eating – The Nourishment Ninja

Growth: The Uncomfortable Comfortable

If I asked you to walk home in the rain, how would you respond? Would you tell me to open my eyes; it’s raining, duh? Or maybe you might feed us both an excuse that you don’t have your umbrella and it’ll ruin your hair? What if I told you that sometimes taking the uncomfortable option can help you grow? Now I know you’re not a thirsty plant, but hear me out! Getting comfortable with being uncomfortable is essential for developing resilience, a “Fuck It” attitude and for finding out what you are really made of. Most of the time, these uncomfortable situations that we frantically avoid aren’t all that bad, such as walking home in the rain. Sometimes they may even be a source of joy, imagine that! Walking home in the piss wet rain could be a highlight of your day? Maybe you think I’m full of shit. Maybe I am, but let’s ignore that for a moment because there is one person who we owe it to to do the things that make us feel uncomfortable – and that is ourselves.

Every day I see people that inspire me to push myself, whether it’s that they have something that I want *ahem a Marathon Majors 6-Star Medal cough* or they’re holding the first copies of their newly published book – I’m jealous, so shoot me! I just want to smell crisp new pages covered in my words! What lies between where I am now, and where I want to be is very simple and very painful: a whole lotta growth.

Make yourself do unpleasant things so as to gain the upper hand of your soul – W.E.B. Du Bois

This is where owing it to yourself to get comfortable being uncomfortable comes into its own. Do you remember any of your teenaged growth spurts? Those HURT! Growth is uncomfortable, and of course, it takes effort to grow, relentlessly unforgiving and continuous effort. You owe it to yourself to challenge yourself and get comfortable being uncomfortable. By becoming comfortable with discomfort we learn how much we can push ourselves, we realize and learn our limits, and that our resilience reaches beyond our own imaginations.

The option to stay exactly where we are is always there. When we have had enough we can always stop and decide if we like it just as it is. Maybe you do, or maybe it’s just easier to stop, for a long time self-harming was more comfortable than facing the rawness of my psychology and mind, learning to eat was more uncomfortable than starving myself and there came a point when being unwell becomes more comfortable than undertaking the journey to becoming well because being unwell was all I knew- I soon learned that growth happens in the most treacherous and uncomfortable of waters, as the adage and many a meme go. It’s true. That shit is scary and itchy ants-in-your-pants uncomfortable. The best teacher and arena I have found in persevering through discomfort has been exercising, without it, I doubt I would have recovered as much as I have.

Sometimes when you’re covering a large distance in one go, hi there marathon, or hiking and climbing up a mountainside (Tryffan, we have unfinished business), it is uncomfortable. It is hard. In each task, by putting one foot in front of another, a very simple yet vastly symbolic act, the finish goal will eventually appear. In continuing to show up for yourself through the challenge and continuing to push on through the burning quads, aching knees, jarring concrete and absolute monotony that can be associated with covering distance, you get there and all of a sudden the intense and immense gratitude, pride, sense of accomplishment that you feel makes it all completely 100% worth it. You don’t forget the pain, this isn’t childbirth, it just all becomes worth it.

So taking this ideology into a bigger playing field is the next step, and they don’t always have to be huge strides of progress that are acquired during an activity for it to be worth it, next time it’s raining, which if you’re in London is probably tomorrow lets be honest, walk for a bit in the rain even though you don’t want to go out in it. Go for that walk in the cold. Take your shoes off, feel the ground and the cold iciness of a wintery puddle submerge your toes. Practice different types of discomfort, physical, emotional, mental: turn the heating down to below comfortable for a day, have a cold shower, go for a run up a hill. This is the reality. Life isn’t always sweet, it’s mostly pretty grim. In practise, you empower yourself to manage situations when you lack control over a situation. Sit in the overwhelm and when exposing yourself to uncomfortable situations, go ahead and nurture yourself as well. Self-soothe yourself through the discomfort, learn how to do this for yourself. Figure out whether it’s a mantra that you repeat in your head, a texture that you feel, a particular way of fidgeting your fingers that is soothing. This is great practice for self-soothing in situations that are uncomfortable where you have no control over being able to escape them, i.e. depression, anxiety, that presentation in front of your colleagues, public speaking, a race, a challenge, commuting on an overpacked tube at rush hour. It doesn’t mean you always succeed, just that you will succeed more than when you couldn’t tolerate any discomfort.

No Shame! Freezer Food Meals Can Be Healthy Too

I love my freezer. We have had them available for our homes for just over 100 years and believe me when I tell you, they. are. a. game. changer. It stores ice cream perfectly for when you can’t eat your Ben and Jerrys in one go, it turns water into ice so iced coffee at home can be a thing and it stores many meals in conveniently for when I really cannot be fucked to cook. Let me hear a Hell Yeah! from anyone else who is also feeling the freezer love right now!

There are many misconceptions about eating healthily that permeates our culture and attitude towards “healthy eating” and eating well, some of which are based upon a smidge of reality, such as eating a varied and balanced diet costs more money than a less varied and balanced diet. Then there’s the downright ludicrous like detoxing, and that you must pay for the privilege of powders and packets to do said detoxing of those treacherous toxins, and that gluten free is a healthier option for non-coeliacs, and that convenience food is always super unhealthy. Well that’s bullshit.

The thing is, eating well doesn’t have to mean getting overpriced foods from Whole Foods; you don’t even have to step foot into the wonderful world of wankers that most Whole Foods¹ stores are, and don’t even get me started on Waitrose. In fact, a lot of foods marketed as “healthy” or “good for you” that are trendy aren’t much more nourishing than the normal foods we are used to that form our staple stock shops from your local Sainsbury’s, Aldi and Lidl; a matcha² donut is still a donut and vegan ice cream is still full of additives, preservatives and similarly “unwhole” ingredients chastised for being in non-vegan “junk foods” and a pastry is a still a pastry even if it’s dusted with the finest powder of super food extract and cost £6.50. Gregg’s do a banging donut for £1 by the way.

It’s perfectly fine to sometimes rely on ready meals and frozen foods, such as fish fingers, frozen veg and something of a potatoey goodness. Convenience cooking is OK and nothing to be shunned at via food snobbery; sometimes you’re tired, sometimes you just want something easy and quick³. Sometimes convenience is the only option because work is annoying, winter is winning and you’re experiencing a dwindling will to live that only a TV binge can fix. I’m being dramatic, we’re not all depressed (or are we?) but some evenings really feel that way after a long day. That’s where the freezer comes in, as if by some miracle of the modern day the freezer and the world of freezer foods, ready meals and pop in the microwave *ding* technology really comes into it’s own because despite your melancholy mojo a slice of toast, or ten just won’t do.

There is now a great variety of healthy ranges in the freezer and ready meal sections of the supermarket. If you’re uncertain look out for the traffic light system available on most ready meals and supermarket products. The more green labels the better, some orange is dandy and a little red is fine, it doesn’t connote devil food after all! Personally I love fish fingers and sweet potato oven chips for dinner.

N.B.
1. Although admittedly, Whole Foods is the Hamleys of supermarkets and I do love it!
2. I’m so glad the matcha trend has fizzled out 🤮🤮🤮
3. I’m talking about food, not a shag.

What’s Wrong With WW Kurbo’s Approach to Childhood Obesity?

Weight Watchers, who are now rebranded as WW, Wellness that Works have launched a new app under this new branding for children as young as eight… as Young. As. Eight. It’s marketed as a potential solution to the childhood obesity crisis in America. However, a lot, and by a lot I mean, basically everyone who is an eating disorder advocate has lashed out online about the Kurbo App.

America is not the only country where childhood obesity and associated lifestyle diseases are high on the public health agenda. In the UK we have a Childhood Obesity Plan which has been associated with sugar reduction campaigns. With childhood obesity so highly on the public health agenda in the UK and USA. In the last decade, obesity amongst infant school aged children has dropped, whereas for year six children, obesity has risen. There is also a very strong correlation with social deprivation and obesity, which seems like it should be the other way around, that having more would mean you eat more. It isn’t, and so beyond calorie counting, we have to take into account social status and level of deprivation. Childhood obesity is a social class disparity – which will not be addressed solely by calorie counting on apps.

Source: https://digital.nhs.uk/

I would be curious to see if there is a similar chart to represent diagnosed eating disorder prevalence across social deprivation status’. Does it really mean that children are healthier just because they are not obese? Are there more underweight children in either end of the spectrum? Are there more mental health problems and what kind? Are there accessible facilities for exercising in the community? Where I live in SOuth London you pay £5 to access the tennis courts. This seems perfectly reasonable to those who an afford it, but what about all the children living in poverty in the area? Whereas in Surrey where social deprivation is not so much of an issue, the tennis courts in the park are free to use for everyone. As you can see, the picture is not so straight forward as calories alone.

Children being incredibly overweight, to such an extent that their quality of health and life are negatively impacted is a problem. I will not sit here and pretend that it is normal or healthy for a child to be unable to play and run around with their friends. It is not normal or healthy for a child to be limited by their body, or to be in pain when they try to play catch with their mates, and it’s not fair either. By over feeding our children, we are neglecting their holistic needs, and depriving them of a lot of what childhood has to offer for the ease of not managing their diet appropriately. Now I’m no sugar police, have some cake, have an ice lolly, heck, eat ice cream in the rain if you want to – a little bit of sugar here and there, and a child’s natural propensity to be drawn towards super sugary sweet foods is not the issue. It is the abundance in which these foods become a dietary staple, and in depriving children of attention and freedom to be kids in the streets safely (looking at you gang culture!!), we limit their potential coping mechanisms and potential social development. It is much more complex than diet alone. It is much more complex than calories in and calories out – although this is a suitably reductionist prophecy to sell to the general public because in being so reductionist it is also very easy to explain and sell.

As adults we have no right to deny children of the childhood freedoms of running around with their mates playing catch and relevance 40-40 in for days on end. As adults we have no right to either to instill pathological dieting practices into the young and impressionable under the guise of “this is for our health”. It’s not. Let’s not pretend for one moment that WW Kurbo app is for one minute about healthy relationships with food. In the same breath, we need to stop reducing the idea of health down to a BMI chart number, which is incredibly outdated now. Placing utmost importance on the weight of a child will mean that in a child’s mind, the idea of health can be measured easily and singularly in one arbitrary measure, the number on the scales. A very accessible number with which an obsession can easily be built. A very unreliable number with which our sole judgement of health should not be placed upon. What about getting their blood pressure down, and their glucose sensitivity up? What about a way to do this that doesn’t mean scanning every food and counting calories because equating losing weight with success very quickly equates not losing weight with failure. Why would we put such a bullshit task that’s easy to fail at the definition of daily failure for young children.

A child does not need to count calories to be healthy. Kurbo is a reductionist approach to nutrition that undermines the complexity and importance of a varied diet to support the very varied systems inside our bodies upon which our lives rely. Weight is not everything, if it is to be very much at all. A quick anecdote from a children’s weight management programme I worked with: His mum was using it as child care during the easter break and he qualified via BMI. He had an overweight BMI. He played sports, enjoyed sports and was a picture of health for a young boy with a tall athletic build. He was fast and very competent beyond his years in sports, and our nutritionist was quite stunned that he met the admission criteria for the programme. The admission was based solely on BMI and waist measurement. His waist measurement was not “concerning”, just his weight according to our guidelines. Neither his weight nor waist circumference were “concerning” in the slightest. Two words: MUSCLE. MASS. He shouldn’t have been on this particular programme and learning to eat less food, although I can entirely understand why his mum took the opportunity for free childcare during the Easter break.

The solution is not simple or straight forward. An app in principle is perhaps not the worst idea for a health tool, but basing results and goals on weight numbers is plain lazy. Reducing health to calories in vs calories out though, and encouraging children to count calories is dumb at best, and downright fucking dangerous at worst.

What Respecting Your Body Might Look Like

What does it mean to respect our bodies? If you follow me on Instagram, then you may be painfully aware that I’ve developed infection action a week before Ride 100. In the end, I realised the right thing to do for my self and my body, was to defer until 2020 and this got me thinking about what it means to respect our bodies.

So often you see and hear of people who have injuries yet persevere without any let up on their bodies, in order to achieve the goals they set for themselves. The thing is, the more broken your body becomes the less able you will be able to achieve those goals and challenges that your heart is so very set upon. Resting and not exercising can be pretty rough when you’re used to being active and you enjoy being active, but in the long run, treating your body well and knowing when to rest, knowing when to take it easy, and when to not push on through with brute determination can be just as important as being able to commit to any form of training plan at all.

How we relate to and treat our bodies really affects our performance and ability to achieve. Instagram is littered with stories of injuries, permanently damaged ligaments and sad stories of people who fell in love with running until it destroyed a part of their body, usually in the lower limbs. It’s great that the love of running has become a popular love to have, but overdoing it only shoots yourself in the foot; rest, as uncool as it may be on Instagram, is essential. So back to the original query, what could respecting your body actually look like? Here’s a list of what I personally consider to be essential components in treating your body with the respect it deserves.

1. Listening
You know when you have a plan but your body aches with tiredness? Or when you feel so hungry after increasing your training load, and it goes against your planned intake? This could be an ideal time to practice listening to your body. Sometimes you need to eat more, and at other times you need more rest. It’s very easy to schedule plans without forethought to how your body might respond, or need. Just remember, our bodies are not computers or robots that can be mathematically figured out in an absolute formula. Sure there a formulas in nutritional science for guidance, but these are really for guidance only – so treat them as such!

2. Nourishing
Sometimes when you’re training you may have a dietary plan that you’re following. Maybe you are trying to gain muscle, or lose fat mass for your sport. There’s nothing wrong with that. Nourishing your body looks like choosing a varied diet, plenty of fruit and veg, some good quality protein and plenty of carbohydrates. Yes, carbs! We need carbs and the occasional treat. Don’t forget to have your cake and eat it!

3. Resting your body
You may have heard before that when you’re training for a marathon, ideally you need closer to 10 hours of sleep than the original 7-8 recomended in The Sleep Foundation guidelines. Sometimes you’ll be feeling fine on less sleep, and sometimes you will need more. If you’re feeling sluggish and a bit out of it, maybe it’s time to hit the sack for a nap ,or even better, an early night?

4. No Pain, No Gain? Within reason
Sport doesn’t come without its risks of injury and a good session lifting weights can leave you sore for days with DOMS. However, there is a difference between DOMS and an agonising cramp in your Achilles. A lot of people push through and persevere despite their bodies telling them to stop and attend to a niggle or injury. It isn’t heroic to persevere through your pain at the expense of your body. So when you’re calf is giving you grief, or your knee feels a bit knackered, instead of seeing it as something to push through, how about seeing it as an opportunity to care for your body and show yourself some love?

5. Showing some appreciation
Without our bodies we wouldn’t be able to do anything. We wouldn’t be able to run, play our A-game on the pitch, or travel easily from A to B. Our bodies fight infections and repel illnesses, they make babies from two cells, and they maintain a very delicate and complicated balance within our bodies called homeostasis. If we had to think about all of the mechanisms that our body does to maintain this balance, we’d not have much time for anything else.

6. Trusting our bodies
By not undermining your bodies’ ability to do what it needs to in order to stay well, as is assumed when going on a detox diet or cleanse we allow our bodies to get on with what they’re designed to do. Sometimes things go wrong and eventually we all die, but in the meantime, put faith in your kidneys and liver, because detoxing sends you the message to yourself that your body isn’t capable or adequate enough already, and usually it is.

7. Wearing clothes that fit
Feeling comfortable in your clothes, instead of trying to fit into a specific size can make a real difference in how fat you feel, from anecdotal experience. Anyone wearing clothes 1-2 sizes too small is going to feel out of sorts, lumpy and frumpy here, and spilling out of your clothes there. Just wear whatever fits irrespective of the clothing size label. To put this in perspective I have clothes from a 10 (apparently), up to a 14. I’m more a solid 14. This means I don’t look at or buy clothes in a 10-12 anymore, and I have passed all of these sizes in my wardrobe onto the charity shop. As soon as I stopped trying to squeeze into these sizes, or trying to lose weight so I could fit into them again, I started to feel more comfortable and at ease with my body.

8. Tend to your illnesses
Getting the right help and treatment if you are unwell is a great way of showing your body some love. Sometimes they can’t fight illness on its own, and a little help is needed. Maybe this is via using antibiotics for a nasty infection, such as the one that inspired this post, or taking antidepressants to manage a depressive episode. This might mean visiting the pharmacist, who are very highly trained medical professionals in their own right, or your GP. Don’t try to muscle through without advice or try to outdo an infection if it gets ya; modern medicine is wonderful at helping us to overcome such ailments as they arise.

Beat: The UK’s Charity Antidote to Wellness Wankery and Eating Disorders

If you are worried about your relationship with food, who do you turn to? Your mates? Your GP? Or maybe you might turn to many of the numerous blogs, instagram pages and podcasts out there #wellness? Turning to influencers to make sense, I mean afterall, they’re flawless skin, pert tits, perky bum and six pack is the picture of health, right? Surely they must know what they’re talking about when it comes to wellness, diet, and exercise, or maybe not; influencers and #wellness are in a very committed marriage with diet culture. They’re like the grandparents who have been married since forever #adorbs. This marriage though is #toxic needs to get a divorce, but there doesn’t seem to be one on the horizon *sad face*. Wellness industries and diet culture are like salt and pepper to your scrambled eggs, left and right to your Sat Nav and milk and sugar to your coffee.

A recent study by Christina Sabbagh looked into the validity, accuracy and evidenced based quality of weight management and nutrition of nine influencers, defined as having in excess of 80,000 followers on at least one social media platform. By assessing each blog against twelve criteria, including evidence based information, the use of reliable sources, and clearly stating the difference between opinion and fact, only one passed each criteria – and they are a UK registered nutritionist who is degree qualified. Nine is a small smaple size, but the strength of the results cannot be ignored: there seems to be a clear trend. Especially with many of the influencers having had no accredited training or education in the advice they are pushing on their sites. [More info here]

A lot of influencers post before and after wellness photos. Before they were skinny and weak and barely eating coupled with pubishing exercise regimes that proved detrimental to their health. So are the influencers really as #healthy, #wellness, #blessed as they seem? Maybe, but most likely not. Are they really the place to turn to if you have concerns about your own relationship with food? Perhaps you’ve been bingeing in the evening, or skipping breakfast to shed some pounds and the result is that now you are in a somehwat chaotic place with your relationship with food. I don’t have the answers and I’m not going to pretend I do, else I would be falling into the wellness wanker world, no, I’m going to tell you about Beat – a wonderful UK based charity that I have been volunteering for.

Beat is the UK’s leading eating disorder charity. They provide information and services for people experiencing eating disorders, or who may be concerned about their relationship with food – I’m looking at you, the chaotic eaters who feel lost and overwhelmed with food, the fearful who are scared and anxious about eating, and the compulsive overeater who sweats hours in spin class just to try and burn it off. Beat have a lot of helpful information on their website, which can be found here.

What do Beat offer?

A phone line that you can call for advice
Information
Online 1-to-1 chats with a trained advisor (that’s me), like MSN messenger
Online group peer support sessions – also facilitated and moderated by trained advisors (Hi again, also me)
An email service that people use for seeking help and advice for themselves, loved ones and/or in general. (Me again)(This list is starting to look like it’s all about me, ha!)
A service finder application that you can use to find other eating disorder support services in your area using your post code.

So why did I choose to volunteer with Beat? Beat was the first website I was signposted to when I first opened up about my struggles with eating to a teacher way back in 2006. At the time was called EDAUK (Eatign Disorders Association UK): yup, it was that long ago and it was pretty basic. The most useful websites were all American (they get the best of everythign I swear). At the time I was obsessively surfing online between information sites, and other sites where people with eating disorders congregated online at the time (more on that another time). With the majority of sites being USA specific and although they had a lot of information that was useful about eating disorders in general, the support at the time was quite basic and non-interactive.

Sometimes I imagine how useful it would have been to have these online services when I was struggling back then, and as I became increasibly isolated by my bulimia, if I had had somewhere to chat in a safe space about what I was experiencing. Pro-ana sites mainly gave me a space to feel less alone – it would have been nice to have a healthy version as an alternative option; eating disorders are incredibly isolating experiences, particulalry when you have bulimia because a) it takes up a lot of time and b) there is a lot of shame around it when compared to the glorification of anorexia. It is that bit more shameful, that bit infinitely more disgusting and that bit more time consuming, mentally and physically.

So if you’re struggling with any eating difficulties, whether you have an eating disorder diagnosis or not, get in touch with Beat. They offer a good variety of services, and they are all confidential. Finally, if you think you might like to also become a Digital Volunteer, more information can be found here.

Why Loving Your Reflection is Just Another Unrealistic Expectation

At face value the body positivity movement may seem like the perfect antidote to unrealistic body goals, the continuous merry-go-round of dieting and the perpetuation of thin ideals from the fashion, media, fitness, retail, and industry that uses models and their bodies to promote products and ideologies. The incessant nature is that although these images, which are often digitally manipualted, don’t cause eating disorders or disordered eating, they can instill unrealistic ideals upon which to focus on, whether you are male, female, trans, and not even preidpsosed to eating disordered behaviours. The vast majority of us don’t fit the eating disorder category, and I would argue that a lot of dieting practices that are normalised in magazines and on wellness websites are dancing on the very thin line between normal dieting behaviours and disordered eating behaviours.

Body positivity on social media has come in all shapes and sizes. Some people promote the message by getting into their underwear and shaking their bellies in front of the camera, all in a bid to help you feel better about your own belly. Some people spread the message by telling you that you are fabulous and perfect just the way you are. There’s a lot of work going into challenging societally ingrained fat phobia, which is great, however sometimes I can’t help but think that the message gets a little lost and mixed up at times.

There is a common misunderstanding that if you have ever had any body hang ups, which is going to be pretty much all of us, that learning to love yourself and your body is the perfect antidote. A key tool used in hating our bodies, our reflections, is a major focus in learning to love our bodies – or so you could be forgiven for thinking. What if you have spent years and years of your life thinking of yourself as actually abhorrent? What if you have hated yourself to the point where you have hurt yourself in some way to try and fix “it”, whatever “it” might be? This could be in the shape of a number of different ways: binge eating, purging, exercising as a form of punishment, skipping meals, fasting behaviours, self harm. This is by no means an exhaustive list.

The pressure to love your body is a tall order for anyone who has struggled with their body image. How about we turned learning to love yourself on its head? What if learning to love ourselves happened by not focusing on turning the tyranny of your relationship with your own reflection 180 degrees on its heel is not the best focus. Another idea that offers an antidote to body bashing it a hashtag circulating the realms of social media: #BodyNeutrality. Body neutrality removes the pressure of having to love your body to have achieved success in not hating yourself. It means instead that accepting your body and being relatively neutral about your body image instead of trying to love what you previously thought to be unlovable. It is less extreme, less demanding and in being as such, more realistic. The pressure to always be happy and smiley about yourself is removed, but so is the need to berate yourself unfairly. The pretence of loving your belly has been removed, so if you are having an off day you need not feel like a failure for wishing your belly would just shrink. Instead body neutrality means accepting the thought, and not letting yourself be mad enough to diet over it. It offers us a middle path in a world of extremes. I think this is in fact much more empowering and I’ll tell you why.

Body neutrality means not hating your body or parts of it. It means that off days when you do momentarily hate your self are ok, and instead of havign to U-turn that entirely, into loving yourself, you can instead be neutral. You don’t love your body, but you don’t hate it either. It is very much the mundane and very boring mid-ground of body image, that is in fact potentially much more empowering. You are no longer focusing on your reflaction, or how well you take a photograph from this angle vs that angle. In fact, the mirror plays such a minor role in your day to day value of yourself that you have so much more free headspace for embracing life beyond your body, your image and your looks. Think about it. If you are no longer so hooked up on trying to turn your reflected self hate into self love, the absolute antithesis to what you know, you instead have loads of energy to instead focus on life beyond the skin you’re in, you can hit a middle ground which is in fact much more conducive to living your life away from your looks, and with all of this free energy and head space think of all the burgeoning possibilities that await you: climbing a mountain, planning trips away in nature, learning s new skill or a language, swimming in some wild waters, and baking some beautiful cakes from your grandmother’s recipe and eating them!

Go and laugh until your belly hurts, then roll on the floor clutching your middle and laugh some more. Go and challenge yourself in a way that exercises your mind and character and therefore giving you some brilliant stories to tell for years to come. Laugh at yourself when you fall over, pull a goofy face and let people learn to love you for who you are: your quirks, your mannerisms, your little weirdo ways because really, focusing on our reflections remains a narrow view of the world, of our lives and of our worth, whether we are singing our praises or chastising our very existence.

Be brave. Cover your mirror up and see how you feel only using your reflection to check you’ve not got toothpaste all over your face before leaving the house. Be brave. The greatest empowerment is to free yourself from the suffoctaing restrictions of being hyper-concerned about things you cannot and can change, but maybe your efforts are best placed elsewhere. Of course take pride in your appearance if it makes you happy to wear some make up – but don’t let it define you or how you see yourself. Our bodies are merely a vehicle through which we live, and it is the most dull thing about us as people, and eventually, if you have the privilige of reaching old age, looks fade and bodies change – would you rather be the one who was a stunner when they were younger with nothing more to offer? Or the one with banging stories of adventures, mishaps and hilarity calamity renditions of a life lived beyond the mirror, a life lived not enslaved to learning to love a reflection.

Orthorexia is the New Anorexia, and It’s Not Cool

Social Media is bursting with #BodyPositivity #LoveYourself and #ICanSoYouCan to messages seemingly aimed at the average health conscious woman. At face value it seems like a pretty brilliant and groundbreaking trend that’s taking over. People are going to fitness events more, we are health conscious now thanks to a decade of public health campaigning.

Dig a little deeper and there’s another layer to this trend. People who have recovered from eating disorders posting transformation pictures from then and now. They’ve usually managed a level of good weight restoration – which is great. They often claim psychological healing from the eating disorder too, and who wouldn’t believe that when someone has restored and maintained their weight? That is what eating disorders are all about right? Weight. No, nope, nada, that statement couldn’t be any more wrong. Eating disorders are a psychological illness and mending the mind takes much longer than weight restoration.

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Especially when those same people are posting comparison shop of body shape and muscle with their weight displayed in numbers on each picture to prove that you can be smaller and leaner at a higher gravitational mass. The point seems to prove that weight loss doesn’t always count for stronger and weight gain can mean a leaner body. I don’t know when it was discovered hat muscle is more mass dense than fat. I think it was a long time ago. The proportionate representation of a Kg of each next to each other send this message home enough. I don’t know about you but I don’t need six packs and weight numbers emblazoned across two pictures to show me as well.

Back to the #BoPo trend, why am I sceptical of the complete recovery claims and love yourself campaigns by some influencers? Because the same woman pushing these messages of self-love seems to have migrated from one way of obsession over her body and food to another. I know, it sounds hypocritical considering my ED past and that I’m now studying nutrition, but hear me out on this.

I’ll be frank, seeing your perfectly lean body, with no cellulite or wobble with a six-pack and long blonde hair (Why are so many successful influencers white and blonde?) does not encourage me to feel all #bopo about myself. The lack of diversity amongst the influencers is a whole other matter but in this instance I think what has really occurred is a shift from one beauty ideal to another in the last decade. This woman has successfully transitioned with the trends, from skeletal to sculpted. I further this stance by pointing out the body positive and self love messages still all revolve around “I love what I see in the mirror” or how they look clothed, barely clothed and basically it all revolves around reflections. Self love isn’t found in your reflection, it is deeper than that. Imagine a couple who are shit hot, heck, I hear this is what Love Island is about – what happens when they irritate each other or age, or sag – will they still be in love if it’s all based on a skin deep love? Anyone will tell you these kinds of relationships are shallow and won’t last at the very least.

Going back to the body trends. In the 90s we had heroin chic, then that was deemed too dark so we transitioned to 2006 with Nicole Richie, Paris Hilton, Lindsay Lohan, Mary-Kate Olsen who could be summed up at the time as bones, bones and more bones. They were idolised as the beauty ideal, put on a perfection pedestal that translated to being as skeletal as possible without being sectioned or dying because then you kind of lose by default. Thinspo became a thing, and sometimes the ones who did die from their eating disorder were further idolised by many as being the ultimate goal. These people were as unwell as it sounds. Many were genuinely unwell, how do I know? I was one of them. However, the mass media (this is pre-social media boom) perpetuated these images, this ideal and humiliated any celebrities who had cellulite by blowing the picture up in their magazines and encircling said fault with a fat red circle.

We’ve moved on from that. Its been 10 years after all. However, the retaliative movement was health and fitness: strong is the new skinny, suns out guns out and all that jazz. It’s not all bad, but there is a dark under layer of migration of pathology with food, body image and exercise emerging in the surfaces of popular media, magazines (ahem, Women’s Health) and social media platforms (Oh Hai Insta!). During the process super foods became a thing thanks to clever marketing and buzz words. Paleo, veganism and the ultimate heathen of ‘healthy living’ that we all utter under our breath as if he who should not be named, clean eating. We bought it. We buy it every time and in a capitalist society why are some people pushing these ideas? Obviously, there is dollar in health. There always has been and always will be. Each trend earns some people big bucks.

Most of them have a singular continuous trend threading throughout them since the thinspo days of 2006: restriction. Each fad is a new way to restrict the diet, introduce vast numbers of rules around eating and achieve beauty ideals. Except in 2006 we knew being so thin meant an anorexia/eating disorder epidemic, not the trends and trend setters are more sinister; they’re disguising their restrictive eating and compulsive relationships with exercise and their reflection as health. We’re buying into it, they’re getting paid for it. the difference since 2006 here is that making money from social media didn’t really exist then. If it did I think a lot of people would have made a living from being anorexic and online; just like hoards of people are now for being orthorexic or an over-exerciser. We are paying them for their compulsions, and they are lying to us and more importantly, themselves. Evidently, I have a massive problem with this.

To all the body positivity social media gurus with six packs, steel thighs and a built derrieré from going to the gym more times than I blink in a week, I’m calling you out and I’m hoping that more people see through the rose-tinted veil of beauty you show to us. Orthorexia is the new anorexia, and it’s not cool.