Healing from dieting cycles, binge eating, disordered eating and body shame is hard work.  

It’d be hard work if we lived in a vacuum! But what makes it even harder is living in a culture that glorifies and praises dieting tendencies and intertwines our worth with our bodies, our nutritional intake and our even health status.

In my work with women and in my writing, I bring up the concept of diet culture often. I wanted to dive into the concept a bit to provide you with context and some food for thought that I’m guessing could be needed, especially around this time of year (hello resolutions!).

Bad body image days, they happen to all of us. 

Have you ever noticed how you can start your day feeling neutral, content, happy even, with how your body is showing up to the world, only to have that come crashing down by mid-day as your body image has plummeted until despair and loathing?

It's interesting how this happens because your body certainly hasn't changed drastically in a matter of hours. 

But the way you relate to your body, or feel about, or in, your body has absolutely shifted.

This time of year can bring on all the feels. Which, in my experience, can significantly amplify how we feel in, and about, our bodies.

So, as we move through this stressful season of the year, it's important to be reminded of and armed with ways to cope with those tough moments, or days.

Between complex family relationships, a layered and vulnerable relationship with your body and food and a seemingly boundless feast filling your field of vision, it’s no wonder why the thought of the day can insight anxiety (dare I say dread?!).

And to top it off, for many women struggling with binge eating, this is just the beginning of a long, quite possibly painful holiday season. 

If you’re tempted, or are planning to rid your house of the goods while your kiddos are sleeping, I want to encourage you to take a deeeeeep breath and consider an alternative.

Sugar doesn’t have to be that scary

You might be thinking, “NO, Sarah, you don’t understand! I’m ADDICTED to sugar! I’ll house everything from the trick or treating bags if I don’t get it out of here!”

I want you to know I hear you. I totally appreciate why you feel like you’re addicted to the chocolatey goodness. In your lived experience, it’s probably brought about certain can’t stop won’t stop thoughts and behaviors.

Something that one of my clients recently shared with me was that body image work is like an endless marathon. As you move into healing, the end point seems to get further away. But, over time you build up endurance to keep going, to keep moving, to keep believing in yourself. So much so that your initial anticipated destination doesn’t seem all that important. It’s process and the journey that really heals and truly sets you free.

Body Positivity is a buzzword these days. In mainstream media and within the diet and wellness industries folks are jumping onboard to try and help women feel better about their bodies.

I’m thankful that these conversations are taking place, because it can be an entry point for people who have struggled with their relationship with their body for years

In tough times, it's so easy to identify with a label. To identify what's happening for you emotionally or behaviorally and many times to justify how you're showing up the world.

You're depressed.

You're anxious.

You're a binge eater.

If you are in need of emergent mental health support, text "HOME" to 741471 or call the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline at 1-800-273-8255.

If you need assistance finding a therapist in your area, please don't hesitate to reach out. I would be happy to help you find the support you are SO deserving of.

Many of my clients are shocked when they realize that true and lasting healing from disordered eating and body-hate actually has very little to do with food and their bodies.

Sure, those are the things you project your pain onto. That you try with all your might to control to stop your unworthiness wounds from flaring up. 

But, the efforts of control are a massive distraction.

A distraction that reinforces the message you've bought into that if you don't control, that if you don't strive and grind for perfection, then you won't ever feel worthy. Loved. Beautiful even.

You have the power within you, at this very moment, to take steps to stop this cycle.

By giving yourself permission, momentary permission even, to practice imperfect action.

Disordered eating and the pursuit of thinness is so normalized in our culture that it is often dismissed and even encouraged within health and wellness fields.

You might be wondering if I lost my mind by sending that in the subject line!

But, I assure you, I haven't!

No more than usual at least 😜.

I really mean it, though. It's ok to want to lose weight.

It's ok to want to follow your eating disorder's rules.

It's ok to be pushing back against the whisper of the compassionate caregiver's voice in your head that's encouraging you to loosen your grip on disordered eating patterns.

It's ok.

You can want to continue to lose weight. You can want to keep your eating disorder around to keep you safe. You can want to look like the hottest model on social media.

It's ok.

Just because you want to, doesn't mean you have to.

New article is live on Thrive Global!

At the time my weeks were spent tightly "on-plan" and my weekends were spent binging. The binges were emotionally and physically painful and made me feel absolutely out of control and completely and utterly flawed.

I didn't know what else to do, so each week when Sunday rolled around I'd throw out all my "bad" foods and hop back on my plan.

If you’re reading this you’re probably struggling with food and your body in some way. And if you’re considering buying into one of these programs, you’re probably praying that one of these challenges is your solution.

Ladies, here are my most honest tips:

Today I want to give you a few tools to help you cope with stress and anxiety in your day-to-day. Because if you can start dealing with this stuff early on in the day, you’ll be likely to have the weight of the world on your shoulders later at night. And if you don’t have the weight on the world on your shoulders at night, you’ll be less likely to need to numb out with food.

It’s a struggle that’s so common for so many people. But it’s not openly talked about because it’s steeped in guilt and shame.

Binge eating at night.

Today I want to help you understand what could be driving binge eating at night and give you a few tools to help you move through it.

Because if 70% of women are already engaging in eating patterns and behaviors that are negatively impacting their emotional well being, masquerading weight loss as self-love is actually manipulating them into believing that it’ll work this time around.

That if they self-love themselves hard enough by skipping meals on the regular, living by a number that My Fitness Pal prescribes, only getting off the treadmill when they hit x number of calories, eating within a 5 hour window that they’ll come into their own and finally feel worthy.

Because #selflove.

Right?

You want to retrain your brain and acknowledge that society has influenced you to view cellulite as “ugly” or your round stomach as “terrible” or your jiggly arms as “disgusting”.

Do you see the power that these types of words carry?

Get really clear on the fact that you weren’t born with these judgements. You were conditioned into believing them. And, if you can back off on that just a little bit and get really clear, really basic, really descriptive and specific things can just be what they are. Without the weight of judgment.

The parties, the temptations, the triggers, the purchasing of holiday outfits.

All of it. 

If only the warm, fuzzy feelings of the holidays outweighed food and body stress!

Instead the season can bring on all the feels.

And often times we turn to our go-to way of soothing those feels- by emotionally overeating to to cope with the stress and discomfort. 

To start let’s loosely define “normal” eating. I want you to think of a person (if you can!) in your life that eats what they want. Without guilt. Without shame. Without hiding in the pantry or burning the evidence. Without beating themselves up or compensating with cutting calories or with exercise the next day. The person who eats when they’re hungry, stops when they’re full and fully allows themselves to indulge their cravings when it will serve their mind, mouth and body.

That’s normal eating.

We exert so much energy trying to control our food and trying to control the way our bodies appear. 

Because we’ve been taught to think that this kind of control will be the antidote to the parts of our lives, the parts of ourselves, that we feel most vulnerable about.

→Our bodies.

→Our self-worth.

→Our ability to make things look easy. Like we’ve got our shit together.

Control in its basic form is a response to feeling powerless in some way.

So when we look at the staggering number of women engaging in disordered eating patterns, it makes so much sense.

We feel powerless. We feel ashamed. We feel self-doubt.

How do you want to feel in your body?

No, not how do you want to feel once your body is the size you’ve been dreaming about.

In this current moment, what are the feelings that you want to feel, and truly experience, in your body 🙆🏻?

→Yes, even if you feel uncomfortable in it!

Let’s talk about willpower real quick.

Around this time of year food and body comments run rampant.

“It can't believe I’m eating these ____. It’s like I can’t stop!”
“You have so much self control! I can’t be around _____ without losing my sh*t.”
“Don’t judge me, but I’m going to eat ____.”
“If I can just make through these 30 days without ______ I’ll be golden.”

We rely on the idea of willpower, hoping it’ll help us follow restrictive diets. That it’ll help up control ourselves around food and lose those last ____ pounds this new year.