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A Setback in Eating Disorder Recovery

 

There was a quote from YouTuber, Linda Sun’s, video:

“I don’t want to spend time counting calories instead of making the time I have count.”

I felt that.

Over the last few weeks, months, years, I’ve been trying and failing to lose weight. Well, I haven’t been completely failing, but I feel like a failure because I’m not at my goal weight yet, because things aren’t moving fast enough.

You see, I want to be skinny by the summer. My heart rooted itself in the ground when I realised that it wasn’t going to happen, because I failed again. Because I took too many weeks off, because I allowed myself to have that biscuit or ice-cream or takeaway. Instead of counting calories and working out, I binged and ate McDonald’s for two weeks straight. Now look at where I am: nothing but a failure.

Why do we talk to ourselves this way? Why do we place so much worth on our weight? Like the quote said, I want to make the time that I have count, instead of spending all my time counting calories. Recently, I made a plan to restrict my calories a dangerous amount. Already, I have failed. I keep using that word, failed, but I haven’t. If I have failed to restrict my calories to the point of starvation, then I’m proud of that. I’m proud of the fact that I’m not putting my body through such turmoil.

Only, I am, aren’t I? I’m putting so much pressure on myself to lose weight, so much focus on becoming a “better” version of myself, a completely different version of myself, that I’m forgetting to love myself in this very moment. This version of me exists whether I like it or not, and I’m not only going to have to learn to live with her, but also love and cherish her. Instead of living for the future, I need to live for now because the future isn’t guaranteed, but now always will be.

My stretch marks, the bits of my body that wobble: they’re a part of me. They always will be whether I’m fat or thin, wide or lean, big or small. These words that we put so much meaning into, they’re just words. Why do we give them so much power? They’re. Just. Words.

As hard as it is, I’m going to delete that weight loss plan, get rid of the timetable of goal weights and realise that I can love myself now and that I deserve to be loved. My goal in life shouldn’t be to “lose weight”, it should be to “be happy”. Be loud, be proud, be someone I can look up to right now, not a few months or a year down the line.

The hard truth is that body acceptance doesn’t come from shrinking. If you can’t love yourself in a bigger body, then forcing yourself into a smaller body won’t fix that. You’ll never be good enough with that mindset, you’ll never be small enough. I should know this by now, I’ve been back and forth for over ten years. This isn’t new to me. But I still have a lot to learn. I have a lot of work to do, but I’m willing to do it. I refuse to let this setback become anything other than that: a setback.


Until the next time,

Char.


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