trigger warning: eating disorders/body dysmorphia/excessive exercise 👉🏼 Several times in my life I have embarked on a “lifestyle change” with the hopes of finally feeling worthy. Each of those times, I’d get more and more addicted to the control I had, so where exercise should have been done for joy, and eating done for nutrition and enjoyment... instead everything was done from a place of hate, disgust, and punishment.
There were times I would exercise 3 hours a day. I’d only eat protein shakes for most of my meals and I’d log EVERYTHING. I’d weigh morning and night, measure every body part daily and keep the measurements at my bedside in a notebook.

No one, including myself, ever thought this was a problem. You see... I naturally live in a larger body. And that means at my most disordered, I still weighed 160 pounds which according to doctors and BMI is an “unhealthy weight.” I got nothing but praise for my willpower and dedication to “get healthy.” I’ve been grieving the things I could have been doing, all of the life I could have been living instead of being so fixated on how many inches my biceps were measuring or how bad certain foods were.

Orthorexia is real. Fatphobia is real. The stigma around weight and health is scary. You can’t judge someone’s health on how they look. Swipe to see me at *one* of my most disordered seasons of life. I thank God for every one of you who introduced me to #intuitiveeating and @stephdodier, it’s helping me heal in every aspect of my life. I still struggle with loving how I look - but I’ve learned that how my body looks doesn’t define me, what I’m worthy of, or how healthy I am. Instead of worrying about nutrition and exercise, right now I’m concentrating on coming to peace with food, movement, and within myself.