Hey Laura,
I’m slowly coming to the realisation that I have been battling an eating disorder for a long time now. After taking the time to look at my thinking I have realised that so much of it was about food, like obsessively.
My thinking has been incredibly negative, harsh and strict about food, to the point that there was little space for anything else! I’m actually a really healthy person. I like to eat good home cooked food as much as I can but I couldn’t understand why I wasn’t feeling or looking healthier. I see now that it has a lot to do with my thinking around food. I’d have a piece of chocolate, a sushi roll with soy or a piece of cake and I would instantly decide that this had ‘made me look old’ or ‘made my wrinkles worse’ or ‘everyone Is looking at my fat tummy’.
I was wondering if you could suggest some positive and helpful thinking that I can practice while I try and get through this stage please?
Here are some I have been trying:
My body is 100% happy and healthy
The food I choose to eat fuels my body
There are no rules, food can be fun
My body can take what it needs from the food I eat and release anything that doesn’t serve it
Look forward to hearing your thoughts xx
My friend you are not alone and you can heal from this.
I know this pain all too well.
I often think, imagine what women could create in this life if we didn’t obsess about our bodies and food 99% of the time? So much!
This is an issue that so many of you experience and not only has your thinking, obsessing and restricting become a habit, I think for many of us the habit began decades before we were even born in our mothers, grandmother and other women in our families.
Because this thinking is so ingrained in some of us it takes time and work to learn a new way of thinking.
Please do the daily reflection and intention workbooks and every day empty out your mind of all the thoughts you had around food.
Write down how you thought, how it made you feel and how you responded – see how your thinking is causing you to act in certian ways – restricting, shaming on yourself etc.
Then actually write out how you could have thought differently.
Consider a different thought you could have had that would have been more neutral or less painful to you.
This must be a thought that is just as believable.
You say you have been trying these new thoughts.
Do you believe them?
You cant just think oh this is so healthy about chocolate cake if you dont believe it – it will never work.
I have a body and I love it.
I care for my body and nourish it with food, movement and light.
I am learning how to think more compassionately about myself
I am doing the best I can and am learning how to do better
I deserve better
My body is long, lean and healthy
Some of these have worked well for me.
This is important.
This process.
See how you think.
Go back and reframe your thinking.
Daily.
Slowly you will find that you will start to catch yourself and be able to reframe in the moment.
Then you will find yourself thinking in a whole new way.
But this takes time and commitment.
Even today if I am not intentional the dark thinking can re-appear. That mind of ours really is a toddlers with a knife 🙂
For women I think we are working against 100s of years of thinking, marketing, messages and attitudes that tel us we are a number on the scales, our value is in how we look, what we weigh…this work is warrior work my friend.
And it is worth it.
You have to be willing to do this if you want to be free from this darkness.
Please post back here when you need.
You have got this.
This thinking can stop with you.
This thinking can stop with you and me and all the women out there who have and enough of the self-hate and are not going to pass this onto the younger women in our lives.
You have got this and I am right here with you.
Xxx L