Letter to my Years

[This will begin at the start of my disordered behaviors]

Dear 8-year-old Chrissy,

I want you to know you're not alone. You don't have to keep quiet. You're right in feeling that what you're thinking and doing isn't normal but that doesn't mean it's not real. There are real words for what you're experiencing, and sadly so many people feel it. I know you cry during the nurse's screenings, throw your lunch away before going to step on the scale there. You have a breakdown cursing yourself for your "love of chocolate" as the nurse furrows her brow and marks her pen on the left of the bmi chart. You learned in school that certain foods would make people fat which meant unhealthy and miserable. When your mother picked you up to go to gymnastics you'd scarf down everything you could fit in your tiny child's hands because you could only eat what you wanted if you exercised. But the hours you spent in the mirrors at practice, grabbing what you thought was fat and just feeling oh so ashamed to the point where you began drinking green tea nightly, and swapping out your favorite foods. You are not fat, but more importantly, you are not shallow for your obsessions. You need to eat, my dear. Food is good for your soul, I promise.You're allowed to eat whatever you're hungry for and not wait until you can get rid of it through exercise. You always have someone to talk to about this, please tell someone.

Dear 9-year-old Chrissy,
More and more you feel like you don't own your brain. You have a perfect life and are full of light and joy, so why do you feel so ashamed of being you? OCD that you aren't aware you have controls your walking, touching, and breathing, you yearn for a way to silence it. At camp you lean back on the dining benches to get an ab workout instead of/while eating and churn with anxiety over your body. A cabin mate calls you small and your jaw drops at how blind they must be, but still you blush with pride. Perhaps that's how you find solace. In achieving perfect grades you fear failure, and friends will leave, but smallness you can control and perhaps the urges to do every odd compulsion will slow.. Your mommy and daddy love you so much that when they see you eating less, they get scared. It's like they can see the future coming. You complain of an aching stomach, unconsciously sucking in as if it was on autopilot. Your mother's heart sinks and you don't know what you did wrong. After she tells you what eating disorders are, you promise her you'll never do that, but the word anorexia sends an oxymoronic warm chill up your spine. It leeches into your brain, but you're not allowed to tell anyone. Chrissy, you have too much potential to hide this pain.

Dear 10-year-old Chrissy,
You're "better' you say. You love chocolate and eat it all the time! You go to dinner and eat food until you're full so what's the problem? You think it's normal to hide in the bathroom at friend's houses wishing you could just peel your stomach off, cursing yourself for eating at all. You feel sick and dizzy from thinking about your shape and size, and just wish you could unravel like a ribbon. You know you're happy, but don't know why it's so hard to keep it that way. You go from being vegetarian to eating low sugar to eating low fat, until you just give up and go back to eating and loathing yourself for simply nourishing your body and mind. I promise you that there is a way out of this endless cycle, and that you can reach out. And for a while things actually do get better.

Dear 11-year-old Chrissy,
I'm so sorry things are going downhill as soon as you thought they were changing. You put up the facade of loving food although you know you wish it didn't have to taste good. You tell people you're "addicted" to chocolate, so that they don't worry about your rigid exercise routine you perform in your bedroom after school. You claim you want abs, but you find ribs enticing. You quit meat for good (although because of your unhealthy intentions, you'll "slip up" two or three times), and have declared sugar a "treat" to be used sparingly. The late night bouts of despair and depression from a day of anxiety lead to you finding comfort in the deep dark trap of "ana" media. Websites, forums, instagram pages, you name it. You know people check your accounts, so instead of following, you write down the usernames and hashtags so you can replace food with thinspiration. You swallow every calorie counter to satiate your need for nourishment. Nobody knows about this until your "friend" suggests it's good for you. You compete with her to shrink yourself, but make it your life mission to be the thinner one, though you're nearly identical. You track bmi and read those charts like a Bible. My dear, I have so much compassion for you. Please don't let this web addiction swallow you whole.

Dear 12-year-old Chrissy,
Where do I begin? You wanted hunger to take away all the pain but instead it made everything worse. Alas, there you lie on a deathbed or rather your parents bed, not sure if it's really you there. You are rotting from the inside out, and feel life slipping through you. You try to grasp it but this "Ana" pulls you back.  It physically hurts to speak and move. Your heart finally quits and when you regain consciousness you gasp for anything to keep you alive even if it means food. Your body quits on you again until you appear in a psychiatric hospital where you're told you would've died within hours or days. You're awake enough that "Ana" is present to scold you for eating and shame you for surviving. But, the piece of you left knows that you don't want Dad to plan your funeral and you don't want Mom to explain this to Katie. The stay in the hospital changes your life by saving it, but also creating traumatic memories balanced out by the most amazing friends.
Christina, I'm sorry your adolescence will be defined by survival.

Dear 13-year-old Chrissy,
Stripped of your coping skills, you remember why you wanted to eat less in the first place. Self harm seems to be your only way to manage, and many times you contemplate death. You wish you would've died when you tried to kill yourself outside of COPE, but now is your chance to succeed in suicide. The darkness hugs you and consumes you. Anxiety and OCD riddle you with suffering and you begin to recall tragic memories you didn't know you suppressed. You'd give anything to be as hungry as you were before. Despite all this, I still can guarantee that there is a light coming soon.

Dear 14-year-old Chrissy,
You end middle school with a bang of happiness and finally feeling hopeful. You know that there is hope ahead and feel free to carry on, but the demon of self destruction stirs inside you. When high school comes, you grow nostalgic from the depression of the morning and throwing food away.  You grow increasingly anxious trying to recover and relapse simultaneously. When people catch on to you starving, you begin to experiment with eating normally and vomiting. You make homemade diet pills to swallow at lunch when no one's looking, and feel inferior to everyone around you. You grow tired daily and can't fathom ever confessing to your feelings. Bullies make things worse as you scream for a way out.

Dear 15-year-old Chrissy,
Hope was found in cyber school, but it couldn't end your self hate. You unmask your struggle and are admitted to residential treatment. You meet a life changing dietitian and quit restricting and purging and agree to take care of yourself to help take care of your mom. You begin to see the bright side once more but you know this isn't the finale. You think you can healthily lose weight and safely become underweight again while recovering, but nonetheless you maintain a positive mindset.

Dear 16-year-old Chrissy,
What a whirlwind. You relapse to the point you were 4 years ago but feel it's not the same because your bmi isn't the same. You love the thrill of hunger and go back to purging only as a last resort, but it catches up to you. You wind up in the ER, and are admitted to ironically the COPE partial program. When they tell you to go inpatient for a feeding tube after kicking you out, you grasp the motivation to do anything but. In a short few months, you commit to recovery for good and are finally living and thriving. Finally channeling everything you feel into creating music, you feel hope for your future. You are fighting like hell, but it's paying off.
I can't wait to see what 17 brings.

Myths About Intuitive Eating

So you think you know intuitive eating?

Chances are that even if you didn't 2 years ago, you've now heard of intuitive eating. But your idea of it may be very different depending on if you heard of it from a dietitian, a blogger, or a diet culture program appropriating the term. 

Because it can cause so much worry, confusion, and is surrounded with myths, I'll be busting some of those here!

Disclaimer: I am not a registered dietitian, not a psychologist, not educated in intuitive eating. My only experience is working with an intuitive eating RD.

So, myths

1. Eating intuitively is an excuse to eat unhealthily- yes and no. While intuitive eating does allow you to eat traditionally "unhealthy foods", it's more about allowing yourself to have those foods while changing your perception. Instead of feeling shamed about eating things that can only be eaten during cheat days, in binges, or if earned or forced, it teaches you to trust yourself and relearn that it's NOT bad food. There is no good or bad foods, none are off limits, and all are healthy in various ways. So it's not an excuse to eat what diet culture labels "bad", but rather permission. Plus, when you listen to hunger signals, cravings, and use your brain to make choices about what's most nourishing, you'll find that the desire for these formerly "forbidden" foods slows down and other cravings will play in.
2. It's the same as the "hunger-fullness" diet- This follows the same thing that assuming intuitive eating is a diet which it isn't, but it commonly gets mistaken for the hunger and fullness diet. The hunger and fullness diet permits you to eat only when hungry, stop when full, and not eat until hungry again. That's not intuitive, because IE allows you to listen to more than just physical hunger. It incorporates mental hunger cues, rational thinking, and socialization. For example, you may not be hungry in which the hunger and fullness diet would make everything off limits, but intuitive eating may tell you that Panera sounds great for lunch, or that you have a big day ahead so you want to eat a lipid and protein dense snack, or even that it's your friend's birthday so cake would be fun. It incorporates your INTUITION into everything hence the name.
3. It will change your weight- Some people gain weight, some people lose weight, some people maintain, but most people do all 3 throughout life. If you have lost weight from unhealthy behaviors, chances are normalizing your eating may make you gain weight, however that isn't always the case. Same goes for gaining weight unhealthily, you may lose weight through IE, but again, not always the case. And it applies to maintaining. It also will allow your body to reach it's natural weight (read here about set point weight theory: http://followtheintuition.com/diets-do-not-work-set-point-weight-works/ ), which is ever-changing! It makes sense that our bodies don't come pre-installed with a bmi chart programming and calories-in vs calories-out calculator. If we were that simple, we'd be robots. Weight and healthy weight is constantly ebbing and flowing so if intuitive eating does or doesn't change your weight, there is nothing wrong with you, in fact you're just allowing your body to be.
4. Intuitive Eating is a fad/trend- While it has become more openly discussed, when you think about it, it's quite the opposite. In fact intuitive eating outstands even the "paleolithic" diet if put on a timeline. Mainly because it's not really a diet, but also because it has existed since humanity. It is just following the natural instincts we're all born with and observe in kids. The only rule is "no rules" and anti diet :)
5. Eating disorders shouldn't be treated with intuitive eating guidance- I actually agree with this to an extent. Early stages of eating disorders especially ones that drastically affect the amount or types of food you eat might not respond to intuitive eating. If your hunger signals aren't aligned, your disorder changes your perception of food, and your health is at risk baby steps definitely should be advised by a dietitian, physician, or other professional. But for people who have disordered eating (not quite a full blown disorder) or have restored hunger signals and perception, it can be a freeing step. No more restriction, no more binging, peace with all foods- it sounds like a recovered utopia. Whatever your disordered behavior is, intuitive eating can be a step to freeing yourself. It is different for everyone, because everyone is different.

If I find any more to respond to, I'll update here, but other than that, eat your kale AND your cake (or whatever the heck makes you happy!)