nothing is ever as it seems
I wish I loved my body. I wish I could look in the mirror and genuinely enjoy what I see. But the truth is-- I don't. Anytime I find myself in front of my mirror I find myself picking out all the ways my body falls short. To what standard you ask...? I'm not sure. But I just know that what I see isn't good enough.
I've never been satisfied with my body. My therapist (God bless her) had asked me during one of our sessions to recall a time that I liked the way I looked. I couldn't. Because the thing is-- even at my thinnest stages in life-- I still thought something was wrong. I still felt fat. I still thought there was more weight to lose. And this has been, and still is, my constant battle. Every.damn.day.
So I'm writing for a couple of reasons.
1) To get it out. All these thoughts and feelings take up residence in my head and I feel as though it has gotten to the point where I can't even focus on anything else anymore. People ask how work is going or what plans I have...but I'm just over here consumed with how my body looks and making sure I eat the "right" things and worrying about what people think now that I've gained weight back.
2) Because the more people (mostly women...but definitely not excluding men) I talk to, the more I'm realizing I'm not alone in my thoughts. When we share our stories and truths, we simultaneously give others the freedom and permission to share their stories and truths, too. Something I think we could all use a little bit more of.
3) To be vulnerable and real. My life is not always as it appears to be. Nothing is what it appears to be. Instagram and Facebook have done a great job of allowing us to believe that everyone is living a better life. But IG and Facebook are mere highlight reels. Rarely is anyone sharing their ACTUAL truth.
I'm fast approaching one year since my rhabdo hospital stay. Those blog entries are somewhere on this page if you're hella bored and missed the boat. But long story short-- I nearly worked myself out to death. Why? Trying to lose more weight/tone up/be desirable/prove myself worthy enough. Pretty sick...I know. I have the hospital bills to prove it. Ok, bad joke. Moving on.
Post-rhabdo hospital stay I went through a break up. A what? Yeah, I said it. Some of you are probably like, "but wait...I didn't know she was seeing someone." Yeah it's okay, nobody did. Give or take 1 or 2 people, the vast majority knew nothing of it. We can talk about toxic relationships another day. Bottom line: we ended things. And I stopped eating. Not on purpose, but because I felt sick all.the.time. I had zero appetite. I was living in a perpetual state of anxiety and sadness. So an extreme deficit in calories = a quick (albeit unhealthy) weight loss.
But I was complimented more in those short months than I had ever been in my life. It's kinda cringey thinking about it now. People asked what I was doing to "look so good" and I didn't have an answer. Not an honest one, anyway. I lied my way through something along the lines of, 'Oh I'm watching my portion sizes.' Truth is-- I was emotionally and mentally spent. I was sick.
BUT, I ran with the endorphins that came with the praise I was getting and sought counsel from a nutritionist to keep the weight off. Because heaven forbid I gain the weight back after I got better. I'd no longer have the approval I had now grown accustomed to. I began tracking my macros and while I wholeheartedly believe it can (and does!) work for some people, I found out very quickly that it does not work for me. I became obsessed. I no longer enjoyed food and found myself in full blown states of panic over the idea of going out to dinner. What if I didn't hit my numbers? What if some macros fell short? What if there was more fat in my chicken than I had estimated? And Jesus take the wheel if my body started craving something that wasn't already accounted for in my macros that day. Suppress the craving, binge eat the craved food the next day, feel guilty & fat, swear not to give into anymore cravings, deprive self of said bad food until the craving inevitably returns. Repeat. I was caught in a cycle I didn't know how to stop.
Until the day my therapist looked me in the eye and said, "if you keep this up, you're going to be staring at an eating disorder." She told me that she wouldn't tell me what to do because it was ultimately my life, but she said some words that have continued to stick with me: "The longer you keep this up, the harder it's going to be to stop." And there have never been truer words spoken, amen.
Seriously. Quitting macro counting and not stepping on the scale every day was so.hard. It is still SO.HARD. My type-A personality didn't know how to deal. I had surrendered control and it was terrifying. It took a little over a month to finally delete my macro tracking app. But that was the easy part. The hardest part? The weight gain.
Luckily, (and for obvious reasons) I don't own a scale. But the moment I chose to step on the scale at my gym was the moment I swore I never would again. And I haven't. I don't want to know. I truly believe situations like this call for an ignorance-is-bliss mentality. The number I see will never be good enough, so why step on the damn thing to begin with?
I hope one day I can make peace with food and my body. I hope I can learn to appreciate what all my body can do instead of focusing on all the ways I feel it falls short. I hope I can learn to celebrate the fact that no one else is shaped exactly like me...and that's what makes the human race so damn beautiful-- including me.
Until then...I'll be over here speaking my truth and working on self-love. Nothing is ever as it appears.
Peace, friends.
I've never been satisfied with my body. My therapist (God bless her) had asked me during one of our sessions to recall a time that I liked the way I looked. I couldn't. Because the thing is-- even at my thinnest stages in life-- I still thought something was wrong. I still felt fat. I still thought there was more weight to lose. And this has been, and still is, my constant battle. Every.damn.day.
So I'm writing for a couple of reasons.
1) To get it out. All these thoughts and feelings take up residence in my head and I feel as though it has gotten to the point where I can't even focus on anything else anymore. People ask how work is going or what plans I have...but I'm just over here consumed with how my body looks and making sure I eat the "right" things and worrying about what people think now that I've gained weight back.
2) Because the more people (mostly women...but definitely not excluding men) I talk to, the more I'm realizing I'm not alone in my thoughts. When we share our stories and truths, we simultaneously give others the freedom and permission to share their stories and truths, too. Something I think we could all use a little bit more of.
3) To be vulnerable and real. My life is not always as it appears to be. Nothing is what it appears to be. Instagram and Facebook have done a great job of allowing us to believe that everyone is living a better life. But IG and Facebook are mere highlight reels. Rarely is anyone sharing their ACTUAL truth.
I'm fast approaching one year since my rhabdo hospital stay. Those blog entries are somewhere on this page if you're hella bored and missed the boat. But long story short-- I nearly worked myself out to death. Why? Trying to lose more weight/tone up/be desirable/prove myself worthy enough. Pretty sick...I know. I have the hospital bills to prove it. Ok, bad joke. Moving on.
Post-rhabdo hospital stay I went through a break up. A what? Yeah, I said it. Some of you are probably like, "but wait...I didn't know she was seeing someone." Yeah it's okay, nobody did. Give or take 1 or 2 people, the vast majority knew nothing of it. We can talk about toxic relationships another day. Bottom line: we ended things. And I stopped eating. Not on purpose, but because I felt sick all.the.time. I had zero appetite. I was living in a perpetual state of anxiety and sadness. So an extreme deficit in calories = a quick (albeit unhealthy) weight loss.
But I was complimented more in those short months than I had ever been in my life. It's kinda cringey thinking about it now. People asked what I was doing to "look so good" and I didn't have an answer. Not an honest one, anyway. I lied my way through something along the lines of, 'Oh I'm watching my portion sizes.' Truth is-- I was emotionally and mentally spent. I was sick.
BUT, I ran with the endorphins that came with the praise I was getting and sought counsel from a nutritionist to keep the weight off. Because heaven forbid I gain the weight back after I got better. I'd no longer have the approval I had now grown accustomed to. I began tracking my macros and while I wholeheartedly believe it can (and does!) work for some people, I found out very quickly that it does not work for me. I became obsessed. I no longer enjoyed food and found myself in full blown states of panic over the idea of going out to dinner. What if I didn't hit my numbers? What if some macros fell short? What if there was more fat in my chicken than I had estimated? And Jesus take the wheel if my body started craving something that wasn't already accounted for in my macros that day. Suppress the craving, binge eat the craved food the next day, feel guilty & fat, swear not to give into anymore cravings, deprive self of said bad food until the craving inevitably returns. Repeat. I was caught in a cycle I didn't know how to stop.
Until the day my therapist looked me in the eye and said, "if you keep this up, you're going to be staring at an eating disorder." She told me that she wouldn't tell me what to do because it was ultimately my life, but she said some words that have continued to stick with me: "The longer you keep this up, the harder it's going to be to stop." And there have never been truer words spoken, amen.
Seriously. Quitting macro counting and not stepping on the scale every day was so.hard. It is still SO.HARD. My type-A personality didn't know how to deal. I had surrendered control and it was terrifying. It took a little over a month to finally delete my macro tracking app. But that was the easy part. The hardest part? The weight gain.
Luckily, (and for obvious reasons) I don't own a scale. But the moment I chose to step on the scale at my gym was the moment I swore I never would again. And I haven't. I don't want to know. I truly believe situations like this call for an ignorance-is-bliss mentality. The number I see will never be good enough, so why step on the damn thing to begin with?
I hope one day I can make peace with food and my body. I hope I can learn to appreciate what all my body can do instead of focusing on all the ways I feel it falls short. I hope I can learn to celebrate the fact that no one else is shaped exactly like me...and that's what makes the human race so damn beautiful-- including me.
Until then...I'll be over here speaking my truth and working on self-love. Nothing is ever as it appears.
Peace, friends.
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