Diet Culture

We live in diet culture. Like every where we look there's something telling us what we can do to look more like "her." Who the hell is her? Over the past year, I've done a lot of work to learn to love looking more like me. A happy, healthy, nourished me. And when you start loving being nourished, you start to hate diet culture and everything it does to prey on our insecurities.

A balanced lifestyle should never ask us to throw our lives out of balance which is often what a diet does. The most common type of diet restricts calories by excluding an entire food group from your diet and compensating by adding foods from a different food group to ensure that you still "feel full." Let's talk about science for a minute. Your body needs every single food group. You can google each food and learn what they all do for you, but you can't live without any single one of them. They all work together to make your body function at its best. When you exclude one of those food groups, one part of your body isn't able to be its best. For example, a common food myth is that carbs make you fat. Carbs are actually the main source of energy for the body. When you restrict carbs, you're restricting your body's energy resources. They also power your brain. So carbs don't make you fat - they make you smart and strong. Your body can't get the same energy and wits from a vegetable. 60% of your diet should actually come from carbohydrates. This doesn't meant that you have to eat pasta every single day (there are plenty of other sources of carbohydrates out there), but it does mean that restricting this food group altogether is a terrible idea!

It's called balance. The body needs everything. It needs fruits and vegetables just as badly as its needs fats and proteins. We should consume every food group, every day. And we should love our bodies regardless of what the media is telling us is beautiful. I've been overweight and I've been underweight and I've been a healthy weight. I can tell you that the first time I really began to nourish my body, I went to my therapist and said "if this is what being nourished feels like, then I've been starving for years." And I've met plenty of people who have had this same experience. Skinny isn't an indicator of health. And number on a scale is just that, a number. If you're nourishing your body appropriately, your body will respond and find its healthiest range. You'll feel good. And you won't be hungry.

If you have questions or need help or feel overwhelmed by nutrition, I encourage you to reach out to a dietitian. They don't just help people with eating disorders (: It's much safer than dieting. I don't know what I'd do without mine. She reminds me weekly that nourishment is vital to my well being and helps keep me on track with what an appropriate meal plan looks like for my body because every single body is different.

Accepting Normal

"I hated my body when I was overweight, I hated my body when I was underweight, and I hate my body now." I've said this more than once this week and it's something that should be okay to talk about.

I began losing weight because I thought there was something wrong with the way I looked. I thought there was something wrong with me. The size I was wasn't desirable. I didn't like the way certain clothing looked on me. You could forget feeling comfortable in a bathing suit. When I lost weight, not only did things begin to fit better, but the world fit me better. My new body got a lot of attention. Nothing really changed about me, but my life changed a lot. My habits were far from healthy before anyone ever noticed that I had lost too much weight. And even at my lowest weight, I felt much more acceptance and praise than I'd ever felt in my life. I was also the most inauthentic I'd ever been. Maintaining a life and an eating disorder at the same time is exhausting and nearly impossible. As much as I felt like I "fit in," I still wasn't happy.

Now at a normal weight, accepting that this is my normal is really hard. Knowing that this is what my nourished body looks like, this is where my body feels good, well, that's hard to accept. My dietitian can tell me every single day that I'm in a healthy weight range, my friends can tell me I look great, I can tell myself I'm thankful for how well my body is functioning and none of it makes it easier to accept the fact that my body is larger than it was a few months ago and it needs to be that way. However, what I'm working on learning is that skinny doesn't equal fulfilled. No matter what the number on the scale reads, there's still a soul inside of this body that I have to learn to love and care for. No amount of diet pills can slim down your character.

This road is long and this journey has been quite the fight. They tell you that body image is the last thing to go. And I certainly hope that one day I'll be able to live in this body without hatred or disgust. But for just this week, I'm resolving to be thankful for making it this far and for all of the supports that have helped carry me when I thought I couldn't go any further. It's been a really hard week. Sometimes I think it's okay to be gentle with yourself and allow yourself to take a break and just breathe. That's my week - breathing and being thankful.

"These mountains that you are carrying, you were only supposed to climb." -Najwa Zebian