DIETING AS A COPING MECHANISM

Something that has been on my mind a lot lately is how my attempts at dieting, that eventually lead to my eating disorder, were at the most fundamental level, a coping mechanism.

An attempt to deal with the very real pressures including stress, anxiety, shame and fear of living in a fatphobic diet-culture that teaches us that our value as women is based solely on appearance

But the way I used it to cope was two-fold.

First, much of the stress I experienced came from the reality of how our society treats people based on body size including institutional discrimination from fatphobic doctors , to widespread body shaming from the media and just general judgements and comments from my peers and family.

At the time, I truly believed that the only way to succeed and be loved was to fit the "thin beauty ideal."

But it transcended my desire to fit into society and became my primary coping mechanism for non-weight related issues. I made my body the scapegoat for more complicated emotional needs.

Instead of articulating my feelings of not being good enough, I transferred that on to my cellulite and made that the representation of what I was feeling.

Because my family system was falling apart (I will spare you the details), and I had just moved away for college, I transferred my anxiety onto my body and food in an attempt to “gain control” of something when so much of my life felt very out of control.

There was a time in my life when leaving the house was difficult because I was so insecure and unsure of myself, such that I couldn’t wait to get home to lock myself in my room and just binge the night away.

I needed to numb myself from reality. I needed to check out.

Seeing as I was already anxiety prone, I am not surprised that my lack of tools to cope with life lead to such a damaging relationship with food and my body.

Often the emotional pain or trauma is too much to bare, so we use food to soothe our feelings or fixate on our “weight problem” to create other pain or problems in an attempt distract from the real source of our emotional duress.

And while this might offer reprieve in the short term, disordered relationships with food (diets, ED's, etc.) almost always cause more pain in the long run then they could ever actually alleviate.

For example, our precious awareness is taken up with body monitoring and self-objectification.

Our food obsession expands as we struggle to maintain any weight-loss we may have achieved.

Our physical bodies health suffer (loss of periods, hormone imbalances) from the restriction, bingeing and other disordered eating tendencies.

And out self-esteem takes a hit with each weight cycle we experience as we are taught to see ourselves as the failures.

The more effort we put into shrinking our bodies, the more our life shrinks right along with it.

Eventually, I realized that my coping mechanism of choice, my eating disorder, was ineffective and was causing more pain than it was helping me heal from.

So, I had to get real with myself, and be willing to learn other ways to navigate our weight-biased world and heal all the past trauma and regular stress of life in more self-loving, caring, compassionate and effective ways.

I had to expand my emotional coping toolkit to include things other then food and dieting.

By healing my relationship with food, I was able to heal my relationship with life.

And now I am doing everything I can to heal the culture.

xo, C

WANT TO IMPROVE YOUR BODY IMAGE? GET OUT OF THE MIRROR IN YOUR MIND.

Oh hey there blog franzz, it's been a minute.

A couple weeks ago I gave a talk on Body Positivity and Body Image to a group of young dancers and I was nervous knowing their little porous sponge-like brains would potentially be influenced by what I shared. Obviously, for the better I hoped.

And in case youre wondering, the whole experience was awesome :)

Needless to say Body Image has been on my mind a lot lately.

If you've been hanging out on IG stories then you have likely heard me talk about how one can cultivate a positve, healthy Body Image.

And today I want to shed some major light on it.

First things first: Please do not blame yourself or feel bad if you have poor body image. It is not another thing you are getting wrong or can't figure out.

It is basically a natural reaction to the classical conditioning we all face by growing up in a fat-phobic, diet culture, that continually manipulates us into believing that our worth is based on the appearance of the fleshy earth suit our soul inhabits.

It's fucking bullshit. A small jean size pales in comparison to a big bursting heart.

(also there is nothing wrong if you naturally wear a size small, okay?)

And I want to clear up one of the most common misconceptions about positive body image.

Your body image has nothing to do with what your body actually looks like.

You could look like a Victoria's Secret model and still have poor body image.

Rather, your Body Image is your internal perception of your body and it's based on the values and opinions you have of yourself based on that perception.

For example, I used to base my self-worth on the amount of cellulite I had and since every god-forsaking tabloid made fun of women with cellulite, I felt like shit about myself and had poor body image.

Now my self-worth has nothing to do with my cellulite, because I know that body-dimples are a pretty natural thing for women to have on planet earth..., so I have a healthy, positive body image despite all the cellulite my 30 year old body has.

This doesn't mean I like my cellulite, I don't hate it either, I just know it has nothing to do with my value as a human being.

So while we are lead to believe that shrinking and tighting our body will make us feel better about ourselves and improve our body image the research does not support this.

And anecdotally, my experience of life and repairing my body image is in alignment with that science. It didn't matter how small I got, I was never truly happy with how I looked.

It wasn't until I stopped focusing on how I looked that my body image improved.

According to Renee Englen, PhD, author of the book Beauty Sick, How the Cultural Obsession with Appearance Hurts Girls and Women, the more cognitive resources we spend on monitoring and managing our apparence and body size, the less happy we end up being in the long run.

A drop in pant size might offer temporary reprieve from low body esteem but we end up going a little cray cray trying to keep the weight off, which makes most of us pretty miserable.

On the contrary, when we focus on making the world around us a better place by engaging in meaningful work and authentic relationships, we have less room for "body-based rumination" as described by Englen.

In essence, the key to healthy body image is not "body-improvement," it's cultivating a fulfilling life that you love, one that has little to do with the way your body looks, and is more about what you are able to do becuase you have a body.

The more we can get out of the internal mirror in our minds that is constantly scanning our body for imperfections, the more free and happy we will be.

So this is your permission slip to go do more shit that makes you joyful and excited to be alive because that will improve your body image way more then counting calories ever could!

xo, C

SHAME IS NOT A DIET PLAN

I used to think that body shame was motivating, that if I wasn't ashamed of my body I would either gain weight or not lose more weight..., both options were out of the question in my mind at the time.

The thing is, self-talk is ridiculously powerful, and thinking or speaking negatively about our bodies (and ourselves) isn't an effective way to "hold ourselves accountable." (more on that here)

Yet, it is an agrument I have heard countless times by women I work with.

Like... "If I don't beat myself up, I will gain a gazillion pounds and shit would hit the fan.

But, how effective has body shaming really been?

If you're like most of us, you've been shaming yourself for a long time, and if it really was effective and motivating, wouldn't you be at your goal weight by now?

"Body shaming doesn't move women closer to an unrealistic body ideal" according to Renee Engeln in her book Beauty Sick.

On the contrary, as the body ideal has gotten thinner and less attainable, fatphobia has increased right along with the waist size of Americans.

Meaning fat shaming has increased and we aren't getting any smaller.

So again, it is ineffective.

Rather shame is closely correlated with depression and typically depressed people are not in a better position to take care of themselves.

As counter intuitive as it may seem, feeling bad about our bodies typically triggers a disordered relationship with food.

When our self esteem is attached to our body, we are obsessed with and attached to food, which is why negative thoughts about our size lead to binge eating.

I'm sure you can recall a time where you felt bad about yourself and your body, so you skipped a night out with friends, stayed home and ended up binge eating.

On the flip side, when we respect our bodies and are grateful for them, we want to take care of them which is why those who have self-worth outside of their body size do not binge eat.

Lets end the body shame is motivating conversation.

Body shame contributes to a disordered relationship with food, not the other way around.

If you are ready to leave body shame and binge eating behind you then I invite you to join my next group coaching program, you can learn more here