I know more than diet culture!

Learning is a wonderful thing, we are blessed by our ability to learn and become wiser each day. It’s fun to know new things and learn new lessons, and when we do learn we want to share our knowledge and teach it to others! It makes us feel good and it is enjoyable to watch others grow and learn as well! As a mother most of the time I spend is teaching and sharing with my children lessons of life and learning. This is what we do, it is our purpose! As I have expressed in earlier blogs, I have had guilt over what Caitie went through with her anorexia, not because I think it was all my fault, but because I taught her things that were wrong. I as her mother, the one who is supposed to be protecting her from harm, teaching her and guiding her, keeping her safe, I helped to lead her to a path of horror. I did not do this alone, and I did not intend to hurt her but none of that matters now because she was hurt. Now as much as I hate that fact, I can also say that I have learned a great lesson! I learned that what I thought was fact, was actually fiction. I learned that so many things that are presented to us as truth are often just made up facts. Made up to make money from our insecurities. It has worked, people will do most anything to have the perfect body, the beach body, the fit, tiny, socially acceptable body. Before, when all I wanted was to have that body, I believed, I drank that kool-aid up! I dieted, I starved, I cut calories, I cut out entire food groups, all in the name of health. I was doing all these things while raising my sweet young impressionable daughters. I hated my body and they saw me hate my body. I complained about wanting to eat cake on their birthdays, I was disgusted by my cravings for bread, I regularly talked about earning my food through exercise, I talked about “bad” food and “good” food, and my kids heard it loud and clear. When they were growing up I never forced them to eat all of their food, never; why? Because I didn’t want them to learn to over eat, I didn’t want them to struggle like me. Again, I didn’t mean to cause harm, nobody ever stopped me from saying or doing these things, actually it was quite the opposite. My friends and family were doing and saying much of the same things, everywhere you look it is there. Television, magazines, movies, and now social media. You get it, you all know this right? So why am I writing about it? Obviously, it hit my daughter hard, she ended up developing an eating disorder, but I have three daughters, the other two are okay, so no biggie right? Why make such a fuss? Here’s the thing, as I have learned and the more I continue to learn, I am more and more aware of how deeply ingrained this philosophy of skinny healthy is in our society. Now that my family is in a place of recovery, and working hard to stay recovered,(and I say my family, not just Caitie because we are in this together.) I am finding the bombardment of diet culture baloney in my face more and more and it is frustrating. Frustrating because I know how triggering it can be for Caitie and others who struggle with eating disorders, frustrating because it’s not true! I have learned something new and I want to share it with you! It is freeing and wonderful! I want you to know it too, and not just know it, but believe it, for the truth is a wonderful thing. So, here is my truth.

You don’t have to be skinny to be healthy. The BMI scale that has been used forever to calculate if you are at a “healthy” weight is a lie, it was never meant to be used as a “one size fits all” scale. And lastly, and this is a good one, if we all ate the same foods, and exercised in the same way all the time, we would still have bodies of different shapes and sizes. We aren’t meant to all have the same body, our creator made us different and that is wonderful! Why do we love to celebrate our differences in every other way except for body type? We have been trained to believe that wanting to eat, really at all, is somehow wrong? And it’s only okay if you are already skinny or eating the right food. That is sooooo messed up!! Right? I mean I know on some level we know that is ridiculous but seriously think about how we praise and recognize and celebrate how wonderful it is when someone is strong enough or has enough willpower to restrict, resist, and not eat. As though being thin is the best thing a person can accomplish! Here is what I think, we are so much more than our bodies, and if we spent the kind of time trying to better our inside self as we do on our outside self this world would be a much better place. I saw this quote recently and it really says it all, “Sexy does not come from the shape of a body, but the fire in a soul” J. Iron Word. I want to have a sexy firey soul! The other day my friend texted me to tell me that she had lost some weight, she had set a goal to be a certain number by her birthday and she had accomplished that goal. I felt conflicted about how to respond, I have known her since high school and we have yo-yo dieted for years, and I am certain she lost that weight by not eating. So I said to her, “if losing weight made you feel better, than good for you, but I think you are beautiful at any size because of who you are.” She liked it, because we are worth more than a before and after picture! Look I’m not trying to bash people for wanting to eat healthy or exercise more, I love to exercise, it truly helps my mental health, I feel better when I run or work out. I just believe now that if we simply pay more attention to our bodies actual needs and follow those cues that we can still be healthy! I think I have blogged about the kidscook motto before, it goes like this, “eat food, real food, with variety and moderation.” If I feel hungry, I think it’s a good idea to eat, and I pay attention while I eat, so when I feel full I stop eating. Some days, I eat kinda a lot, and other days I don’t. It sounds silly, but it had been years since I have allowed myself this freedom with food. It actually took some getting used to, for so long I had told myself, only this much, only this many calories. I had to almost relearn how to know when I was hungry and when I was full. Guess what, I gained some weight. Seven pounds. That’s it, 7 measly pounds, I have one pair of pants that are kind of too tight to wear now, but besides that nothing has changed. My blood pressure is better than ever, my cholesterol is perfect, I can still run over 4 miles and maintain under a 10 minute mile. I actually have more energy for running because I eat carbs! No I’m not winning any races but I could care less, because I feel great! I can do real push ups no knees on the floor, I can squat jump and do deep lunges, and I even survive through burpee’s. My husband has no complaints, because guess what? Turns out he loves me for my firey soul, not my perfect body!

I recently posted this quote on my instagram, “To help a girl’s self-worth don’t tell her she is beautiful. Teach her she is more than beautiful. Don’t just reassure her that her body looks great. Teach her that her body IS great. When we stop giving beauty the power to make us, we take away its power to break us.” Lindsay Kite. I want to re claim my power, and I want to teach it better to my girls now than I did when they were small. I want to share this, because people don’t know, we have been force fed the diet culture lies for so long now that it seems like the gospel, and to preach against it, seems like a terrible thing. But what I have learned is not terrible, it is wonderful. Not everyone wants to hear about your diet, not everyone who is overweight is unhealthy or lazy, any body can be a beach body, and everyone struggles with something.

Although what Caitie went through was horrible, today we are better for it. Every one of us has learned something valuable about life, and we all hope to use that knowledge in a positive way. Caitie is doing great, and more and more she is being able to share her knowledge with people around her who need an understanding and knowledgeable heart. It is amazing to see her share that knowledge and heart. There are some people who still really don’t understand, usually those people choose not to understand, and sometimes you just have to walk away from those people. Even though that is hard, it is also a good lesson in life. Not all people are your people, even if they used to be your people…. people change, and that’s okay. This is where my head has been lately, I hope I did not offend, that is not my intention. I just want to share what I know now, I hope it will maybe help someone to see things a little differently, maybe just re evaluate when you see some skewed truth from the diet culture and just let yourself be free!