fought hard to accept myself as I was. As much as I would have liked to be thinner, I also knew that I was not interested in returning to the prison of obsession that was the hallmark of my acute anorexia. I learned to put less stock in what I saw in the mirror and go, instead, by how I felt and how my clothes fit. I managed just fine - I'm strong and stubborn (or tenacious). Having a full life had become more important to me than obsession about my weight. But the sense of never really knowing how I appeared persisted. The reflection in the mirror would change throughout the day. When I was hungry or had just worked out, the girl in the mirror looked smaller. When I was full from a meal, she looked really large. It was weird, that fluctuation. I could never quite come to terms with it. It is still with me, yes, even 25 years later. Even as I am pushing 40. Even as a mom of two adolescent boys. I weigh less now than I did in high school, but I still see myself quite often as I looked in pictures where I was at my heaviest. I am often surprised (yes, even to this day) when someone refers to me as small or thin. My perception of myself is so distorted that I have trouble believing it. Again, I know not to say much, lest I'm branded the crazy lady, or people start to believe that I'm just full of false modesty. But when I look shocked at someone saying I'm small, or thin, or tiny, or fit, honest to God, I am. Weird? Yes. Crazy? A little. But it's part of me. It's fallout from a serious illness. I'm aware of it, and I fight it. And I have learned some great coping skills. I hope these might be helpful to anyone struggling with similar issues. 1. Reality testing: This can be done using photos, the scale, or how clothes fit. Some days when I feel particularly large, I literally have to put on a pair of jeans that I have worn in a picture where I looked thin to myself. Some days I am sure I have gained 10 pounds and I need to weigh myself for reassurance. Or I look back at a photo and remind myself that I my weight is fine and my current perception of myself is false. 2. Self-acceptance, regardless of how I feel: I need to remind myself that I'm okay, and that I have lots of great qualities that aren't dependent on my weight or size. I would rather put effort and thought into my job or my family or my relationships than, again, obsessing about weight. I think about the legacy I want to leave as a mom, a woman, a friend, and I realize that I just don't want to waste time feeling bad about myself. 3. Physical activity: Exercise always works to adjust my perceptions. It also serves as a reminder that regardless of how I feel, I have an incredibly capable, pain-free, functional body. And at the end of the day, that is so much more important than what size I am. Accomplishments that indicate that I'm growing stronger or faster or even just that I can maintain a certain level of fitness help a lot to boost my body image. 4. Perfect doesn't exist: No, the perfect body so many strive for will never happen. I will never be good enough for the image in my mind, because our media has so distorted not only the importance of a perfect body, but even the idea of what that looks like. So I try to stop striving and accept where I'm at today, and then move on with my life. 5. Awareness and mindfulness: I recognize that the distorted thoughts are there. I, in no way, accept them as normal or healthy. This allows me to talk back to that critical voice, in a sense. "Look at yourself - you're huge. And hideous," says the voice. I can respond..."No, I'm not actually. I feel that way at this moment, but it's not true." Letting those thoughts become a pattern of mind is dangerous, so resisting them is important. I've also learned to breathe deeply and stay grounded in the present, real moment. Sometimes I literally tell myself that "my breath is real, but my thoughts are not". I use this tool in any number of stressful or anxiety-provoking situations, but it's effective against my crazy body thoughts, too. I hope this helps someone. If you struggle with this and are comfortable commenting, I'd love to hear some other strategies if you have them.
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I often advise those who are looking to lose weight, particularly around their middle, and improve blood sugar control to eat a low-carbohydrate diet. This typically causes people to think of the Atkins diet, piles of bacon and steak, and no fruits or veggies. Which is not at all what I'm talking about. I think of my way of eating as modified low carbohydrate. I first heard of this when I read Syndrome W, an excellent book by Dr.Harriet Mogul. She details a modified low carb diet which is not extremely low carb like the Atkins diet, but does cut way back on carbs in general. As a result of reading her book, I tried cutting out the toast with my breakfast and the bread on my sandwiches at lunch, along with other forms of sugar that can sneak in during the day. I've been eating this way for 7 years now and have maintained a 40-pound weight loss with a fluctuation of 3-5 pounds over those 7 years. It works. The one place I disagree with the Syndrome W plan is that it is low fat. After losing some weight, I also started to increase my fat intake due to personal research and also reading about both paleo diets and The Primal Blueprint. This helped to increase my satiety levels and I actually continued to lose weight, much to my surprise. Also, my blood pressure normalized, my cholesterol levels improved significantly, and some hormonal issues I was having resolved when I made this change. I don't have joint pain in the morning when I wake up anymore, I am more fit than I ever was in my 20s or early 30s, and I don't get crazy hunger swings and stomach pains anymore. I know - I sound like an infomercial. But it's all true. So how do I do it? The short story is I try to keep my total carbohydrate intake for the whole day below 100 grams. Most days, it is between 50 and 75 grams. If my intake starts creeping up above 100 grams, so do my weight and my blood pressure. And, in my book, a carb is a carb is a carb, whether it comes from a fruit, vegetable, nut, rice, or a piece of chocolate. I don't count fiber differently, and I'm not meticulous about counting - I just have a general sense of where I'm at. The longer story details how I actually do this. So here's what a typical day looks like for me: Breakfast - 2 eggs, any style, sometimes with vegetables or salsa or breakfast meat, but not most days. Snack - 1-2 oz nuts Lunch - 2-3 cups chopped fresh veggies (typically a salad) and a serving (3-4 oz) of protein (usually chicken). Oil and vinegar as a dressing. Snack - sometimes after work, I will have some form of nut butter on rice crackers or celery, but generally I try to work out and skip the snack altogether. Dinner - This is where things can get tricky and budgeting comes into play. One of us cooks most nights and we have dinner as a family so it's important to me that I eat something that I enjoy, while staying low carb. I try to get at least 2 more vegetable servings in - often oven-roasted vegetables of some form. If I'm hungry, I'll have some protein. And I usually have some carbs with dinner - rice, sweet potatoes, rice pasta - something starchy. I don't cook specifically low carb for the family, so I make modifications. I might have a pasta sauce over vegetables instead of pasta, or cauliflower rice instead of regular rice. Treats - Fruit (1 piece at the most) or dark chocolate (1-2 oz) Alcohol counts - it's worth about 5 grams for a serving of dry red wine or unsweetened liquor. If I want a glass of wine, I skip the rice. If I eat extra potatoes, I skip the chocolate. I like to have some spontaneity in my choices, but can only afford a little bit of wiggle room. Some tips/tools that have helped me: -I save most of my carbs gram for the evening when we eat a meal as a family and I'm more likely to want to indulge. I would rather have a serving of homemade risotto at dinner with the family than eat a bag of pretzels by myself for a morning snack. -Don't focus on calories - but they still count. Nuts are great, for instance. One ounce has 4-6 grams of carbs, depending on the nut. But low carb doesn't mean no impact. They still have lots of calories, and I could easily down several ounces without realizing it. I measure myself a serving for each day at work and put it in a baggie to avoid overeating. I do find that I can eat more calories and maintain a much lower weight on a lower carb diet than I ever did when I was eating low fat/high carb. -Use a tracker until you get accustomed to the carb content of foods you enjoy. This is my favorite so far. -Understand the science behind why low carb works for so many people. I love this infographic. It's more motivating when you think about what you are doing to your body biochemically. This is NOT just about aesthetics or attaining some ridiculous physical goal - it's about caring for your body, inside and out. It's that time of the year again - that time when so many of us will make a New Year's resolution. According to several sources, 45% of Americans will make a resolution, and only 8% will be successful in achieving it. The number one resolution? Weight loss. Improving fitness comes in at number five.This will drive people to strange and uncharacteristic behaviors ranging from giving up any myriad of activities cold turkey, to purchasing gym memberships that won't be used more than a handful of times, to joining clubs or weight loss groups or starting a detox program of some sort. (Keep in mind that detox drinks/diets/plans are one of the biggest scams out there. You have a cool little organ called your liver that already does this for you, and no amount of water, cayenne, lemon juice, vinegar, or green tea can hold a candle to what your liver does for free.) I'm sure you've heard this before, but I'll put it out there again: The diet industry pulls in a staggering 40 billion dollars a year, with a failure rate of 95%, meaning that 95% of people who diet in any form will re-gain all of the weight they lose - and often more - within 1-5 years. It's brilliant, from a business perspective. I mean, think about it - a product that will never work but can be marketed again and again and again as if it might work this time so that consumers will continue to buy it. And try. And fail. Changing the packaging or the name or the marketing messages seems to be enough to keep people coming back for more failure. Amazing. Holiday weight gain is real, and New Year's is a convenient time to address it. I believe there is a downward slide that begins with Halloween candy, brings us to Thanksgiving feasting, and then the month of December, which seems to be one huge Lindt-ball laden extravaganza. Couple that with cold temps outside, short days and less time to exercise, and by this time, I think most people are feeling like they're ready for a change, or at least to shed a few pounds. But here's a radical idea: Rather than set yourself up for failure with a resolution or a diet, start with self-acceptance. Instead of using BMI calculators or calorie counters or squeezing into your skinny jeans and feeling awful, try this: Look in the mirror and say "Today I am at my perfect weight." Because you are, at least in the sense that this is where you are today. Self-love and acceptance are incredibly powerful tools. First of all, they work instantaneously. You don't have to wait a few days or experiment on yourself - just be kind to yourself. Now. Today. It's a great place to start. It will breed a desire to care for and make better, rather than to punish your body. Having struggled through anorexia as an adolescent, I feel like I have spent the last three decades of my life (I can remember this as far back as 10 years old) looking into mirrors or at photos and saying "yuck" or seeing every single flaw, to a point where it is a reflex as natural as breathing for me. If you have that same reflex, fight it. Talk back to it. Look at yourself and see the things you love. Or find things to love. Or start loving the things you've always hated. Make a choice that this year is going to be different, not because you are going to get skinny or perfect, but because you are you going to accept yourself, exactly where you are, right now. I have never, ever met a woman who has not wanted to lose at least 5 pounds. Never. Let's try something different. Perspective helps. Here are some thoughts to keep in mind:
Extreme dieting ---> Failure ---> Complete lack of awareness of anything diet-related ----> Weight gain ...and then back to the beginning Five years or so ago, I decided to start feeding myself better to improve my health in areas where there were some concerns - blood pressure, hormone balance, blood sugar control - and it worked. Amazing. That stops the cycle before it even begins, and it is a form of feeding and loving myself, rather than punishing. And while I did lose significant weight that I have kept off, I was actually more excited about the changes I saw in my health than anything. This was a crucial paradigm shift, and it's made all the difference.
There are good, compelling reasons to lose weight for some individuals, in some circumstances. And there are ways to successfully lose weight and keep it off. But there is no quick fix, and there is no one-size-fits-all solution. Don't give in to the diet industry this year. You are at the perfect weight for this moment, this day, maybe even this year. Accept that, and see what else opens up to you. Social rules are different in every culture. In America, we are very, um, polite when it comes to select matters. There are things that you just don't talk about in certain company, things you don't mention. You would tell someone (maybe) that they have something hanging from their nose or that their fly is down, but even that would be done with some awkwardness for most. But I would never, ever say to someone I haven't seen in a while, Wow, you've really put on some weight!. And if someone ever commented on my weight in such a way, I would be very upset and offended, even if it were true.
Well, that got challenged while living in Turkey. As I hung out with women, I noticed that it was very common to talk openly about weight gain or loss. In my home culture, we tended to only talk about loss. In my new culture, I was shocked to hear people openly commenting on weight gain. At first, no one ever commented on my weight...but then we got comfortable with each other. When we moved overseas, I was about 35 pounds heavier than I am now. I was heavier than was healthy for my frame, but I ate "healthily" (according to the USDA pyramid) and exercised. I figured the weight I was at was just where I would stay. Having a rather traumatic history of a severe bout of anorexia nervosa at the ages of 13 and 14, I had worked hard over the years to get comfortable with my body however it was. I did not want to slide back down the slippery slope into obsessive exercise and weight loss. I didn't weigh myself, and I tried to be positive about my body image. Having had 2 kids, and being in my early 30s, I figured that my body just was how it was, and I accepted that. One day while having tea with some women after being in the country for a few months, one of the women commented on the fact that I had a "fat stomach". Now I was still getting comfortable with the language, so I thought surely I heard that wrong! I asked her to repeat what she had said, and sure enough, she was talking about my belly. She proceeded to recommend that I lose 8 kilos (about 18 pounds), all the while looking me up and down with great scrutiny. I felt my face turn scarlet. I was horrified. I managed not to cry...but I wanted to. We ended up laughing it off and moving on in the conversation, but that comment had stung. I went home and cried later. To be honest, that conversation, while shocking to me, taught me an important lesson: discussing weight, while it can be done in a mean and insulting way, can also be a way of expressing care for someone. My friend was not trying to deride me or hurt me. She was simply nudging me towards taking better care of myself. And at the end of the story, it was effective. It took me a few weeks to accept her criticism, but I finally let myself see it. I took an honest look at myself in the mirror, and I knew I had some weight to lose. I bought a scale and decided to trust in myself and my recovery from anorexia. I set a weight goal. I moved more and ate less, and I managed to drop 10 pounds. I felt better. (The rest of my weight loss would come after finally getting away from USDA Pyramid-based dogma, but that's another story.) My neighbors watched my weight loss with interest. They commented. It was annoying most of the time. But I began to understand their interest in my health and appearance, and I got used to it. By the time we left, I was completely unfazed by weight-related comments. I heard them thrown around enough that I actually grew to appreciate them. I, personally, still never could have said to someone, Have you gained a few kilos? but I understood the spirit behind it when I heard it being said. If we could see outside the skin what excessive fat is doing inside the body, I think we'd all be a lot more motivated to talk openly with the people we love and care for about weight issues. The fact is that when humans are at their optimum weight, they are healthier. Being overweight, for many people, leads to disease and dysfunction, dependence on medications, side effects of those medications, less productivity, higher health care costs, etc. I believe that healthy people build healthy communities, and healthy communities can be more effective in making things better the world over. I am thankful for my friend's honesty that day, though it stung at the time. It challenged me to make myself healthier, and that has made all the difference. Deciding whether or not to supplement, and with what, is a complicated decision. When I analyze my own diet, I can see that, despite being a very intentionally healthy eater, I am at or below 60% of the RDA for some essential nutrients, including calcium, magnesium, manganese, and vitamin D. Am I still getting enough for me? Or is there something missing? Outside of the known vitamins and minerals, are there other things I should be taking? Fish oil? Flax seed oil? Ginko biloba?
Obviously, most of us aren't walking around with the blatant symptoms of nutrient deficiency. When's the last time you met someone with scurvy or rickets? We are blessed beyond belief to live in a place and in a time where and when food is widely available. Unfortunately, due to poor stewardship of the earth in the form of irresponsible and unsustainable farming practices, as well as a highly processed diet, many people may be taking in enough calories but not getting the nutrients they need. Could this have anything to do with our high levels of obesity, type II diabetes, and other chronic illnesses? I think it's a distinct possibility. It is possible to be deficient without having outright signs of deficiency. But I don't feel that slapping everyone on a multivitamin is the answer, either. I think that smart, targeted supplementation of nutrients that are specific to the needs of each individual is important. Multivitamin and mineral supplements, while appealing, can lead to a number of problems. One is that certain vitamins and minerals block the uptake of others, meaning that if you take them at the same time, you won't be able to absorb one or both of them. Also, I have found that many formulations include nutrients that are untested but include outrageous health claims. I have spent a lot of time in the past few weeks perusing vitamin and mineral supplements in major stores and health food stores, and the packaging, ingredient lists, health claims, and options are enough to make your head spin. How to make a good choice? I would say it's important to answer the following questions: 1. What nutrients do I need? 2. What is the best way to obtain these nutrients? a. Diet alone? If so, which foods are richest in said nutrients? b. Supplements? If so, which supplements are the "best"? The best way to determine what you need is to do a diet analysis. You can have this done by a professional, or you can do it yourself using a tool such as Fit Day (at fitday.com). It is free to set up an account. You enter everything you eat for a day or more, than look at an overview of your diet. Along with caloric breakdown, you also get to see a nice summary of where you are at with vitamins and minerals. I recommend looking at any nutrients for which you fall below 80% of the RDA. (Remember that vitamin D will be low because your body can synthesize this from sunlight. In reality, though, for those of us in Northern climes, you aren't synthesizing enough unless it's summer.) You also need to bear in mind that the Fit Day database does NOT take into account the vitamin/mineral loss due to storage, processing, and/or cooking. It also does not necessarily account for the relatively mineral-deficient crops that are being raised if you buy produce from large agribusiness-style companies. Now decide if you want to supplement with diet or with pills. If you want to stick to whole foods, you can do an online search for foods rich in the particular nutrient you are low in. Figure out how much of that food you need to add to your diet to meet your basic requirements. It might require adding a few extra servings of vegetables or nuts and seeds to your diet, or an occasional slab of liver (from a grass-fed animal raised without antibiotics or hormones). Or you might decide you want to go the supplement route. This gets a little more complicated. Many supplement brands make claims about the superiority of their products. The truth is that supplement makers are not required to prove the efficacy of their products, due to an act (NSHEA)passed in 1994. It is also up to the FDA to prove that a given supplement has adverse effects (this happened with the popular weight loss drug ephedra) in order to pull it off the market. There is very little regulation on the manufacturing or sales of supplements in America, so it's hard to know what you're getting, how much of it will actually get into your blood stream, and whether or not it will even make a difference. Contamination with lead, among other things, has also been reported. I have no answers here, but it does seem that the USP (stands for United States Pharmacopeia) mark on a supplement is probably your best insurance that you are, more or less, getting what you pay for. Without lead. Which is a good thing. I will report back as I find supplements that seem to be safe, and available to the body once they've been consumed. I'll start with magnesium in the near future, as that's one I just happened to do a lot of research into. Until then... When I was 13, I developed anorexia nervosa. Really scary, severe anorexia nervosa. I went from a healthy, outgoing, bright girl to a shell of a person. I was not overweight to begin with, but by the end of my ordeal, I was down to an emaciated 75 pounds. I was constantly cold, tired, and quite frankly, wanted to die. It was not much fun, and definitely not a year of my life I would want to repeat. Anorexia is, in my opinion, nothing more than a slow, prolonged form of suicide - and I was well on my way to that fate. Anorexia has the highest mortality rate of any psychiatric disorder. I am thankful every day that I am here and alive and well. I beat the odds.
I would like to slowly share my story on this blog, in bits and pieces, as I feel inspired. I will subtitle these "Skinny Stories". The whole darn story could make a book, but rather than a long, linear, historical tale, I would like to tell it against the backdrop of my current life. You don't have an experience like that without it impacting the rest of your life, and my experience has become woven into the fabric of who I am. That starving girl is still there inside of me, and she has a story to tell. In my case, I had 2 tools of self-destruction: a calorie-counter book and the bathroom scale. My addiction was to weight loss. I couldn't stop. The calorie counter made me acutely aware of the numeric value of anything I put into my mouth, and the scale was my measure of success. Every morning I would wake up, excitedly anticipating my weigh in. I weighed myself at the same time (early morning, before I ate or drank), in the same place (scale lined up perfectly on the "correct" lines of the linoleum on the bathroom floor), and in the same condition (undressed, before my morning shower). That was the ritual, and it was my life. A weight loss meant a good day, maintenance meant a slightly agitated day, and gain was anathema. I would set a weight goal, and I (initially) always had the earnest intent to stop losing weight once I met that goal. The goal started at 115 pounds, but when I got to 115, I thought that 110 would be reasonable. And then I reached 110, and I thought Well, why not 105? And then 105 seemed a bit heavy, so I aimed for 100. By the time I got to 90, I had lost control completely. It wasn't so much that I didn't want to stop losing weight, but that I felt that I couldn't. Fast-forward to the time that I started eating again. (That will be another story for another day.) I remember sitting in the doctor's office, telling him that I was feeling better and wanted to eat again, and he said this to me: That's good. I'm happy to hear that. But you need to know something. Your chances of relapsing into anorexia, or developing bulimia, are very, very high. He was cautiously optimistic. And he was right. The relapse rate of anorexia is estimated to be between 30-50% in the first year of recovery, and 20% overall. Also, the development of bulimia in those who are recovering from anorexia is common. For a pediatrician in 1988, he was ahead of his time in telling me that. This caused 2 responses in me: The first was to say, Nope. Not me. The second was to develop a determination to not count, weight, or track anything. Not what I ate, and not what I weighed. After all, that's what had gotten me into trouble in the first place, right? So, throughout high school, I rarely stepped on a scale. If I had to for some reason, I would get nervous, agitated, and always felt shame and embarrassment over what I weighed, even if it was completely healthy. I finally decided to get rid of the scale altogether and just forget about it. My bathroom scale at home sat unused, and I stopped paying attention to weight. I was so determined not to become obsessed again that I ended up letting go. This was really good and healthy in some ways, but in retrospect, led to some new and different unhealthy patterns. In the past 4 years, I have realized that I need to find a balance. As I wrote in an earlier post, when a friend told me I was overweight, I was shocked and horrified and even mad, but she was right. And I had to make a choice to trust in the process of healing and growing that I had gone through in the last 20 years. I had to make a decision that it was okay for me to step on a scale, that I would not go flying into out-of-control weighing and obsessive behavior. I talked back to the starving girl inside of me, the one who is full of fear and worry that I will relapse and hurt myself again, and I said Guess what? I can handle this. I'll be okay. And so far, I have been. Weight is an important index of health. It's not everything, but it's meaningful. BMI, while it doesn't tell the whole story and certainly has its weaknesses, does matter from a disease perspective. All of my years of eating what I wanted and refusing to weigh or pay attention were sort of like writing checks out of a checking account but refusing to check the balance. And believe me when I tell you that I do NOT have a metabolism that deals with that well. I could easily become obese - it runs in my family and I have to be careful. I have to pay attention. I spent a lot of my 20s and part of my 30s at a weight that classified me as overweight on the BMI scale. Not good. And "dense bones" only explain so much of that weight... I don't weigh myself every day now, but I do try to check in every few days. I don't always want to weigh myself, but I do it to keep me accountable to taking good care of myself. I don't let the number determine if I will have a good or bad day like I used to, but I use it as an indicator that I need to start paying closer attention to what I'm eating or how I'm moving. For me, weight gain means high blood pressure, increased risk for type 2 diabetes, hormone disruption, and other health-related fallout. I won't lie - I do have days where I see a number lower than it has been in the last 20 years, and I think Maybe just 5 more pounds... But I know that voice now, and I know how to quiet it. And then I move on. |
AuthorI'm Emily. I currently work in online education management, but I also have a Masters degree in Nutritional Sciences (my true passion). In addition, I am a mom, cook, avid reader, novice gardener, and enjoy all kinds of outdoor activities. On my blog, you will find articles on food, fitness, weight management, and eating issues. ALL recipes on my blog are gluten-free. Many are low-carbohydrate. Most are grain free. Enjoy! Categories
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