#8

body shit

I’ve written and re-written this newsletter about twelve times now. My journey with food, my body and exercise has always been extremely personal and nothing I’ve ever had to neatly put into words with commas and shit. I’ve gone back and forth on even publishing this topic or just moving on to a different topic, but I already have a jumble of mess on a google doc. I might as well put it out into the universe.

The topic of ‘creating a healthy relationship with food and exercise’ was requested via IG question box and it’s one that really spoke to me so I decided to take it on. Here I am weeks later with no real outline and still trying to find the balance between being helpful and oversharing. 20 years in a ballet studio gives me almost too much content to work with.  

My relationship with my body isn’t perfect, but I’ve come a long way in the past five years. Dare I say my relationship to food is normal, healthy even?! So I do think my experience is worth sharing. I am coming off a week off zero exercise and daily ice cream ~shoutout wisdom teeth removal~ and don’t give a single fuck how my body looks because I’m healing my mouth!

I have no idea what my body looks like. I never have and I probably never will. I’ll happily blame this all on ballet. I will forever stand by that staring at yourself in a mirror throughout your entire formative years is not healthy.

When I graduated high school I weighed under a 100 pounds, but I wasn’t ‘anorexic’ or ‘bulimic’ the only two words that got thrown around in regards to eating disorders at the time, so I had no reason to be concerned and thought anyone who was genuinely concerned about my safety was way out of line. I was absolutely still crying over the size of my thighs meanwhile I looked like a skeleton from science class. 

The first time I heard the term body dysmorphia I felt so seen, it was like my entire life fell into place. I haven’t tried to heal from body dysmorphia, maybe that’s my next journey but I’ve decided that it literally doesn’t matter what my body looks like. I’m healthy, I’m strong and everyone thinks I’m hot! I still have zero concept of the size of my body, but it doesn’t matter.

Here are a few things helped me get to this place.

social media

If my immediate reaction to someone’s content was, ‘I wish I looked like that’ or ‘I wish I was skinnier,’ they had to go. I don’t miss their content in my feed either (or them promoting their “fruit only” diet).

exercise

After I stopped dancing seven days a week for hours a day I (obviously) gained weight, freaked the fuck out and threw myself into a cardio heavy workout routine that I really hated. For what? Finally, I came to the conclusion that being screamed at in a dark room at 6am may be contributing to my terrible anxiety. I transitioned to yoga, then more into pilates, which gave me a calm, body-loving environment focused on strength and health. 

A year or two ago, I gave myself a hard maximum of working out five days a week. I typically do 3-4 days but you have to set boundaries with yourself and then follow them. It’s helped me to do something else with my “workout time” like cleaning, going to the pool or walking to get a matcha.

food fear

I had to ditch any dietary restrictions I placed on myself. I’ll always be vegetarian because eating animal flesh is truly concerning to me, but the strictness of anything beyond that is too much to put on myself. My personal recommendation for this would be to find your actual hard no, for me currently it’s eating animals then chill on everything else. The moment I stopped fearing food was the same moment all my ‘intolerances’ seemed to melt away.

body neutrality

You don’t need to be skinny to have friends, you don’t need to be skinny to be good at your job, you don’t need to be skinny to have boys running after you. This is the main thing that helped me flip my mindset around my body. It literally does not matter what you look like. Your body does not affect the person you are, the work you do, or literally anything else. 

Being able to move away from a path like dance where my body was the main focus allowed me to make this shift. Realigning with work that is based on creativity and not the shape of my foot allowed me to spiral about my body much less. 

This is a total practice in mindfulness and will definitely be a lifelong journey, but training my brain to stop negative self thoughts about myself was a major key.

We made it. I’m proud of myself and I hope you are too.