Dear Readers
For me it started in puberty when I really felt hunger for the first time. My best friend embarrassed me when I ate too many muffins at the breakfast table after a sleepover. Then, my Mom gently made me acknowledge I had been gaining weight. I looked in the mirror and for the first time I saw that my butt was Huge! Now this was in the 70s when white girls were supposed to sport a boyish figure. At 14 I began dieting for the first time. By the time I was 15 I was purging. No one knew. They were just proud if me that I stuck to my diet and lost weight. Fast forward 40 years yep and I eat well but I still struggle with body image. Every single day.
Love,
Diana
Monday, June 30, 2014
Sunday, June 29, 2014
Today is a New Day!
Dear Readers,
Ritualized eating is an attempt to control impossible social situations. This can be a response to dysfunctional families (what family is functional?) or a relationship to school, work, or regional environments. Sometimes abusive love relationships can trigger eating disorders. The following examples are a short version of how people with eating disorders keep themselves from feeling the abuse they endure in daily life:
1, Cutting a slice of pizza into twelve pieces and then eating exactly six as a meal. Eating four 2 inch prices of iceberg lettuce.
2. Eating four perfectly measured bowls of cereal every Sunday morning and then vomiting all of it back up.
3. Making a cake by mixing up two cake batters and drinking one of them secretly.
4. Eating and drinking so many calories that oblivion sets in. You are in a drunken stupor. When it wears off you do it again.
5. Eating normally. Then running ten miles a day and taking laxatives to induce diarrhea.
If you can recognize a behavior in yourself or someone close to you even similar to those I listed above then you understand what I'm trying to say.
Don't fight yourself anymore with punishing and rewarding with food.
Fight the abuse that comes from outside of yourself. Start by sending love to the very core of your being.
Don't take any more crap. Be nice to yourself. Be nice to others as long as you are not in an abusive relationship with them. End any abusive relationships you are in. Be the person you were born to be. A unique beautiful being who deserves to feel loved.
Please feel free to respond with your stories. There are so many of us that we might not recognize what we do is an illness. The start of healing is to see that there is something in you that needs to heal.
Love,
Diana
Ritualized eating is an attempt to control impossible social situations. This can be a response to dysfunctional families (what family is functional?) or a relationship to school, work, or regional environments. Sometimes abusive love relationships can trigger eating disorders. The following examples are a short version of how people with eating disorders keep themselves from feeling the abuse they endure in daily life:
1, Cutting a slice of pizza into twelve pieces and then eating exactly six as a meal. Eating four 2 inch prices of iceberg lettuce.
2. Eating four perfectly measured bowls of cereal every Sunday morning and then vomiting all of it back up.
3. Making a cake by mixing up two cake batters and drinking one of them secretly.
4. Eating and drinking so many calories that oblivion sets in. You are in a drunken stupor. When it wears off you do it again.
5. Eating normally. Then running ten miles a day and taking laxatives to induce diarrhea.
If you can recognize a behavior in yourself or someone close to you even similar to those I listed above then you understand what I'm trying to say.
Don't fight yourself anymore with punishing and rewarding with food.
Fight the abuse that comes from outside of yourself. Start by sending love to the very core of your being.
Don't take any more crap. Be nice to yourself. Be nice to others as long as you are not in an abusive relationship with them. End any abusive relationships you are in. Be the person you were born to be. A unique beautiful being who deserves to feel loved.
Please feel free to respond with your stories. There are so many of us that we might not recognize what we do is an illness. The start of healing is to see that there is something in you that needs to heal.
Love,
Diana
Friday, June 27, 2014
Starting New
I'm starting this blog because I care so much about this topic. Eating Disorders is a name for a variety of unhealthy relationships to food. Food sustains us, is celebratory, invokes feelings of excitement, warmth, and nostalgia. On the flip side eating and food itself can be part of unhealthy obsessions. People with eating disorders eat too much or too little, they create rituals surrounding their food intake. They use it to punish or congratulate themselves. They think about food all of the time.
I also have a passion for helping victims of abuse. And with that I firmly believe that eating disorders stem from cultural abuse. The internet is full of sites promoting anorexia, in my mind the Ana trend has gone too far. Television gives women and some men the idea that there is a perfect body type for the star, the leading role, the "good" one.
So I started posting quotes that popped into my head on Instagram. The quotes started becoming longer and not really quotes but paragraphs. That's when I knew I needed to start a blog.
I'll tell my story here over the next few posts on how I am working to heal my relationship with food.
Note I said "working" on it because this is such a profound issue for me that I am uncovering layer upon layer of problems I have with my weight, food obsessions, and how much I love myself.
Because it really boils down to this: in order to have a healthy relationship with anyone or anything, you have to love yourself first. We are taught in our society and through our families that we are not worthy of love. This happens especially to women. But some men experience self aggrandizement too. They feel that to be lovable they must diet to look like a certain type of person. The good news is is that only 5 % of all women are able to achieve that perfect look naturally. They were born that way. The bad news? Nobody seems to know this.
So you can read my quotes on my Instagram #WhatItsFor or you can wait until I create a section where I will post them to this blog.
In the meantime I really want to hear your stories, I want to hear what you have to say about your relationship to food. Together in numbers we can chip away at this terrible block that holds so many of us back from who we really are. We are not one type. We are like beautiful snowflakes, no two alike. So please post here and help all of us share in the dream to heal ourselves and our relationship to self love and food.
I also have a passion for helping victims of abuse. And with that I firmly believe that eating disorders stem from cultural abuse. The internet is full of sites promoting anorexia, in my mind the Ana trend has gone too far. Television gives women and some men the idea that there is a perfect body type for the star, the leading role, the "good" one.
So I started posting quotes that popped into my head on Instagram. The quotes started becoming longer and not really quotes but paragraphs. That's when I knew I needed to start a blog.
I'll tell my story here over the next few posts on how I am working to heal my relationship with food.
Note I said "working" on it because this is such a profound issue for me that I am uncovering layer upon layer of problems I have with my weight, food obsessions, and how much I love myself.
Because it really boils down to this: in order to have a healthy relationship with anyone or anything, you have to love yourself first. We are taught in our society and through our families that we are not worthy of love. This happens especially to women. But some men experience self aggrandizement too. They feel that to be lovable they must diet to look like a certain type of person. The good news is is that only 5 % of all women are able to achieve that perfect look naturally. They were born that way. The bad news? Nobody seems to know this.
So you can read my quotes on my Instagram #WhatItsFor or you can wait until I create a section where I will post them to this blog.
In the meantime I really want to hear your stories, I want to hear what you have to say about your relationship to food. Together in numbers we can chip away at this terrible block that holds so many of us back from who we really are. We are not one type. We are like beautiful snowflakes, no two alike. So please post here and help all of us share in the dream to heal ourselves and our relationship to self love and food.
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