When you let go of depression you gain energy.
When you let go of sadness you gain happiness.
When you let go of addiction you gain relationships.
When you let go of anorexia you gain weight.
That is the last part of healing. Weight gain. Accepting the weight gain. In a society that is all about thin…no, skinny-
you have to be okay gaining 10, 15, 20 pounds.
You are moving against the flow. You are swimming upstream and it is hard. IT IS HARD!
Everyone
around you uses the ED (Eating Disorder) terms. “I was bad
today I had two pieces of chocolate.”
For me
eating two pieces of chocolate….that would be a good thing. It means I expanded my food repertoire.
When someone
says “I was good today, I only ate
600 calories.”
For me, that
would be bad. I am looking to be
comfortable with 1,100+ calories.
Then there was the one time I watched someone take a bite of
a candy bar chew it for a second and spit it out. She was proud of her move. I couldn't help it, I blurted out “That was a
classic anorexic move.”
This is hard stuff. Constantly reminding yourself to be okay
eating 10 bites instead of one. Eating
two pieces of pizza instead of tearing one piece to shreds and pretending to
eat it.
This is painful stuff. Watching females check their calorie counter
after a Barre class to see how many calories they burned. Wanting to scream “IT CAN’T BE ABOUT THE
CALORIES!” The feeling of health has to
come from the soul. Not the brain, not
the calorie counter - THE SOUL. The
piece of you which God has gifted from the moment of conception.
I am trying to grow to love numbers, but I truly hate them. I hate sizes. I hate the assumption others make about my
size. I hate the scale - I don’t have
one. I hate the fact that fashion
magazines say you need a scale to make sure you don’t gain weight. I hate that women turn to fashion magazines
for inspiration to lose weight. Please
turn to Him. He knows WAY more than
Cosmo.
I still fight with this gaining weight thing. I have held the weight steady for many years. When I relapsed I lost weight but eventually
gained it back. It’s hard. I wish we could change the terminology. I wish I wasn't sensitive to it. I wish we could realize we all have our
stories of weight and that is all they are, just stories. Weight doesn't make
you good or bad. Yes, it can make you
healthy or unhealthy (it goes both ways too low or too high). But I will stand firm on this: Weight. Is. Not. My. Worth.
My worth is in my soul. It is given from Him. He did not assign us numbers. We assigned those to ourselves. He assigned us worth. Amazing wonderful worth. I have worth, you have worth, and she has
worth. We have it. We have to share it the way we share our
weight and diet stories. What if instead
of saying “I was bad because I ate a piece of cake,” we started saying “Today
you are loved because He made you.”
Maybe if I start this conversation I won’t be so sensitive
to others who express their worth through weight. If I change the conversation in my head, I
will realize my worth never changes with the size of my thighs. A decrease in thigh mass, doesn't increase my
worth with the Father. Maybe it will
free another recovering bulimic or anorexic. Health is a struggle, I get it, but when we
start nourishing our souls through Him, health is no longer a struggle. He points us to the steps we have to take to
be healthy, and for me, it was to gain weight. There I said it. I GAINED WEIGHT TO BE HEALTHY (enter feelings
of extreme vulnerability). It is a tough
mind shift, but, when we can bridge that gap between His worth for us and
health, amazing things start to happen to our bodies. The way the Lord works is a beautiful thing and
that beauty is “good” for everyone.
