Reintegration, Recovery & More

Being patient with my body size in recovery has been super frustrating recently–something that I haven’t entirely mastered yet. Especially lately, when the summer clothes are coming out of the closet, it’s been extra difficult to feel “at home” in my body (pride pun intended).

As I’ve said before in previous posts, I’ve definitely gained weight in recovery. I don’t know how much, but since starting my first phase of recovery, the OA diet, in 2016, and leaving it behind four months later, there’s an absolute possibility that I weight more than I did then. I haven’t gotten on a scale since last summer, but I can feel and see the tangible change in my Clothes sizes. (which are all over the place–M, L, XL, 0X, 1X, 2X depending on the brand!)

This all being said, I am a living example of diet failure. Those of us in the post-diet world know that relative statistic that 95% of diets fail. What this actually means is that the diet fails people, people don’t fail the diet. They are buying a product that came damaged, and are blamed when the damaged product doesn’t work. What the “95 percent” thing actually means is that 95 percent of the time, restriction based weight loss isn’t ever sustainable.

Further, it has been shown in studies that people who diet restrictively go back to the weight they were before the initial diet, and then gain 40 percent more. This isn’t meant to scare anyone, because I think the idea that “dieting will make you gain all your weight back and then some” is an anxiety provoking thought that has inherently fat phobic implications on its own.

Instead, I reframe this thought in such a way that reminds me that if I’m really anxious about my body size now, participating in the futile act of dieting to make myself smaller than I currently am will land me right back here and potentially produce more anxiety until I unlearn all the fat hate rhetoric that society has so fiercely bestowed upon me.

What I’m learning in recovery is to be happy and healthy at any size.

I’ve spent a lot of time since learning all these numbers and nutrition stats trying to find my own way to recover and re-integrate my body back to its own conception of “normal”. And what I’m developing is this process I have named and coined as re-childing. 

Shifting Recovery

When I started “recovery”, recovery looked a lot liked a diet–because it was a diet. Binge eaters are often prescribed weight loss as recovery, especially if they are subjectively “overweight” or “obese”.

Patients with anorexia (I say patients in this sentence strategically, because I was never a “patient” to treatment for an eating disorder since I was always a “normal” weight) are often prescribed weight restoration as their form of treatment. Their body weights put them in the hospital; but their disorder is seen by many medical professionals as my recovery solution.

I spent four months losing 26 pounds, and being under a lot of stress and anxiety over when (what time), I ate, how much, and who with. I weighed myself compulsively, and created a lot of anxiety about eating “on time” rather than listening to my body’s cues of hunger and fullness.

After four months, the OA lifestyle and all that came with it wasn’t sustainable. I had more people paying attention to what I ate at post-meeting diner gatherings than helping me work the actual program and all its principles.

I’ve met some WONDERFUL beautiful people in OA, who have encouraged me in and beyond my journey with that phase of what I considered to be recovering at the time. These same people respect that my disease is bigger than overeating. I come from emotional eating, bingeing, restricting, dieting, exercise purging and back again.

After this shift, I stopped exercising for a long while–a few months short of one year–and gained weight doing it. I kind of sat with this weight gain, however, because I was adamant to not exercise until I could do it without compulsively counting the calories, doing the math in my head that verified I had “gotten rid of” my lunch or worked out until I had “permission” to eat more for the day.

These processes were internal, and my relationship to exercise probably just looked really dedicated and motivated to the outside world, but I was doing so much damage to myself and my already tricky knees and back joints (I was a runner who loved to run until 10th grade when I discovered I had hip dysplasia that impacted my knees).

I re-integrated an exercise plan into my routine and my life over the past few months. I have discovered what I enjoy (hiking, walking and yoga!) and learned to put movement that doesn’t suck into my daily life. And I’m doing only those things, with a touch of dance and everyday moving.

My favorite suggestion comes from Linda Bacon’s Body Respect: I park at the far end of the lot at my job and enjoy a few extra minutes of walking to the office to sign in each morning. I also have located several different spots nearby to walk, and my partner and I have visited them a lot throughout the spring!

Intuitive Eating

Intuitive Eating has done so much for me–it is insurmountable exactly how much. It has become about more than just eating when hungry and stopping when full–I have learned through the Intuitive Eating principles how to choose foods that help my brain function better, what food actually does for me, and how to re-process things about my body image that weren’t fully healed. It has taught me how to shut out the external food policing messages that come from family and social messaging, which have throughout my life solidified into concrete messages that have come to sound a lot like my own voice, even when they’re not.

The Ten Principles of Intuitive Eating!

These principles are so important to me, and have made me really interested in the nutrition components of food and what it can do for me. With intuitive eating, I’ve learned that carbs are in fact brain food and we need them if we want to keep functioning, even as we rest.

I have a serotonin imbalance, so I focus a lot on serotonin-producing foods and omega-3 fatty acids for mood boosting. I also hydrate a lot more often and have rediscovered my childhood love for raw veggies as snacks!

My Re-Childing Theory

Most of us have no memories of being newborns or infants–but scientifically speaking, our bodies were designed to eat when they were hungry and stop after we weren’t. Despite the fact that whoever raised us got no sleep when we cried out of hunger at 3 in the morning, we were listening to our bodies when they released ghrelin–the “hunger rumble” hormone in our stomach that told us to feed it.

As we grew, our parents or caregivers were the ones who created our eating schedule in an effort to structure our day as well as their own. But how much of that eating schedule was actually in tune with our own hunger cues?
How often as children were our bodies still hungry even an hour after dinner? It’s got less to do with the “growing boy/girl” nuances we push on children as they develop, and more about their hunger and fullness signals trying to fight against a somewhat arbitrary and self-imposed food routine.

The idea that “you can’t possibly be hungry” an hour after dinner is a myth, and as children, whether we are granted permission to be hungry and eat shortly after a meal affects our development and relationship with food and eating. I know personally that it did exactly that for me.

Lots of healthy foods were available in my life for most of my childhood, and lots of unhealthy ones were, too. I had a good balance of “play food”, quickly prepped food, and nutrient dense food–but was always told either when or how much to eat (my dad’s side of the family were their own Clean Plate Police).

While I understand that parenting is SO time-consuming and that dinner gets made when and however the person cooking often sees fit, more dialogue about family food preferences and hunger schedules should be taken into account.

In our society, its considered rude to eat before everyone at the table has been served. But what if I’m not hungry and everyone else is eating? There shouldn’t be judgment if I have to make a plate for myself and heat it up later.

I can still sit with my loved ones and socialize while they enjoy their meal. Food is so often a really important sociocultural bonding tool, but participation in the food, for me, doesn’t always have to be required. In the case of restrictive disordered folks, challenge yourself to participate in the conversations and the food. There is still opportunity to be present while honoring yourself.

Just the same, parents shouldn’t push kids who are done with their dinner. If anything, teach them that whatever they don’t finish can and should be saved for later, as an effort to not be wasteful.

In households who are privileged enough to have food security, training eaters from a young age to not take more than they need could be useful in creating intuitive eaters who are mindful of the presence of socioeconomically imposed food insecurity and wastefulness.

I am re-integrating my body to its natural state; by listening really closely and carefully and not eating after my body says it’s finished. I’ve done this sometimes by overeating by accident and noticing my threshold without judgment. It’s all about fine-tuning and sometimes, that means willing to be a little physically uncomfortable.

Another form of re-childing my body’s relationship with food and body image is reframing the way I experience and think about movement. Instead of saying “I wasted today and didn’t exercise; I’m so lazy”; I think about it in terms of my relationship with nature. I don’t want to waste my “outside time” or my opportunity for that day to interact with the beauty in my neighborhood and beyond.

When we were kids, there was NOTHING worse than not getting to play outside. I go back to this thought often. When I was a preschool teacher, we would often say to the children, “Clean up your toys fast so you don’t lose outside time!” and they would get right to cleaning up and have more than enough time to play and laugh and run around with their friends.

There are only so many daylight hours, and certain tasks can be done at anytime. Being able to do this social movement activity was so important to them, and not out of a compulsion to move. I don’t like losing my “outside time” as a grown-up, either!

We all are learning and growing in this recovery process, and it is up to us to find out who our inner child is and to feed, nourish and love that child back to life using everything we have learned as adults. I know for me, it has been the most gratifying, healing, sometimes frustrating but always altogether meaningful process thus far. Get to know who you were before the self-imposed rules, structures and external messaging.

How are you implementing reintegration into your life?

Revolutions Need Bodies/A Pride Guide for Everyone!!!

This post has been sitting in my drafts for the past few months, because I thought it would be super important to talk about the embodied practice of revolution.

What better time to do so than pride month?

I’ve been reflecting a lot on what I know about embodiment lately, and I feel like this perfectly goes with the idea of pride month and everything I feel about celebrating Pride as we do.

Micah Banzant

A little queer history: On June 28, 1969, Marsha P. Johnson threw a brick at a NYPD police officer at a bar that was frequented by many gay, lesbian, bi and trans folks. The Stonewall Inn was one of the only places in NYC where LGBTQ+ people were left alone to be themselves, as homosexuality was against the law in New York City at the time.

Mafia families controlled bars and paid police to stay away so that they could make a profit. They sold their bottom shelf liquor at top shelf prices, knowing that queer folks had nowhere else to go to socialize.

On June 28th, the NYPD raided the Stonewall Inn in Greenwich Village.

The Stonewall Riots gave us NYC (and other nationwide celebrations) of “Pride”. 

But so many people forget this history.

 

 

The revolution that is PRIDE was built on the bodies of trans women of color, cis gay men, black lesbians, and continues to be built on fat peoples’ bodies, queer peoples’ bodies, and trans bodies, too. Some of these bodies share multiple marginalization. But the true shifts from tolerance to acceptance, from marginal to normalization, would not exist without them. Without us. 

It is because of Marsha and Silvia Rivera and so many other important and beautiful people that we have entered a new era of civil rights. And this revolution continues to build. As Marilyn Wann says in the foreword to the Fat Studies Reader: “If we cannot feel at home in our own skins, where else are we supposed to go?”

 

@transtastic (DeviantArt)

 

I experience it on a daily basis, in my relationship with my partner, and incidentally, in my relationship with myself and my body. To be queer is to act outside of normative structure. To be fat is to act outside of normative structure.

It’s worth acknowledging that with my marginalization, comes also my privilege. I am white, able bodied, a citizen, middle-class by birth, and these are things that not every queer or fat person shares with me.

We must not forget, during a month that is about equality, that there still are ways in which we are not all equal. 

 

Starting with Pride celebrations themselves.

As I stated in my history lesson earlier, Pride was born out of a mass resistance by LGBTQ people to no longer be policed and to resist the idea of only being able to socialize through active drug and alcohol culture.

Yet today, Pride itself often serves as a space for queer folks and their straight ally friends to get buzzed on the LIRR and go to Cubbyhole or Phoenix after the parade ends. This closes out the festivities to a lot of people in the LGBTQQIPPA+ community, those in recovery from substance abuse in particular.

It goes without saying, many people in the queer community become addicts in the first place because of homophobia, stigma, shame and self-hate; things that nobody deserves to feel, or should have to bury in an addiction.

Another reason I’ve come to reconsider pride as an “inclusive” space is the corporatization of the parade itself in the past couple of years. It’s become a space for banks and companies to give away rainbow stuff with their logo on it and pledge their support for one day of the year, while either implicitly or explicitly also reinforcing discriminatory hiring practices against queer and trans bodies.

Corporations made up 36% of San Diego Pride in 2016, while actual LGBTQ+ people only made up 26%. Many of the companies at pride festivals also exist in states where it’s legal to fire someone because of their orientation or gender identity. In other words, they’re proud to take your money, gay people, just don’t come out at work. 

The protest space itself is not disability accessible; for so many reasons. For folks with anxiety or autism, it can be extremely loud and overstimulating. For physically disabled folks, crowds aren’t known for being wheelchair friendly or generally accessible. Especially when the crowds are upwards of a few thousand people per city block.

And on an election year, expect candidates to be canvassing and shamelessly self-promoting.

And if you’re going to go to pride as a straight person, please be respectful of us. We are not your token gay friends, this day isn’t about how great an ally you are. Like, at all. 

IMPORTANT!!!! make sure you keep your hands to yourself. There is nothing more obnoxious than touching marchers or parade attendees without their consent, commodifying their identity. Don’t be Perez Hilton and go all “I can objectify women and harass them because *haha* I’m not attracted to them!”…just because you wouldn’t sleep with someone doesn’t make it funny that you’re potentially making them uncomfortable.

 

Elias Ericson

 

Let fat people be fat! I adore and love and cherish fat queer bodies. They belong there in that space as much as thin privileged folks do, and y’all best make room for them–no objectification, grumbling, rudeness, side eye, or marginalization or heckling allowed. Fat people exist and they are loved and they are welcome. And they’re not in queer relationships because they “couldn’t get a man/woman/other implied heteronormative relationship situation to love them”. Fatness isn’t a condition. But queer fat love is an act of liberation, and that’s what this entire month (and for some of us, every day life) is about.

In her essay “Fattening Queer History”, Elena Levy-Navarro defines her definition of “queer” outside of the spectrum of human sexuality and love, and into the realm of “other.” She discusses a queerness that “is ore expressly inclusive of all who challenge normatively, including fat people.” She argues the point that while the LGBTQ+ community struggles to be integrated and accepted in society, they may also perpetuate fatphobia in their communal spaces, which are supposed to be about love and justice. While researching pride flags for people to be aware of for this month, I came across a ‘fat fetish’ flag and I was appalled because this is exactly the problem. Fat bodies are squished into convenient narrative boxes, selectively assigned sexuality (based largely on “acceptable fatness” and the “pretty face” pejorative). But to the rest of the world, fat people, particularly fat queer people, are of otherwise no use, no worth, and no value in and across social contexts. And the LGBTQ+ community cannot continue to prop up this kind of commodification rhetoric–we must get rid of the in-house “othering” of bodies in our community as a whole.

Navarro argues for a “historical turn” in queer history, such that we reflect back on the past to look at the bodies of people involved in LGBTQ+ Liberation movements and honor them for their size, shape, assigned sex at birth, expression, gender identity, and the work that those bodies did to get us here.

Fat people experience the same kind of ignorance-based discrimination from the health care system, and are seen as “undesirables” lacking in reproductive ability (as many people view LGBTQ folks), thus rendered unimportant to the medical community. Western medicine hyper focuses on creating a “before” and “after” picture of a fat body, as if there is something assimilationist that is required to be accepted as a fat person, as is the case as a queer person.

This is, after all, the month when we hear slogans like “love is love” and the heterohistorical contextualizers of our society give a lot of effort and lip service to orienting queer people into a space that is heteronormative, using heteronormativity as the reference point. These attitudes and behaviors are the same ones that ask the question, “So which one of you is the _____?” (insert binary gender here), which completely misses the point that queer relationships are intentionally made up of differently gendered individuals. 

These revolutions need ALL bodies to be there. LGBTQQIPPA people are worthy of respect and if you aren’t a member of our community, remember that we are inviting you into our home, and trying to mitigate the injustice that has been done unto our bodies. 

 

 

Marriage equality and pride parades are great but they are still such small steps. Basic dignity, representation, and a movement away from only the “acceptable” queer relationships being visible (i.e. trans relationships, trans representation, fat queer/trans relationships), comprehensive inclusive healthcare, job security, and legal personhood recognition are only just some of the things we still need.

Right now, the basic essence of what it is to be trans is still listed as a disorder in the DSM, the same way that fat phobia is still seen as best practice in medicine. If we want to be liberated, we have to recognize all of these things simultaneously, and combat them simultaneously–and it takes more than a parade and a month of recognition to do just that.

For some of us, pride month is still inaccessible because it’s not safe to be out to our families or our work spaces. This prevents people from living congruent lives, being the same person in all spaces and at all times, and thus, from living with complete integrity. When we are forced to live a dishonest life, one mired in shame, our bodies break down. And these revolutions in social, societal and global change desperately need our bodies to be there, to show up, and to represent everyone.

Nobody should be expected to live from the neck up; only acknowledging their thoughts as a function of what makes them different. Our bodies are the center of how we live, what we do, who we are, and they deserve to be given space and acknowledged and loved. Our bodies should be seen, celebrated, and acknowledged for how they are gloriously, beautifully different!

Happy pride!

PS watch this music video it is everything 

When Accessibility Doesn’t Come in Your Size

I’m so excited to be co-authoring this week’s post with the awesome body positive mental health advocate, fellow content creator and recovery warrior Lexie Manion!

One of her Instagram posts about being in a larger body and not fitting into a lot of the spaces that thin people can fit into inspired me to ask her to co-write this post with me. We’ll share our experiences about spatially exclusive items that thin people, for the most part, use every day without a problem.

 

https://www.instagram.com/p/BfXZAsLhzbr/?hl=en&taken-by=lexiemanion

 

The idea that there are certain everyday items, places, arrangements, and accommodations (publicly accessible things) that are not even a second thought for thin people is one of the many examples of thin privilege.

In its most basic form, thin privilege is used to describe how thin people in society are commonly accepted — even celebrated. Thin people have the upper hand in many everyday parts of life, including physically and metaphorically fitting in with ease, having no issues shopping for clothes, eating food without being questioned, “are you sure you want to eat that much?” 

There’s this fallacy that gluttony and laziness are the true problems that make fat people fat, which is so far from the truth.  Unintentional weight gain or weight distribution throughout the body can be caused by aging, medications, physical illness, mental illness, and what Evelyn Tribole and Elyse Resch call our individual “genetic blueprint. (Intuitive Eating Principle #8).

It’s a shame the general public denies that many fat people are actually fat because of circumstances beyond their control, and that diet programs are one of the only products in our consumer market that blame the user for a receiving a defective item.

It’s worth saying that in our diet culture, not every fat person wants to lose weight. Each person’s health and wellness is their own. I (Lexie) personally can not recall anytime I’ve heard a fat person shame a (thin) person who smokes or drinks excessively.

Correcting other people’s behaviors or assumptions about their behaviors, especially strangers, can never be justified because it’s rude, unnecessary and counterproductive. Meeting a perceived problem with judgmental eyes will never help.

It’s also worth saying that the fat acceptance movement isn’t going around demanding that every single person be fat or live in a larger body–but that society at large is demanding that everyone be thin, fit, eat “clean” (ugh), and have a certain ideal body type that requires taking up less space. The fat acceptance movement is the thinspo, fitspo and thin privilege clapback, not a demand to standardize fatness.

And when we discuss thin privilege in the Body Positive community, it echoes the similarities of other unearned privileges of identity such as white privilege, able-bodied privilege and heterosexism. Admitting that we have this privilege isn’t a bad thing either (another fallacy). Lexie–a white and able-bodied person; Cait–a white and able-bodied cis person; Stating our privileges is acknowledgement that while we are all created equally, not all bodies are created–or socially treated–equally. Racism, sexism, ableism and fat discrimination are all very alive and well in our world.

 

The same message is spread when fat people can’t access certain things in public spaces, or even in private spaces, that affirm their bodies and make them feel like they belong there. Let’s take a look at some examples:

Straight Size Clothing

Lexie: I am a huge Demi Lovato fan and was checking out her merch for her past tour a couple months ago. Sadly, her store doesn’t even accommodate to my XXXL/XXXXL size. What irked me though is that a fan could buy an XXL shirt, but there is a catch. We all know that singers and celebrities over-charge for their merch already (because they can because the fans are so loyal!). So, get this: for $34.95, plus an additional $2.95 (shipping not included), you can be the proud owner of a Demi Lovato shirt (if you can fit into an XXL, of course)!

Cait: This interests me to hear about Demi’s clothes and merch, considering she is a person in recovery. That brings me to another issue: the idea that bigger bodies aren’t the ones with “real, medical eating disorders” and that we all just lack willpower and self control and that that somehow makes us less of a person.

At almost every store I go to, there is a plus size ‘section’ full of maybe an area of clothes that fit me that’s no more than double the size of my bedroom. And everything that fits plus size women like me is always in an irrationally unfashionable assortment of animal print. As someone whose style leans more toward the fat version of Janis Joplin, I don’t want to look like a bloated cheetah or a zebra or Sylvia Fine from The Nanny. And I most certainly don’t want to be charged more for it.

 

Transportation

Cait: I haven’t been on an airplane in a couple of years, but I’ve heard so many stories from women who are larger than me about being charged for needing to buy two seats on a plane just to be able to travel. For a lot of people, this extra money is a hardship; and it’s unfair that a person has to have more money to take up more space. This has become a phenomenon by passenger rights advocates known as the “fat tax.” (read more from this BBC article).

Trains are different, though. I see a lot of weirdness on the LIRR as a native Long Islander. For instance, there are fold-down seats for folks who have disabilities and their caregivers so that they can access the train and get on and off without a hassle–fitting their wheelchairs if need be. Plenty of able-bodied people occupy these spaces when there are no room in the standard seats provided. I’ve seen people get really perturbed about having to sit next to a fat person on the train, because the amount of space they take up is met with judgment--but the same level of annoyance doesn’t get expressed for thin people who put their bag next to them on a seat or who do things that are just not generally so courteous. Fatphobia runs rampant in public spaces; and it boils down to simply prejudice.

 Academia

In a recent Food Psych podcast episode that Christy Harrison did with activist (almost) Dr. Joy Cox, she discusses the idea that desks and seating arrangements in higher education–and for that matter, secondary and public education–aren’t accessible for large bodied people. 

Fat studies and health at every size has also barely entered the realm of academic discourse as a branch of social justice/sociology/studying discrimination. Joy talks a lot about how weight is not yet a federally protected class and how this ideology spills over from the idea that weight and body size fully function as a choice. 

I (Cait) having sat through six years of higher education and having a semester to go on my Masters, have never truly, totally embodied this problem, as I was often small enough or “just fat enough” to be able to fit. But what happens when we add arms and non-movable desks to seating in academia, where fat bodies can’t fit in the space between? We close out academic access to fat people and perpetuate their lack of access to education. And denying someone access to education is one of the many systemic realities of discrimination. 

Fat people aren’t any less able to learn or get degrees because they are somehow less competent, smart or capable–they are locked out because they literally don’t fit in.

As a teacher, access to information, good professors, life-changing classes and academic discourse means THE WORLD to me. I don’t know what I would have done without one of the last classes of my undergraduate program, entitled Feminist Pedagogies. In this class, though it wasn’t pertinent to me yet, we did touch SO MUCH on embodiment and the idea of education as a visceral process; one that fat people aren’t entitled to until they conform to yet another standard of cisnormative, heteronormative white classist privileged education systems in America. And luckily, we sat at tables with armless chairs; so the space itself was fat friendly, but I can’t say the same for all the learning spaces in either my undergraduate or graduate work institutions.

In order to combat this, we HAVE to include weight and body size in collegiate and academic rhetoric about diversity. Because discrimination against people of size is too real and too widely unnoticed. And in colleges across America where students are learning the value of multiculturalism and diversity, fat people are locked out or expected to change yet again.

Yoga

Lexie: As someone in recovery from an eating disorder, I was introduced to the yoga world early on; the treatment centers I went to offered a class here or there during the day. While there is no obvious size or weight limit to practice yoga or stand on a yoga mat, it’s very apparent that much of the yoga world seems to accept only thin women into their practice.

I know as a plus size woman that I can’t do every single pose perfectly (or at all), and thankfully there are modifications for fat people or people with injuries, people with mobility issues so they can more comfortably get into the position. However, fat shaming can easily carry into a yoga class consisting of one instructor and several other members.

 

https://www.instagram.com/p/BhnOmt_BUNu/

Fat people can feel out of place in yoga classes, especially if the instructor calls attention to it by showing the fat person additional support with or without their consent.

Cait: The criticism of yoga as an increasingly problematic space for body diversity is nothing new. In fact, it goes beyond the scope of fat and differently abled bodies.

Like Lexie, I gained weight and changed body shape in my recovery, which has kept me from accessing the poses I could once do when I was stronger, leaner, but also sicker. I was never able to do crow, but could do a pretty kick ass shoulder stand. And while I’m working on it and my rolls often get in the way, I sometimes have to stop my dysmorphia from beating me up about taking modifications. Yoga, or unity in Sanskrit, is about the process.

Yogis like Dianne Bondy and Jessamyn Stanley have talked extensively about the thin ideal that permeates a lot of yoga practices. Yoga for fitness (ugh) has become increasingly popular among thin, suburban white women, and it dilutes the spiritual practice that is the entire point of yoga in the first place. Yoga’s original intention was to help Buddhists, Hindus and the dozens of other meditating Eastern religions to be able to sit and meditate for longer periods of time. I am a regular yogi, a practicing Buddhist, and lover of yoga–but I am also an exercise bulimic and a recovering perfectionist.

View this post on Instagram

Down dog, 🐶half pigeon 🐦 and shoulder stand 💪🏻 shoulder stands are a "skinny girl pose" in the world of co-opted yoga. They make your shirt fly up and your pudge stick out (in my case, full belly hangin out), and feel like your own weight will topple you over. They've become more challenging as my body has put weight on, distributed it and made me more torso-dense. But it's one of my absolute favorites and I still do it. Yoga's eight limbs are a way of life; thus, a practice. Today I listened to @krystalslusciouslife verbalize the meaning of "ahimsa" – nonviolence – as nonviolence against the self. I was sweaty and started getting frustrated by my third vinyasa, but it's no excuse to give up. I found joy when I found yoga, and I have to get back to the core values that allow me to practice self-compassion and spiritual health. This body can do most anything and I'm so so grateful. #bodybyyoga #fatgirlyoga #eatingdisorderrecovery #nutritionalreorientation #healthateverysize #redefininghealthy #shoulderstand #recovery #recoverywarrior #asana #septemberselfcarechallenge #meditation

A post shared by theinbetweenqueen (@theinbetweenqueen) on Sep 14, 2017 at 2:53pm PDT

I often have to remind myself that yoga is not about weight loss or weight redistribution or calorie burning, and that when I stray from my spiritual intention in the practice itself, I am effectively engaging in cultural appropriation.

If you’re struggling to take up space in this world, or the world is struggling to make space for you, demand it. So many movements have been successful in our culture to bring marginalized people into the forefront by them simply demanding space, and resisting the idea of being left out because of something that made them different.

If you struggle to give fat people space, try saying the word ‘fat’ as a non-pejorative term a few times in conversation. The word may trigger some people, but that’s a great place to begin. Find out why people find it so offensive, and remove its moral meaning from the understanding that diet culture has given you about fatness. Bust down the stigma that is associated with it; and learn to just let people live their lives.

So much of what I see on the internet surrounding peoples’ discomfort with the fat acceptance movement and their willingness to only allow “acceptably fat” bodies into the body positivity sphere is exclusionary, and turns out to not be very positive for a lot of people at all.

The rest is straight up hateful. But that’s to be expected when you don’t understand something. Just look at Google:

Read books like Body Respect (which Cait recommends all the time across this blog!) and take the body respect pledge; not just for other people around you, to help you combat fat shaming and weight stigma…but turn that ish inward, too. Too often when we try really hard to learn about and accept others, we forget ourselves. 

Have a great week, y’all!

xo,

Cait & Lexie

Taking the words back

Sorry it’s been about 3 weeks since I’ve posted, y’all!

January has been a really busy month, and it’s about to make the next few months even busier. I’m in my second to last semester of graduate school, I’m working full time, and I’ve made my mental health and discipline in the practice of self-care a tremendous priority (as everyone should!) 

This past month I have had a lot of interactions with diet culture, weight stigma, and fat phobic comments and questions and situations. Before I address that (next week), I have to address the root of all the feelings that stir up when people’s comments, attitudes, projections, and investments in diet culture come about: the trigger.

‘Trigger’ has taken up a lot of space in political dialogue, thanks to human dumpster fire Tomi Lahren. It has been taken to mean “weak”, “sensitive”, but has actually been a legitimate colloquial term in the mental health community for years.

To those with mental illnesses, namely ones associated with trauma, a trigger is something that sets off their symptoms or problematic behaviors. It is the stimuli that creates a reaction that is indicative of the symptoms of one’s mental illness or disorder, such as a PTSD flashback or a panic attack or an episode of self-harm. I didn’t need to live through any experiences to know this; all it takes is a little research and a dash of compassion. 

I’ve spent the past few weeks feeling really triggered by my family’s weight biased comments, grappling with my own internalized weight-stigma-turned-body-dysmorphia, and trying to sort through all of it with a lot of self care and a lot of patience. It can get really exhausting being hyper vigilant of the fact that your body is rendered as an object of lesser value, and it gets even more exhausting to explain to people why I am valuable as a not-thin person. 

There is also a lot of discourse around the word ‘trigger’ being associated with violence and the idea that it’s being moved away from in a lot of talk about trauma. While I see the point in this, and know that language is important to a lot of folks (myself included), to police the use of such a term among other people if it makes the most sense of them is the opposite of social justice.

For the sake of example, I am trying to avoid the generalization of the term ‘queer community’ in a lot of my social justice talk with others. Because while I identify with the term queer as a word that dislodges my personal identity from heteronormative ideals, I understand that so many people have been harmed by that word and that it is still in very many cases an antigay slur.

Similarly, there are people with a lot of investment in diet culture who have not personally reclaimed the word fat as a self-identifier, and I have, since inhabiting my fat body, been corrected for addressing my own body this way–‘fat‘ in our society is still viewed largely as pejorative, and while I get frustrated often with waiting for people in and out of the eating disordered community to play catch up, I must also remain patient and remember that fully actualized fatness is not everyone’s truth. 

Like I mentioned earlier, this constant cycle of having to defend what makes sense in order to maintain a general mental and emotional homeostasis can get really daunting and really exhausting after a while.

I am happy to explain to people what my eating disorder means on an intellectual level, and as far as the science behind my body type and the reasons for my behavior, I’m pretty well armed with the facts about what’s immediately important to me.

But being prepared for battle and always having to step in front of people and assert my boundaries around their problematic, weight stigmatizing, inconsiderate or even sometimes outright fatphobic language and behavior is not my job. There are countless resources (some of which are linked directly to this blog for allies and ED survivors alike to learn more about the varying experiences of eating disordered folks like me). 

This frustration has, in the past, graduated to becoming anger–but that’s not the tone I wish to convey in this post in particular. More than anything, I hope to urge people who don’t understand the eating disordered brain and the psychology of food fixation, perfectionism and dysmorphia to perhaps just listen to their peers, friends, family and even strangers they meet who are affected.

Understanding how to treat people with EDs, and most importantly, how to work really hard not to trigger them, is critical to our recovery and the active dismantling of the diet culture that affects all of us–fat or thin, eating disordered or not–so, so negatively. 

For eating disordered people, triggers mean anything that can spiral us into shame about our bodies, no matter what size they actually are. This shame spiral can bring an eating disordered person deep into their behaviors, whether its bingeing, restricting, purging, exercise or other forms of food compensation.

Even if those behaviors make no logical sense, our brains are wired to do them to keep up with a mental image of perfection and to avoid discomfort. My go-to behavior has always been bingeing, and even though I know that bingeing is often what causes dysmorphia, it is the one thing that my brain has done for so long, that it is conditioned to tell me it NEEDS it to survive so that I can be happy and safe. It is my brain’s way of protecting me from discomfort, even if I know that that discomfort is temporary, insignificant, or imagined. 

My triggers are: weight loss discourse of any kind, eating in front of certain people, eating alone, being offered food, buffet style settings, gyms, people who body check in front of me–to name most of them.

I list these not to highlight my fragility, but to highlight a specific understanding of my behavior and what goes on in my brain when I am interacting with scenarios where these behaviors play out. Too often, people don’t know what is and isn’t okay because it doesn’t get articulated, and we need to make space for that conversation to happen among ourselves with each other, whether those having the conversation are disordered in their food and body patterns or not.

Being mindful of the things we say about our own bodies and how that translates to how we feel about other peoples’ bodies is not only an act of kindness, but a step toward validating every body no matter what size, health status, or relationship to food that body has. We can all stand to lose a little negativity, be more kind to ourselves, and recognize that we as a society cannot stand for the predatory nature of diet culture anymore. I’ve said it before and I will say it again!

Somebody gets paid every time you feel shame.

It’s what convinces you to buy the newest makeup, cream, protein shake, Weight Watchers subscription. And just like in any business model, the demand only lasts so long. There’s a reason why 95% of people “fail” their diets. (People aren’t failing diets, diets are failing people).**** Not because anything’s wrong with them, but because there’s everything wrong with the industry and the idea that restriction and body hatred are sustainable practices. Resilience, self-love and radical, unapologetic acceptance is more than sustainable; its life-saving. 

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****TW for this site: diet program ads may pop up.

Word of the Year (Happy 2018!)

Happy New Year, everyone! 

I started feeling really good about this year as it was coming–even though my eating disorder was acting up for a couple of weeks consecutively. I have felt like my recovery has been stalling, though I feel more spiritually connected than ever before. 

On January 1, I did an overhaul cleaning of my entire space, recharged my crystals in the full moon, and set new intentions and goals for the year. The really cool thing is, this year is the year of the dog in the Chinese Lunar calendar, which matches the calendar animal for the year I was born!

I’m not calling it a resolution, but more an intention; to be more spiritual, more clean (as far as my physical space goes), and more present. So far, so good! This will be the year I finish my Master’s degree, continue my journey of loving myself and learning more and more about me and the world around me and developing friendships and relationships full of unconditional love–for the first time in my life. 

I randomly selected (from a quote jar) three quotes to remember this year:

“Don’t take your experiences for granted.”

I hung up my body positive vision board, and my “totem” for the year to come. I worked on this the day after Christmas with my friend-mom Stacy, who just let me talk and create for a few hours in her garage space while I played with her dog. I am so lucky and so grateful to have so many people who support me in my healing, and will go to any lengths to give me the room and the flexibility and the encouragement to keep growing.

It is really easy to get caught up in goals and intentions and resolutions when this time of year comes around. Just like it’s really easy to put everything from “buy groceries” to “remember to breathe” on a to-do list and inundate yourself with tasks and mantras until it becomes overwhelming. So I decided to simplify my 2018 by narrowing it down to one word that I want to be ever-mindful of this year:

Freedom.

As a writer and an avid reader and a person who constantly needs knowledge in order to feel connected to herself and the world, I have a million words to choose from that resonate with me and how I’d like to feel. But based on what I know about how much anger still consumed me in 2017 over my last major breakup, about how much food rules and diet culture still take up space in my life, and how much my family’s opinions about food and body weigh me down (no pun intended), I have chosen that I want to be free from anything that isn’t loving, helpful or kind.

What is there to be free from? I thought a lot about this.

Freedom from negativity. At the close of 2017, I think I unfriended about 40 people on Facebook. I decided who I want to take with me on this journey, and that Facebook friendships are not permanent. But the people who I need in my life are the ones who support me, love me, reach out to me, encourage me and hear/see me, with as much care as I support, love, reach out to, encourage and hear/see them. Being seen and heard, I have learned, is not the same as looking at or listening to someone. Paying attention to their feelings, emotions, thoughts, language, and vibrations is all a part of being with them, and this year, I’m taking those high-vibration friendships with me because they make me better. 

Freedom to move and eat as I choose. I still get the urge sometimes to exercise out of obligation, but for this year, I am promising myself that there will be! none! of! that! and that no food is off limits. It’s still difficult to shut down my binge brain all the time, but the more I fill myself with meaning the quieter that voice becomes. One thing that helps me to remember is that I am not in a position in which I am going to starve if I go a few hours without a meal, and I don’t have to eat like there is scarcity due to this privilege.

Freedom from shame. I keep developing my theories on shame based on conversations I’ve had with peers and professionals in the past year. I am no longer accepting the invitation from others to buy into the false belief that I’m not okay how I am. The Twelve Steps teach us that we are powerless over the thing we choose to use in order to make our lives seem “manageable,” but this often runs contrary to the belief I have that I was perfect until someone pointed out to me when I was a really small kid (age 7) that I was not. I want to be with that little version of me and tell her, “you are an entire universe.”

Freedom from expectations. There are people in my life who expect me to lose weight, to miraculously wake up not preferring women, to stop going to therapy and stop experiencing symptoms of anxiety and depression. There are people who expect me to say ‘yes’ when they need me to, there are expectations I have of myself that involve unrealistic ideas of beauty. There are expectations in my life that involve working a million hours at the expense of my mental health. There are expectations I have about my clothes, my hair, my makeup, my job, those around me; and I really want to live without expectations from others, or of others; because we are all just on a journey to be better, and we can’t do it if we are holding each other hostage with our own biases and privileging our needs. 

Freedom from my trauma. Okay. Big one. I promised myself no relationship until I was all the way through or mostly through processing my trauma. I still have a lot of stuff related to body, worthiness, self-esteem. I still engage in automatic, habitual and unintentional negative self-talk. I still have voices inside my head that aren’t mine, about what I should do with my body or who I should be or whether or not I’m good enough. I want to heal my scars.

Freedom from perfectionism. All this talk about freedom also makes me understand that I will never be entirely 110% symptom free. I will never be able to be free from these things perfectly. I will never have a perfect body because there is no such thing. I will never have a perfect day, or a perfect way of articulating things without stumbling. As close as I can get to perfect is making sure that my life is manageable and that shame, trauma, expectation and negativity aren’t driving. 

What is your word for this year? 

How Massage Therapy Has Informed My Recovery Work

• Understanding physical manifestation of feeling
• Navigating the feelings on the table
• Reclaiming physical consent and its role in healing

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A few weeks ago, a friend approached me about a study that their friend was doing to complete her massage therapy licensure. Its for people in recovery and is going to test how we respond to ten sessions of massage over ten weeks. I’m on week three so far! 

 

If you’re on Long Island, I’d definitely recommend contacting Danielle to get involved!

During my first session, I tried really hard to meditate and relax–and it worked. I thought a lot about what was happening (the touch therapy part) and how it corresponded to my traumaI remember. It was actually really interesting, and I did a body scan the entire time Danielle was working. What I found out was interesting–just a theory, but interesting. 

We sat down and talked about my energy for the week before we started. I remember telling her that I had felt up and down and that the last feeling I remember having was up; but that during the week, I had been depressed. I started the session on my back and I’m so used to getting massage treatments face-down; so it was weird and hard to concentrate for the first couple of minutes, but I let myself get heavy and make space for the nothingness of thought.

The issues in the tissues

As is the case for many people with dysmorphia (like me), and I think many people in our society based on our conditioning, the stomach is an area of shame. I remember when Danielle got to my stomach; pre-recovery me would have been like “no, don’t touch that; you’re going to assign value to how squishy I am”; my mind would travel to foods I ‘shouldn’t’ have eaten, make me extra self-conscious of my nakedness and spend the whole entire rest of the treatment wanting to be clothed and hidden and covered instead of just being there. 

Instead, I just said to myself; “This is where your shame has always lived.” And this was a powerful entry point to disarming that shame and helping it pack its sh*t and move out.

One thing I also shared (that I haven’t shared here) is that in therapy, I have begun exploring my issues with body respect–this means with regard to the space that I take up and the space that other people give my body without commenting on it, without feeling like they have permission to see me a certain way, or touch me or any other form of encroachment on my physical space that requires my consent. Receiving these treatments has made me think about that a lot, especially while I’m on the table.

I used to be someone who thought they had all the self-respect in the world because they were flaunting who they were and doing what they wanted when they wanted with whomever they wanted for all the wrong reasons. I lived in a bubble of false pride because I had been conditioned by plenty of people who and messages that taught me that my personal space was not important to them. But since then, my body space has become important to me. Massage therapy and the vulnerability of touch has been something I can resoundingly say ‘yes’ to, emphatically–not only because it feels awesome, but because I am in a safe place with a safe person and it’s something that gives me, my recovery, my body, and my spirit power. 

Parts of a whole

I have always compartmentalized everything and it always leads to anxiety, insanity, and, well, micromanaging–both my life and the lives of those around me. That stress manifests itself physically, and I didn’t really realize just how much until I started being a part of this process.

That micromanaging, the thinking I have all the control in the world, is part of why I used food and abused cardio and calorie counted obsessively in order to feel like I was living life. But I realized that even just through concentrating on weighing even 5% less, I was missing out on 95% of what life actually is meant to be: joy. 

But as they say in the 12 Step programs, we all have our defects. I worked with someone who taught me to turn my defects into positive qualities, instead of wishing/praying them away, I could instead change how I saw who I am and all the ways that these characteristics have led to the creation of unmanageability in my life.

I am codependent and by nature that means that historically, I have made it my mission to cling desperately to whatever control or whatever illusion of control was available to me (or whatever I could MAKE available to me); but during this first treatment, I was able to compartmentalize in a way that had me focusing on one thing at a time and giving myself the permission I needed to let go. For example; when Danielle did work on one part of my body, I would finish thinking about whatever thought was in my head, at the same time she finished. I was able to get in touch with each piece of myself and create a whole person from that; something I never have really thought about or been in touch with until that moment.

Massage therapy is such a trauma-informed practice and I am so grateful for the work that these therapists do. I have told Danielle that there will probably be a day that I will end up crying on the table (that day hasn’t come yet!) but I’m so excited for that day and I welcome it. It means that the grace that comes with recovering from disordered eating is working in my life. 

Without the people I have met in recovery, I wouldn’t have been able to connect to this form of treatment and to, in turn, help someone else become something that will help so many more than me do the same work that I do when I lay with myself for an hour and accept what is, reflect on what has been, and lean in really close to myself and the things that I’m uncomfortable with.

During the final stretch of my first session, I was on my stomach, face down. This is the place where I am most comfortable, because my shame center (belly) is face-down with me. 

I have a tattoo on my back that I got on my 100th day of recovery; a tree that says “growth” in the roots. I don’t see it unless I go out of my way to look at it in a mirror, but I know it’s there. And I know Danielle saw it, too, so I was more conscious of it when that side was being worked on.

I started to go into my roots and imagine myself as being that tree. The growth was happening, and has happened, over my last 15 months in recovery from my eating disorder and even more so in the past few months as I have started to pay attention to the steps I need to take, the people I meet, the love I have, and as I have started to actually do and live in the work. I have been promised a newer, better way of life as long as I want one–and the more I water that tree with all the love I have found, the more that tree grows. That tree is me.

Big HUGE thanks to Danielle for her work on me and for being willing to learn about people who are recovering. We are a community with so many different stories to tell, and I find that the more I spread out my story, the more its roots grow, the more I grow with it! 

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If you want to find out more about Danielle’s study, email her at olightbodybar@gmail.com to become involved!

 

 

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“Are We There Yet?”

This week’s post:

• If, not when
• I’m in the South!
• Sweet tea is the best thing America has ever created
• Meditating saves lives
• Isabel Foxen Duke is my new favorite
• New posts on Thursdays (and Sunday’s still!)
• Y’all 

Calling Others Into Your Recovery (Instead of calling them out)

Anger is the easiest emotion to default to, just as defense is the first act of war. 

In active ED behaviors, I have called people out for anything you could think of, and I’ve done it often. In recovery, I have, too. But the effort taken in calling people out, singling out their ignorance of my experience and the experiences of so many with eating disorders and other illnesses or marginalized experiences, only serves to distance them from understanding and distance me from living out recovery the way I know I need to.

I have, instead, taken to calling people in. 

My first interaction with the idea of calling people in instead of calling them out is from writer Ngọc Loan Trần’s post on the subject. They speak on this with regard to race and social justice, and though it was written four years ago, its something that so many of us could use right now in the wake of what’s happening in Charlottesville.

One thing I have always maintained in my recovery is that sometimes, people don’t understand that they don’t understand. They don’t understand body dysmorphia, compensatory purging behaviors, or the effect that diet culture has on those who already struggle really hard to live inside their bodies every waking second of every day. 

They don’t understand what their words mean.

This past week, someone on my Facebook friends list posted about cutting out carbs entirely and asked for advice on the subject of how to address a nutritional problem of eating too much bread and not drinking enough water. I let her know, based on my knowledge of the deficit mode our brains enter into when we cut out or restrict foods, that she could actually send her body into starvation mode so that it would only just hold onto whatever water she did intake. Healthy discussion, balance oriented, just like my recovery has been since I started really living it out.

But then someone from her family comments, “Love yourself as is!!! Its not like you’re obese or fat.”

Anger became my default emotion. I called her OUT. 

This attitude of “at least you don’t look like THAT” is so pervasive in our culture and society, and it took me stepping waaaaaay back into my own understanding of how I still interact with my body from a perspective I learned to accept rather than formulating on my own.

Since this interaction, I have had to remember a few important things:

1. Weight gain can happen to just about anyone. The problem is that we have assigned meaning to it. And we have been trained by diet culture and the thin ideal to be scared sh*tless of this possibility. In a meditation class I co-taught this week, my colleague responded to someone’s question, “How do you not ever get angry?” (he is also a fellow Buddhist, and a more seasoned one than me) with:

“I have learned to practice not allowing the person to disrespect me. Because someone could curse the hell out of me and if I give it meaning, then I will become angry.

Again: weight gain can happen to just about anyone. But we have been conditioned to believe that weight gain or going up in size actually means something. We surrender our power to this idea, we live and breathe it, we exercise around it. Industries and idealizations create doubt that puts us in a position to worship the idea of never gaining weight. 

2. Every time we hate ourselves, someone makes money. Literally. Fad diets, cosmetic products, weight loss commercials, the (pseudo)pharmaceutical industry, corporate executives and more–they all profit from our self-doubt, facilitate our self-hatred. But only for as long as we allow them.

3. When we are consumed with ourselves, we forget what’s going on in the world. And the big guys I mentioned in number two like it that way. We fill their pockets while they systemically marginalize entire communities. While wars are going on. Diet culture and obsession with weight, food and body distracts us from what’s important–calling each other in, healing, and helping the world do better.

Instead of fighting someone I didn’t know, had never met, who was probably suffering in some way from their own self-perception, too, I could have been educating folks about what’s happening, sharing and signing petitions to heal our broken justice system, or offering support and love and acknowledgement to people of color who are hurt directly every day by the systemic ideologies that create incidents of racial hatred and bias. This would have been a better use of my time.

In my recovery I have learned through exploration of faith and the practice of Buddhist ideas that I personally do not get to decide who deserves my compassion or kindness. Kindness withheld is the ego flourishing. I’m not saying that anger and compassion cannot coexist, they most certainly can. Desmond Tutu said it himself: we have every right to hate people and institutions that do hateful things. But I am no longer a subject of my own hatred, and neither are those who just don’t get it.

I am personally responsible for breaking down diet culture by teaching other people how to treat me, how to show people of size and shape and color and different ability that they are lovable RIGHT NOW, not -40 pounds from now, or lighter skin than now, or two more miles from now, but right now and always all the time. I am responsible for the people who don’t “get” what an eating disorder looks or feels or sounds or acts like, and I’m looking forward to educating them. 

I used to get angry about it; I still get angry that people fat shame and are so adamant that people with different bodies, especially female bodies (thanks misogyny!) deserve more or less love, respect and overall consideration from the world until they “fix” something about themselves. It’s personal.

 

Calling in is also personal. It’s a big action. It requires setting aside the ego and seeing other people as human: capable of mistakes, flawed ideologies, fundamental brokenness, or straight up indoctrination. It invites them into our already really messy spaces to sometimes make even more of a mess. If we are willing to reckon with their missing pieces and fill them in with our stories, there is room for growth everywhere. This is the work of healing. This is calling each other in.

These are somebody’s expectations, and other people’s expectations are not our problem. But liberating people who are still struggling with the idea that they can’t love themselves now, is where the calling in comes in handy. Invite people to stop participating in their own body negativity, and they’ll start seeing you differently too. We’re all warriors; some of us just haven’t picked up the sword. 

 

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Connect with me! (I’m going on vacation and I’ll still be answering emails just maybe not as frequently but I still love you!!! Promise!!!!)

Instagram: @caitisrecovering

Twitter: @caitsrecovering

Email: caitisrecovering@gmail.com

Dear Skinny Girls,…

I have a confession to make to skinny girls. 

Some of you are my friends, family, coworkers, fellows, acquaintances. And mentally, I haven’t been very nice to you lately. But let me make this clear–it’s not because of anything that you did or anything you are.

I’ve been stuck inside my own dysmorphia for the past few days, maybe even the whole past week. My own hyperawareness of inner monologue toward my own body shape and size and being has made me equally hyperaware of how you exist, too. 

My self-conscious attitude toward my own body, and thinking that my body shape meant something bad about me has, on more than one occasion, made me wish I could be, look, and eat like you. I have resented you for living in your own realness, while struggling to live in mine. 

 

Shame is a bitch. That’s one thing I know for sure. When I spiraled out in shame these past few days, I could feel the insidiousness of ED thoughts inside me. The more aware I was of the physical space my body occupied, the bloating, the urgency to exercise and sweat it all out; the more aggressively I had to work to come back down to earth and recognize the origin of these thoughts. 

Since I started shopping in the plus sized section at Forever 21 a few weeks ago, I have gone through many phases of attitude–from “who cares” to “I’m angry that my existence is relegated to a corner of this store while the skinny girls get to take up the whole damn space.” 

But I have had to realize that this has nothing to do with you. In some cases, it doesn’t even have anything to do with me. 

The idea that shopping in the plus size section of any store inherently means something about me is a false belief. One that vanity sizing, diet culture, body dysmorphia and my own disordered thinking patterns have constructed for me. The way that sizes are constructed hurts not only plus-sized women, but all of us. It was discovered a few months ago that American Eagle jeans are actually mis-sized to make women feel like they are “larger” than they are in actuality. Body dysmorphia has become not only a pervasive disorder, but a business model. 

 

I don’t have to explain to anyone how dangerous this is. I don’t have to explain to you that the thin ideal hurts you as much as it hurts me–because the pressure to stay that way or be anything else but small is so real. And for 5% of women, thinness is just in their genetics. 

I feel the need to personally apologize for the fact that so much of reclaiming body positivity has become about creating a narrative that says curvy women are the ones with “real” bodies. That must make y’all feel like sh*t. You aren’t made of plastic just because you’re flat chested, bony, or thigh-gapped by nature. 

The same ideal that pushes size-4-that’s-actually-a-0 and the same mentality that constructed bulls*t songs like “All About that Bass” is what pits us against each other. It’s what makes you afraid of looking anything like me, as if the worst thing you could possibly be is chunky, thick, and a little squishy. It puts fear into you that you could “end up” like one of us.

This is the same ideal that doesn’t realize that it doesn’t take being underweight or even thin to have a full-scale eating disorder (i.e. me). The same system that allows me to feel invalidated as a person recovering from an ED even though I have restricted and exercise purged on and off for years, despite my body shape and type. It’s what keeps me resenting you every time I feel self-conscious or I’m in my disordered thinking. Because I have been conditioned to think that the only “right” way to be is thin, small, quiet, polite, and afraid.

But I am none of these things.

Summer is particularly difficult on my body image. Being eating disordered and dysmorphic means I have mixed feelings about myself on the regular. Some days, I am proud of my thickness and my stretch marks and the lack of space between my legs. Add humidity, however, and constantly peeling my thighs apart gets frustrating after a while. It ain’t my body’s fault, though, and it’s certainly not yours.

Learning to love myself doesn’t mean I have to dislike other people for how they exist in the world. It just means I personally have a lot more work to do unlearning the trash that media, capitalist consumer structure, and pretend “concern” over the state of fat girls’ “health” is doing to divide us. We are worth a lot more than the men and institutions that believe they are truly special for accepting us as if anyone’s validation is a prerequisite to our loving ourselves, “curvy” or otherwise. (Seriously…I’d offer the guy in that article a cookie if I had one to waste that I wanted to share with him).

Skinny girls are some of the raddest, baddest and most resilient people I know. Who they are, how they are, is beautiful. They undergo the same pressures to be perfect as any of us. I’m no longer in a space where I want to exist as they are, or shame them for existing as they do; because who each of us are is just fine. 

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“Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness, that most frightens us.”

-Marianne Williamson

 

 

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Instagram: @caitisrecovering

Twitter: @caitsrecovering

Email: caitisrecovering@gmail.com