The process of recovery in a “new year new you” world

Amidst the roar of "new year new you", resolutions, boundaries and control around behavior change, and any other language guising dieting, fix it mentality, and coping from the brutality of being human, I want to write about what it has been, in my experience, to recover from an eating disorder, to disordered eating, to a human who eats with very little baggage around it, enjoys it most of the time, and has introduced sustained changes in honor of my unique body and being (because I have been able to and have access to that). In this process, I have agreed that I am indeed not broken but a human who makes sense from within my context, I have decided to say Yes to the totality of life- the pain, the grief, the confusion alongside the pure joy and ecstasy of full aliveness. Because, though other forces want us to believe the opposite, we cannot in fact have one at the expense of the other, to say Yes is to feel it all, which is a lot!

I found in my experience, after decades of coping, my recovery involved a lot of anger and grief as I made space for those experiences fully. I was able to reclaim and get to know parts of myself that I crammed away because I was too scared and not able to face them. I was lucky enough to have help and support that did not pathologize my pain and grief, that welcomed it and assured me it was a part of the process (among many who did not). 

When it came time for me to welcome in more joy and pleasure, which was a hard task within itself, but as I grew more comfortable with it life asked me to welcome in more and more and more recently I have been confronted with how difficult it is to receive, how uncomfortable it can be for me to be comfortable. Hello, Grief. You are alongside at every turn and that too is Okay.

I feel proud, knowing I had many invisible hands up in the process, of how I move as an eater. In 2020 I was experimenting more fully with turning my attention to things I had not yet before, myself, and my pleasure, and I learned from experience that what I feed grows. Knowing that I needed to be free from the chatter of shoulds and fear in my head around food and my body, which was mostly health in the guise of thinness which is still how we talk about and conceptualize health and it takes a great deal of attention and pain and resource to pull ourselves away from this, and it can be especially difficult in experiences like mine where chronic idiopathic pain was anchoring my desperation for relief- for an answer- I continued to deepen into pleasure with eating and unconditional permission. For years I longed to crave the "good things", I longed to be motivated enough to prepare "healthy" meals (as has been defined for us). This longing did not come from my body, I knew as I experienced it, but for a longing and grief around the loss of (externally defined) worthiness I felt when I was excellently performing health. And perhaps too, a longing for the distraction from the pain and the high that comes from performing a bootstrap model of caring for ourselves, our wild bodies. After years of letting go, letting go, letting go, letting go, I now find myself in a process of reclamation. Of growing roots from a solid foundation, and not in loose soil untended by deep care and intention.

I went through a process that many of us do, after I'd given myself ample time around unconditional permission to eat (everything takes way longer than we think it will, because we've been trained to think about easy fast change that we can buy), and in the absence of the rigid rules and shoulds of my disordered eating, I truly did not know how to feed myself. There is a shame that comes with this, my experience of it being in my late 30s. My inner critic would light my shame afire with ridicule, "what 38 year old adult (and dietitian!) doesnt know how to feed themself", enter imposter syndrome, a desire for smallness. 

Now, With more ample and adequate and accommodated ways to think about, access, and prepare food, the thing that most defines my relationship to all of it is grace, softness, connection, and deep pleasure. 

I've always been connected to food, from the beaming 12 year old holding up her fancily decorated iced cake (chocolate icing with yellow cake, my favorite always), to the disordered and highly anxious young 20 year old teaching others how to cook "healthy" (with no sleep because of the pounding perfectionism coursing through my veins), to the farmer who was softened some by the beauty and magic of land and soil and carrots who come from the ground wrapped around each other. 

To those desiring something different, understanding the chaos and snake oil that is created externally to profit from your shame, I offer to you: keep going. Grief, anger, and internal chaos make sense and are not reasons to stop (and always trust your ability to keep yourself safe and the decisions you make within the context of your own story and lived experience). Continue to steer towards what your body is truly and deeply longing for. Hint: it won't have a sense of urgency attached to it, This won't fit into tidy and easy 8 step handouts, and your body will never objectify itself- these ideas have come from the minds of sick folks, disconnected and disembodied themselves. 

It is difficult, lonely, yet True and Liberating. Happy Gregorian New Year wild bodies, take care of your hearts and deeply Nourish your souls as you are able. Be gentle with your wild and wonderful selves.