I'm happy to say that I'm doing fantastic with both of these things now. They are actually just my new normal at this point. I (almost) never feel guilty about food or exercise decisions, and I (almost) always love and appreciate my body exactly as it is. I say "almost" because I'm not perfect yet, but seriously it's rare when I feel food/exercise guilt or have negative self-talk about my body.
What progress that is for me! When I wrote those posts, I was still engaging in both of those behaviors all of the time. Practically every time I made a food or exercise decision, I would regret it, and beat myself up over it. Every time I looked in the mirror at my body, I cringed, and dreamed of a day when my body would be smaller and therefore better.
I'm super happy to say that this is no longer the case.
It really did just take practice to master these two steps.
For "No More Guilt", just a constant reminder whenever I started to feel guilty about food or exercise to step back and remember that those decisions are MORALLY NEUTRAL and that they should elicit NO GUILT and to in fact feel guilt about those things is DISORDERED THINKING.
Eventually, I believed those things, and now I don't assign moral values to food or exercise. Food is food, exercise is exercise, and no amounts or types of either define me as a person. Really, they don't! I'm so much happier without that constant guilt hanging over my head.
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| Some random self-love at Walmart! |
For "Total Body Acceptance" I just started to love my body more. In order to do that, I spent more time with it. I did things like take baths without bubbles, walk around the house naked sometimes, pamper my body by always keeping it clean and moisturized, and being in more full body pictures. I stopped avoiding mirrors and cameras. I really learned my body. After spending years avoiding body acceptance, this has been extremely enlightening.
I also bought plenty of new clothes to fit my body. Cute stuff from my new favorite clothing store: Torrid. (sidenote: If you are a plus size woman who does not like her body and has refused to believe in the possiblity of cute plus size clothes, please do yourself a favor and check our your local Torrid! I hope that you have one. I adore mine.) Cute clothes that fit my body really helped me in this step.
Just stopping avoiding the reality of my body's appearance and feel has made me love it. Seriously, I used to be disgusted with my body when it was this size. Disgusted. Like, I would cry when I thought about it, and get angry when I saw pictures of it. It was really messed up, how much hate I had towards my plus-size body. Really. Messed. Up.
I accept my body now. And it feels great!
Now, all that being said... Even though I'm no longer guilty or body-hating, I still recognize the need to change my eating habits and to lose some excess weight. But these needs do not need to be met with guilt or body-hate. Really, they don't! Those two things have NEVER helped me to eat healthier, exercise more, or lose weight for the long term. So I gave them up, and I won't be getting them back.
The third step in my recovery is Intuitive Eating. And I already told you guys a couple of weeks ago that I'm working on it again, so step 3 is on its way. This third step will be broken down into several tiny steps. So let's say that my EDNOS/Diet Addiction Recovery Plan is an outline, it would look like this:
I) No More Guilt.
II) Total Body Acceptance.
III) Intuitive Eating
a) Eat only when hungry
b) Stop eating when satisfied
i) Stop eating when full
I'm at IIIai right now. It's always been very difficult for me to stop eating when satisfied, so for now I'm going to do baby steps and stop eating when full. To me, these are two different things. Once I'm "full", I know that I've gone past "satisfied" a bit. But it's an easier sensation to recognize. So I will start there.
My next entry will be about the half marathon training!
2 comments:
This is amazing. Intuitive Eating is definitely something I strive to do. It sounds like you're really making progress. I can see the happy in your words. :)
Hello, I admire the way you persevered into attaining weight loss, from that photos of yours, it seems you are beginning to loss weight. Keep it up, oh by the way, I love those staircase with motivational words, they very effective reminders to keep going.
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