More you might like
30 day thinspo challenge
Day 10: What was the hardest thing you gave up during this weight loss?
This is tough because
I don’t really feel like I have given up
Anything?
If anything I feel like I should give up my lazy lifestyle, and actually make a sacrifice to make this happen, but it’s happening pretty naturally on its own.
I eat healthy foods, mostly meat and veggies but still some minimal amounts of bread and pasta, and lotssss of healthy fats. I drink a lot of water and green tea. I skip meals sometimes, but I never feel like I’m going hungry. I guess that’s the meds probably
But I really don’t feel like I have made any big sacrifices. Probably the most helpful thing I gave up was eating tons of sugar, so now my indulgences are more savory than sweet. I don’t eat nearly as much candy, obviously.
I hardly ever eat yogurt, only full fat Greek yogurt as part of another dish I was cooking — that was the first time I had eaten yogurt in like a year. Look at the label on yogurt? Tell me if you think consuming 20-ish grams of sugar in a single sitting from a little container smaller than your fist sounds like a good idea? (Based on a certain brand of Greek yogurt with fruit in the bottom, I realize this is not representative of ~aLLllLlLL~ yogurts)
But seriously, that much sugar? No wonder it tastes amazing, it’s a fucking high for your brain first thing in the morning. How about one of those every day? If you think that amount of sugar is good for you then you’re fucked in the head and you need to read a book. Sugar is killing us. The end. There is a max recommended sugar limit and it is typically reached IF NOT SURPASSED in most sugary drinks, and fucking bullshit fruit-in-the-bottom yogurts.
Aaaand once again, through writing a short essay I have figured out the real answer to the question: the most difficult thing for me to give up was having Greek yogurt — the kind with the fruit in the bottom — for breakfast everyday. But eating that much sugar was seriously fucking up my entire body.
And they lived happily ever after.
I made this to express some of my emotions about this plateau, and my recent binge problem, and the fact that I am seeing my family in less than a week, and I wanted to look super skinny but instead I will look super normal and nobody will say a word to me about my fucking weight loss.
1/7/19
A letter to whoever needs it most:
I’ve written before about how I do not consider myself to have an eating disorder, while acknowledging at the same time that I do have a strained relationship with my weight. When I was in middle school I started dieting for the first time. My best friend and I were convinced that if we got skinny enough, we would immediately get boyfriends — we were 12 years old, lol.
Our idea for how this master plan would work was simple: go on an extreme diet for like a month or whatever, and then reap the rewards of thinness.
There is so much to unpack about this way of thinking. Why? How? What the fuck? Two otherwise bright kids think the best way to change their bodies is to find a socially acceptable way to starve? Or was it because we had internalized that message, and didn’t realize how illogical it was?
Or we were ignoring what we knew about puberty and growing up — you will gain weight, you are becoming an adult woman, it will not be the smoothest ride and society will not give a shit about your discomfort with this process. It’s hard. Your brain is still developing. Your body is growing. Oh and if you starve yourself while all of this is going on, you will permanently damage the only vessel you have available to carry you through life. You wanna live to be 50? Or 90?
Thinking back on that time now, fifteen years later, I can’t believe how easy it was for me to be so stupid. (Yes I am old for tumblr, leave me alone I love it here lol.)
And again, I say I was stupid because I feel like I have so much more clarity about how to take care of my body now, AND I never had and do not currently have an eating disorder. Eating disorders are mental illnesses. You are not stupid or ridiculous or less than if you have one.
What I am talking about is the kid I used to be. She is probably very similar to a lot of teenagers on here now, and that scares me. Because that behavior can get worse, and become a disorder. It can become a coping mechanism. It can tangle itself so deeply into your life that your every thought and action is bound to your disorder. I am lucky that, in spite of my determination to seek thinness at such a young age, I never developed this mental illness. (Don’t worry though, my therapist and I still have my depression and anxiety to talk about lol.)
I am rambling. My question is this: barring the insanity of messages about beauty and thinness that children absorb from society (because I don’t know enough about psychology to tackle all of THAT), what went wrong from an educational standpoint? Why is it that it took me fifteen fucking years to learn how to listen to my body? To learn that exercise is not just something you do if you’re into sports in school, but a necessity AND A JOY? To learn how to COOK a MEAL for MYSELF that is HEALTHY? (And delicious!)
I think a lot of it is that the independence we have in adulthood is usually nonexistent in childhood. I am in charge of my body now — decisions about my activities, or lack thereof, and my food, or lack thereof, are completely up to me.
I wonder though, if somehow I could have been afforded more independence on this front back then, would I have escaped these fifteen years of unhealthy internal dialogue, fad dieting, restricting, and body issues in general? I don’t think I could have escaped them completely; I’m a woman, lol. But I just think about the actual genuine fucking joy I feel now when I get excited to cook something new, or when I am able to move my body and lift heavy shit and just marvel at the wonder of being my wonderful, inimitable self.
I think about this joy and empowerment I feel now, and I wish I could transfer even just a spark of it back to my younger self. Maybe if she had known more about self compassion, and mental illnesses, and nutrition, maybe she would have grown up feeling like she was in control already, as much as any of us can be.
What I’m saying is I want to start a new type of school where it’s basically just cooking class, therapy, creative writing, and art??? And hikes. Lots of hikes. (I think this is what weekends are for? Ugh idk I don’t have any answers, just my own experience.)
Sooooo. If you just read this long ass novel of a post, thank you. And if you are one of the teenagers I described, and you’re on tumblr because you discovered the online ed community and you are caught in a negative thought spiral where thinness seems to be the only answer, and you echo the sentiments of strangers on the internet expressing their very real pain because it echoes your very real pain and you find yourself exclaiming that eating only 500 calories a day is a victory… I was you once.
So pretend I’m you from the future. I’m a beautiful, 27-year-old badass. (27 is not old, it just seems like it when you’re 13 or whatever.) I have a really cool creative job in the city. I have my own apartment, my own house plants, my own furniture. My life is not perfect, but god damn it, it is really, really good. And I’m sending you a sign that it’s going to be okay. You deserve love and friendship, and you do not have to perform a different version of yourself in order to make the world love you.
So research proper nutrition. Eat AT LEAST 2,000 calories per day. But also, learn to listen to your body — maybe you prefer 1,800 calories per day? Maybe you prefer 3,500 plus some weight lifting throughout the week? Buy some weights at Goodwill. Do yoga on YouTube. Research self compassion. Tell your parents you’ve noticed your internal dialogue is very negative, and you’d be interested in finding a therapist for a while to see if they can help you build some tools to keep you feeling centered and positive about your life. Therapy costs me $40 per week. It’s worth every penny.
Seek love and long term strength in your spirit. Future you will be so fucking stoked if you do.
🧡
So many people do this but seriously my dash is so dead and I need more people to follow. So if you:
- are 18 or over
- post thinspo and/or bodychecks
- have an eating disorder or struggle with food
- are active on your blog and have a queue running when you’re not active
- don’t post/reblog meanspo
- don’t post/reblog pics of extremely underweight people
Please reblog or like this and I’ll check out your blog! (You don’t have to fulfill all of them but nr. 1, 2, 5 and 6 are important to me. I’ll check your blog anyway :))
All of the above 👋🧡
i hope all my badasses trying to recover from an eating disorder enjoyed some yummy, satisfying and nutritious food today. i’m proud of you and even if you didn’t, tomorrow is another day to try again. i believe in you!
reblog if you’re a safe place for:
- lesbian
- gay
- bisexual
- transgender
- queer
- pansexual
- demisexual
- ace
- hopeless romantics
- cis-men
- cis-women
- non binary folks
- the whole spectrum etc…
follow everyone who reblogs ;)