Expand.
Virginia in a printed jumpsuit with her hands down and looking up to the forest of maples and pine trees above and around her.
This blog post discusses eating disorders and trauma and the increase in collective culture around the pursuit of thinness. Please take care of yourself as you move through it. In it, I (Virginia) discuss some of my own story and history.
Realizing I had an eating disorder came in waves. Really, in the height of my orthorexia, I thought I was the healthiest I’d ever been and people around me considered me “a very healthy person.” I was of course praised for this, and alongside the attention and access I got because I was in a thin body, which my eating disorder maintained, was all really helpful for my ego. Which, when you have the underlying issue of intense self hatred, can be beneficial. These were some of the ways the eating disorder helped me to cope.
So I wasn’t able to really name it as such until I was out of it a little bit. And I wasn’t thin enough for a healthcare provider to raise the dissonance for me, they were either really ingraining my eating disorder or cheering it on, as they made food related suggestion after food related suggestion to deal with pain and dysfunction that now I’ve either recovered from or have vastly improved (and some have not).
Looking back from right now, I see my eating disorder as a last ditch attempt, and a very wise and logical one, to manage all my unrecognized and far from resolved symptoms of CPTSD. It also served as a mask for my undiagnosed / unrecognized neurodivergence.
As I’m sitting on this side of my eating disorder and as I write this I’m considering how right now, I’m probably the healthiest I’ve ever been. I measure that in how much I laugh each day, like really (not fake laughing or laughing used to erase awkward silences), how much support I have in my life that helps me to facilitate taking care of my body in the ways that it needs (medications, supplements, hygiene and care, regular satisfying yummy and varied food, regular safe satisfying varied and engaging movement), water (in me, around me, in front of me), my community, how much I’m engaging in things I love, how much I’m stretching myself through discomfort, how my mental health is, how many cat snuggles I get regularly, and how I’m taking care of myself and my mental health through perimenopause (which is still really hard TBH but instead of blaming and judging myself I try to take care of myself). This is what my definition of health is feeling like right now and right now it feels more solid than it has ever been, because of my recovery, outside circumstances, and the access and determination I’ve had to heal deeply. Do I still have health “concerns”? Yes. But to me, health is not the absence of pain or dysfunction or suffering. Because me striving for the absence of those things was the most potent distraction of my life, distracting me from what really matters and at a certain point caused more pain then relief.
When I think of my work through the lens of being an eating disorder dietitian (who got her undergraduate degree in sociology), I know that when we think about eating disorders as an individual issue that is misinformed. Eating disorders have a strong cultural component, and we know that in a world where thinness was not prized, prioritized (at drastic costs), moralized as superior and worthy, and that if people of all sizes had access to representations of bodies like theirs in media and advertising, comfortable and safe seating, clothing that felt good to them, safety from harassment, bullying, and stigma- that we would have far fewer cases of eating disorders (or any?). Healing from an eating disorder is an individual journey but if the collective were not so disordered then it would be much much much more accessible and possible for many more people.
The mind f**k of all this work is that recovery in this collective culture, which is increasingly prioritizing shrinking in new and ugly ways and still equating that with “health” in ways that are increasingly dystopian, is that when we say “no” to that, when we decouple health and thinness and then health and morality, we are faced with the anti-fatness and ableism and health morality (&classism, racism, etc) that is so deeply embedded that people see our healing work as a problem, both because it goes against the culturally accepted narrative AND because it causes dissonance and the discomfort that may bring.
Even though it was so painful and difficult, truly brutal at times, I would choose my recovery again and again and again. Because when I look at my life around me now, I know it’s mine and not a script I was asked to follow and one that offered the false promise of safety (at the risk of a muted life). I know that I chose what I have from a place of self trust, self compassion, and self respect. It’s hard to find these places when we are distracted and hungry and unsatisfied and still looking to solidify our worth from the outside in. There’s no tidy way to talk about or navigate these things- which makes sense because we are human and diet culture (and healthism) targets one of the most vulnerable places of our humanity: how we feed ourselves and how we tend to our bodies.
Recovery is hard work and requires an incredible amount of resource. I again want to express my admiration and support for those who continue to reject the idea that we have to shrink. For the fat activists who are watching their friends shrink and talk about it publicly while they continue to do the endless work of liberation. For the folks suffering from eating disorders/ disordered eating or who are engaged in recovery and trying to stay in it who are being inundated with ads and marketing about the newest ways to shrink, as well as influencers, once committed to recovery/ HAES/ Body acceptance/ positivity/ fat liberation who are now sharing their weight loss stories and all of the details around it. To those who feel confused about how to take care of their bodies and souls in this environment- confusion makes sense.
I am sending love and a big hug to everyone who believes, still, that we are actually meant to be here to expand. I do believe that is a crucial part of our collective healing: that we choose to expand rather than shrink. Because we know that our expansion means we have the capacity to heal not only ourselves but this mess that we are in. Shrinking keeps us small, distracted, and quiet. Expansion gives us space to be big, present, and loud.
This moment calls for expansion.