What Freedom Really Looks Like

FREEDOM is truly found when you realize that what your body looks like does not equal your level of health, success, productivity, beauty, sexiness, happiness, your mental health status, or who you are.

Read. It. Again.

We 👏🏻 Are 👏🏻 So 👏🏻 Much 👏🏻 More 👏🏻 I love this photo because it was taken on a day where I truly felt that feeling of freedom.

Oh how I wish I could say I remember having fun at the pool with my friends when I was a teenager. Instead I came up with endless excuses as to why I couldn’t join them.

If only I had known that it wasn’t my body holding me back, it was me.

It’s the end of #NEDAweek, and I really just want to encourage anyone who’s reading this to look into #IntuitiveEating and #HAES.

And to my friends reading this who love their diet plans, wellness culture, or exercising 6 days a week... please remember that EVERYONE has a UNIQUE journey and I’m not shaming you for anything you do. What is unhealthy or triggering for me may not be for you. But it’s so important to me that we talk about the dangers of diet culture and mental health.

Eating disorders have the highest mortality rate of any mental illness, and you can’t tell if someone has a problem based on what their body looks like.

I’m especially passionate about sharing that being in a marginalized body and having an undiagnosed eating disorder is a very very VERY real and common thing. I’ve had several women tell me they tried to get help but their doctor didn’t believe that they had an ED based on their body fat. I’ve also been told I needed to watch my weight by a medical professional, purely based on my BMI - but if she knew I was barely nourishing myself... would her opinion have changed? That is proof in itself that what your body looks like doesn’t depict your health. This is a major problem in the medical field.

@stephdodier taught me that the next time a medical professional tells you to lose weight to fix whatever problem you may have, you need to simply ask them what they’d tell someone in a smaller body. ❤️ #comeasyouare