10 New Years Resolutions Not Related to Bodies

You’ll probably see some lists like this over the next few weeks. You’ll probably also see many, many posts, and memes, and commercials with New Years Resolutions about starting diets and exercise programs, about becoming “the new you”, about how to lose 30lbs in 2 weeks, about flat abs and tight butts, about cutting out sugar or gluten or whatever other current bad foods are on the list. 

As an Eating Disorder advocate, I have done a lot of research on diets. The yo-yo weight loss and gain, as people start diets and then give them up, is much less healthy than being over what is considered an average BMI, and much more discouraging than simply eating foods that provide you the nutrients you need to consume in order to live. A large percentage of diets fail because they are based on restriction. Restricting leads to deprivation. Then your body and brain reach a point where your caloric and nutrition intake isn’t enough for you and you eat more than you intended, or you eat foods you restricted. That leads to shame. 

Even without an Eating Disorder, I’m sure many of you have been on that restrict-deprive-“cheat on your diet”-shame- restrict cycle. 

Wanting to eat differently than you currently do, wanting to feel stronger in your body, wanting to move more, are all valid and healthy. Those changes might even make you feel great! Making a resolution that you are likely to fail at, however, only makes you feel shameful, disappointed, and like a naughty person. 

I believe that making a resolution to lose weight, to diet, to exercise more, or to change your body in any way, is harmful. It is harmful because you are beginning a new year with the idea that there is something wrong with you. 

There is nothing wrong with you. You are perfectly imperfect and you are loved. 

This year, I encourage you make a resolution that is about your life, and not about your body. 

Here are my top 10 ideas:

1. Practice self-compassion 
2. Explore a neighbourhood that’s new to you
3. Make space for more face-to-face time instead of screen time 
4. Carve out at least one hour a week that is entirely for you
5. Commit to investing time into something that brings you joy 
6. Find somewhere you can volunteer 
7. Read one of the books that is in your “to read” pile 
8. Commit to regularly seeing family members who give you love and support 
9. Look at your budget and find one thing you can spend less on 
10. Turn “sorry” into “thank you” (eg “thank you for waiting for me” instead of “sorry I’m late”)

I hope you are inspired to be kind to yourself as we enter 2018. 

Have a Wonderful New Year!

Be kind, 

To yourself too 

Let it be

No matter how full you feel tonight, your body will digest it and you don’t gain a pile of weight overnight. 

Let the satisfaction of feeling satiated with friends and family be. Just be with it. I promise it will pass. 

Be kind 

To yourself too

...

Children don’t need diets

“Many girls as young as five are aware of dieting and weight-loss.”  

“Anorexia nervosa has the highest mortality rate of any psychiatric illness — it is estimated that 10 percent of individuals with anorexia nervosa will die within 10 years of the onset of the disorder.” - NEDIC      

                 *****************************

Let’s teach our young people to love their bodies. Let’s teach them that nourishing their bodies and moving their bodies comes from a place of love and worthiness. Let’s not teach them the power of shame and deprivation and scare them from not meeting the impossible societal goals that their set point weight isn’t meant to achieve. Let’s teach our children by example.

#EDAW2018 #educator #edadvocate #edawareness #edrecovery #bopo #childrendontneeddiets #onesizedoesntfitall 

Fat

Fat is a layer under the skin. 

Not a descriptor. 

Fat is something you have. 

Not something you are. 

#bopo #fat #fatshaming #torontoart #torontoartists #queerart #colouringpage #queersrttoronto #lgbtqart #lgbtqartist #edadvocate #edawareness #edrecovery 

Beauty

There is beauty in every face I see. 

Shame

This is why I do what I do. These are only 2 examples of the comments I receive on my artwork. People are entitled to their opinions, and can share them as I do. We don’t have to agree. But don’t state “facts” that have statistics showing that those facts are false!! Shaming people for their weight doesn’t make anyone healthy.

Guest Post: How I Hid my Eating Disorder

Today’s guest post is by Polly D. Welcome to Fox Tales, Polly. 

How my Eating Disorder Remained Hidden for Decades. 

By Polly D.

I recently watched the Netflix movie “To the Bone”. So many people had told me how great it was. They were people who don’t know that I am recovering from an Eating Disorder. I tried to approach the movie with an open mind. It turned out to be yet another narrative of an emaciated young woman. This is the narrative that has allowed me to hide for more than 20 years. 

Food has always been my enemy. There are very few things that I like. I was even more picky when I was a child. Watching my parents struggle with failed diet after failed diet, food became a thing of terror. I can tell you the Weight Watchers points of almost every food I’ve ever faced. Every bite of food brings me one step closer to the dreaded descriptive word “fat”.  Even bananas are terrifying. They have the most WW points of any fruit. 

I don’t want to eat. Eating means giving in. Eating means accepting that I need to take care of myself in order to stay alive. When I was growing up, no one talked about nutrients. The messages around food were simply that there was good food and there was bad food. I absorbed the message that eating bad food would make me a bad person. Eventually I came to believe that all food was bad. 

In Middle School, I would spend the day restricting my calories to the point of not eating at all. By the time I got home from school, I was so hungry that I no longer felt hungry. I would pick at my dinner and say that I didn’t like it, or that I wasn’t hungry. At fifteen I announced that I was a vegetarian. There were no ethical reasons. It was just another way to hide how disordered my eating was. It was so easy to say “I can’t eat that, I’m a vegetarian”. 

Everyone in high school seemed smaller than me. At 105 lbs and 5”5, I believed that I was the fat friend. I wore baggy clothes, lots of overalls, and gave away my lunch to a friend who was always grateful that I shared. 

In university, I discovered that I could cut out even MORE food by becoming vegan. This was the perfect way to hide in plain sight. At night, after a day of restricting, I would be so hungry that I would eat more than I needed to. I would secretly binge on whatever vegan-friendly crap I could get my hands on. Because of this, I never became emaciated. 

Until my 20’s, my weight never went over 120 lbs, and yet my family still treated me as though I was fat. My parents, aunts, uncles, and cousins, would give me diet advice. They would give me books to read. Or quizzes to take on what kind of diet I needed to be on. No one ever questioned my food choices because I wasn’t super tiny. No one asked why I wasn’t eating. People assumed that I must have eaten before, or would eat after. Or that, obviously, I ate enough because I was the fat girl.  It didn’t seem to occur to anyone that I could be average size and have an Eating Disorder. 

As the years went on and my eating habits became more and more disordered, my body began to fulfill the prophecy of my childhood. At 30, I weighed 230 lbs and all the attention on me turned into how to get me to lose weight. Decades after my mental illness developed, my weight helped me to hide much more easily. No one would look at my body and think that I miss so many meals. No one would look at me and think that if I eat food I consider “bad”, that I sneak to the bathroom and throw it up. Dieting was always an acceptable response to the offer of food. Passing up offers of food was something I was praised for. What dedication. What willpower. 

Doctors, dentists, partners, family, friends. Not one person discovered my secret. Even now, at 43, I hide my eating disorder under my folds of fat. People look at me and see a fat woman. They see my smile. They don’t know how terrified I am to eat food. 

Having a psychiatric illness with the only cure being recovery through hard work, is exhausting. There’s no medication to take to balance brain chemistry. You can’t avoid food. Humans need to eat to live. Even though I know that, forcing myself to put nutrients into my body is incredibly hard. I don’t want those nutrients. I don’t deserve them. Most of the time I feel unworthy of recovery. I think that I should go on another fad diet. I could lose a bunch of weight and then stop eating. 

I am often convinced that my disordered eating patterns are simply me dieting. That isn’t me though. That is my Eating Disorder. That is shame whispering in my ear. That is me believing that I can numb myself to my difficult emotions, or that I can control my hunger by not giving in when my body says it needs nutrients. When I am dizzy, and my hands are shaking, and I’m light-headed and weak, I will momentarily listen to my body and feed it. But I don’t feed it the nutrients that it needs. I feed it the first thing I can find, regardless of what that is. 

Most of the time when I eat, it is because there are people in my life who would be sad if I died. 

My hope is that one day I will want to eat to feed myself; that I will believe that I deserve to nourish myself. Until then, I can only cling to the fact that you need food to live. 

I would like to express a heartfelt thank you Polly, for sharing your story. 

I look forward to more guest writers on my blog.