I’m on a wonderful journey right now, one that I think is really saving my life or at least giving me a new lease on life. I’m learning how to think about food and my body differently, finding freedom in food and learning body acceptance and even seeing a future where I can live with body love. It’s a life changing journey for me and I want to document it, partly for myself so that I can better understand my own history and my own journey with food and body and partly so I can share it with others so that they can maybe see that there is a whole different way to live in freedom with food.
I know there are amazing voices online already sharing about this movement and sometimes I worry that I have nothing new to add to the conversation. Maybe I don’t, but I’ve decided that it’s important to share my own story nevertheless because I am just a normal, white, size 14 woman – completely average in so many ways – who has had a completely fucked relationship with food and my body for almost my entire life. Even that is normal. I cannot think of even one woman I know who hasn’t struggled with her own complicated relationship with her body because she’s internalized so much cultural junk and conditioning that leads her to question her own self worth.
It has to stop.
I believe we deserve better than a life spent second-guessing the way we look, literally trying to make ourselves smaller to be accepted. I believe that we should expand our definition of beauty to includes all kinds of bodies and looks. I believe that we deserve to release ourselves from the drama around the way we feed ourselves so that we can focus on our true work on this planet, which doesn’t have to be anything grand but likely doesn’t involve stressing over whether or not to eat cake or berating ourselves for eating cake.
So, I want to share my own story, which is very much still a work in progress. Trust me, you don’t go about undoing a lifetime of social conditioning quickly or cleanly, but it has been the greatest gift I have given myself in my entire life. I am going to try my absolute hardest to tell the truth of what has happened to me, to share the moments that define my relationship with food and body and numbing throughout my childhood and to share the pivotal moments in the healing process over the past few years, too.
Here is my rough outline of what I want to share with you all:
- The First Time I Remember Being Fat
- My First Diet
- Disordered Eating Takes Root
- Trying to Find Control
- My PCOS Diagnosis
- The Freshman 20 – Fun, but also Fat
- I Will Diet Tomorrow
- The Spinning Chapter
- Yo-yo Diets in D.C.
- Skinny in Africa
- Skinnier in Africa
- The Excruciating Joy of Being Small
- Exercise, Exercise, Exercise
- Happy and Gaining and Panicking and Stressing
- South Beach my Ass
- The Rock Bottom and the Release
- Learning about Intuitive Eating
- Uncovering Why I Eat Emotionally
- My First Taste of Food Freedom
- Accepting my Big Body
- Understanding the Significance of True Self-care
- Just one More Diet
- PCOS and My Body
- Being a ‘Big’ Bride
- The Audacity of Eating Normally
I will link to the relevant articles as I create them so that you can follow along in real time with me.
I am literally shaking with fear and excitement for this work and for sharing the depths and trajectory of my food and body relationship online. I can’t wait to go on this journey with you all in the coming weeks. More to come…
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