"Skinny" people have feelings too.

The blogosphere is all atwitter (social media pun alert!) about a recent post in which the author discusses why gay men hate their bodies.  Since I am fascinated by the degrees of body acceptance in cultural groups different from my own, I was very excited to read this, especially given the fact that it had stirred up a lot of anger in the blog community.  Though the post was maybe slightly too tongue in cheek at times, for the most part, I understood where the blogger, Orlando Soria, was coming from.  LA is a city of Barbies and Kens.  It's hard to feel good about yourself some days, no matter how skinny you are.

I figured there would be the usual critics shouting "it's what's on the inside that counts!" The typical name calling as people criticized him for being narcissistic or superficial.  What I was not prepared for was people saying he had no right to feel this way since he was thin.

To which I say, are you fucking kidding me?  (pardon my French)

Yes, this is what some "skinny" people really DO
see when they look in the mirror.

NEWSFLASH: being skinny is not the key to self esteem!!!  When I was at my lowest weight I was also on my knees in a rest stop bathroom throwing up the road trip junk food I had inhaled in the car.  Do you think I felt GOOD about this?  No.  Every time I looked in the mirror I wanted to punch the fat slob that was looking back at me.  And it's ok for me to feel that way.  Just like it's ok for a person at ANY weight to feel good about themselves.  Who the hell are we to decide how a person should feel about themselves?

Seriously folks, I know a lot of people think that skinny people have no reason to ever feel bad and I wish that was the way the world worked but it's not that simple.  That was the biggest lesson I learned from my ED, when I had to say to myself, "Congratulations, you're skinny.  And where exactly has that gotten you?  How has it changed your life?"  The answers to those questions were, "nowhere," and "It hasn't."

So before you start completely invalidating a person's feelings because to you they look perfect, maybe just try listening to them and understanding where they're coming from.  Sometimes that's all we need, is someone to listen and recognize our feelings as valid.  THAT will help to build a better self image than any amount of congratulations for fitting into a size 0 ever will.

Preach on, Kelly Clarkson

A friend of a friend of mine recently made the very difficult decision to go to rehab for help with a problem he's been having.  Though all of my eating disorder treatment was outpatient, I know how hard this decision is to make and I admire and applaud him for his strength.  Talking to my friend about it has caused me to reflect on my own treatment experience and how true the old adage, "What doesn't kill you makes you stronger," really is AND how helpful that phrase can be when you really USE it to help you get through a challenge, be that a fitness one or life in general.

See?  There's always a bright side.

Though it sucked, my experience with my ED is probably one of the best experiences I've ever been through.  Yes, I said that an illness that was causing me to make myself throw up 6 times a day, go to the gym for 4 hours at a time, and skip friends birthday parties because I was "afraid" I'd have to eat is one of the BEST experiences I've gone through.  I learned more about myself from it than any other single event I've gone through in life, and it has made me into the relatively self aware person that I am today.  I mean, hell, my boyfriend told me (with a straight face) this weekend that one of his favorite things about me is how rational I am.  I know that this is largely because of how all of my treatment throughout the ED taught me how to think.

When you're going through something that is so overwhelming you want to crawl into bed for a week, it's very easy to do just that.  What isn't easy is looking at the situation and going, "Wow.  This is HARD.  How do I get through this hardness?"  Sure, you can stay focused on the crappy events at hand and wallow in your misery, but what does that accomplish?  The most valuable thing that my treatment ever taught me, the thing that literally defines the aforementioned cliche is to look at a shitty situation and ask, "What can I learn from this?"

If I related every lesson that the ED taught me I'd be here for a week, but asking that question may be what saved my life.  It allowed me both to acknowledge all the bad feelings I was having (something that the ED never did since instead of feeling the feelings I would just stuff myself full of food and throw it up instead) AND forced me to say to myself, "Ok self, you're going through this and it sucks, but what can you learn from it to make it slightly more bearable?"  That latter option is what really made me turn the corner in recovery.

Sing it, sister.

Whether you're dealing with a workout slump or a boyfriend who cheated on you, finding the silver lining will make it that much easier to get through the rain.  Haven't been to the gym in a month?  Maybe your brain is trying to tell you you're bored with your routine and need to shake it up.  Boyfriend slept with some floozy?  That gut feeling you've been ignoring about him is probably right and in the future you should trust yourself more.  See what I mean?  Suddenly the situation isn't so overwhelming and is downright interesting!

Ok, so it may take some time to get to feeling THAT positive about hard situations, but I promise, much like your muscles, if you continue to train your brain to think this way it will become stronger & more fit just like your body does after regular time in the gym.  Give it a try!

Affirmations: not just a bunch of touchy feely BS.

The Holstee Manifesto.  My guidelines for life.

When I was in the beginning of my struggles with my eating disorder, one of my biggest reasons for resisting help was because I hated what I perceived therapy to be.  I thought of it as a bunch of relaxation exercises with hippie dippie instructions like, "Feel the river filling up your body and washing away your worries."   I figured my eyeballs would get stuck staring at the ceiling because I'd be rolling them so much.  This is also why yoga has never resonated with me.  (I have since learned that there are many different styles of yoga so please, yoginis, don't freak out on me.)

I was very surprised when I went to therapy for the first time and found that there are a lot of therapists who understand my want and need to be able to explain my feelings in a logical way.  It doesn't have to be new age-y music and waving bundles of sage around.

But there is one thing that even the most practical of therapists continued to suggest to me and I continued to resist: affirmations.

I hated the idea of looking at myself in the mirror and a la Stuart Smalley saying cheesy stuff like, "I'm good enough, I'm smart enough, and gosh darn it, people like me."  I still hate it.  But one day my roommate/life coach changed my whole perception of these nifty mind tricks.

She had heard a story on NPR that talked about affirmations that presented them simply as affirmative statements to yourself.  I guess that's kind of what Stuart Smalley does, but this seemed way less hokey.  For instance, one of hers was, "I will floss my teeth today."  Not, "I will floss my teeth in order to feel my healthy beautiful gums flourishing in all their grandeur," simply, "I'll floss."  Well, now that I could do!

I've been doing it for the past few weeks and color me shocked, it actually helps!  Starting the day off with a practical discussion with myself keeps my brain on the straight and narrow without making it a gag inducing "affirmation" that I'd never take seriously.  I've even found "affirmation art" like the Holstee manifesto at the top of this post that resonates with me in a positive way without laying it on too thick.  (You can purchase it here.)

So if, like me, you find affirmations too hokey, try to think of it as simply giving yourself a pep talk.  To use a sports metaphor that even your boyfriend could be into: you are the coach of your life.  A good coach never lets the players on the field without firing them up first, why be a player in your life without the same thing?

Ten, hut!

You talkin' to ME?

Do you understand the words
that are coming out of your mouth?

We've all got an inner monologue and I'm pretty sure that everyone's inner voice has the nasty habit of being negative from time to time.  Hey, we're human, it happens.

But so many people have an inner voice that pops up way more often than it should, and it tells them terrible things about their own body.  You ate too much, you ran too little, you are not good enough.  Many of us become so used to hearing these messages that we even start to believe our own negative hype.

Let's put this in perspective.

Think about a negative thought that you may have about your body.  Now, imagine saying that thought, out loud, to your best friend.  Or your sister.  Or your dog.  Like this:

"Hey best friend, if you don't lose 10 pounds, no one will ever love you."

WHOA, hold the heck on, you say.  I would never talk about my best friend like that!  He/She is so awesome, who cares about 10 pounds?!

Exactly.

Why is it ok to tell ourselves these awful things that we would never in a million years say, or even think, about the people in our lives that we love so dearly?  Newsflash: it's not.

Thinking about my eating disorder this way had a huge impact on my recovery.  I first read about this concept in this great book Life Without Ed by Jenni Schaefer .  She described looking at her eating disorder as an abusive boyfriend named Ed (ED = eating disorder.  Convenient, huh?).  So many strong women like Jenni, and myself, would never take crap from a boyfriend but yet engage in a never ending abusive relationship within their own mind.  If some dude I was dating told me my butt was looking a little big in my pants, his own ass would be cold and alone in bed that night.  But yet, I used to tell myself that, and worse, multiple times a day.

So the next time you're berating yourself for going to happy hour with an old friend after a particularly bad day at work, or ordering dessert at your friend's birthday dinner, think about saying those thoughts out loud to another person.  Then flip your own internal script.

Mama always said, if you don't have anything nice to say, don't say anything at all.