Trigger Warning: Eating Disorders

Hey folks,

It’s going to be a short but sweet post today. I’m currently feeling the endometriosis pangs and haven’t actually slept a wink so that’s been all fun and games but I feel an urge to write about how I’m feeling so, despite the fact my website still isn’t 100% functioning, I’m still going to post this. Let’s go for it.

It’s coming up for summer season in London.

I mean, I say it’s coming up for summer season although the skies are 85% grey and miserable but we move. Summer season in itself is quite difficult for me, and I think I just have to get used to the fact it might always be. As soon as the faintest ray of sun pokes through the clouds, I start some form of fitness regime. In the past, I’ve used and abused this process. I’ve either eaten next to nothing and overexercised, been obsessive about when and how much I should eat or binged on anything and thrown it up. It’s been a cycle until I went travelling and the feelings that used to feel so incredibly powerful and overwhelming eased. I developed a healthier way of looking at exercise, starting with gym classes to build up strength and eating what I wanted, without feeling the desperation to control it all.

Being in therapy for years has taught me that my lack of control with my family life has contributed to controlling other things and of course that includes my food and exercise. I guess if I try to focus on things I can ‘control’, it means I can absolutely not think about the stuff that I can’t.

‘You look great though’

It’s always nice to receive the occasional compliment but I find it bizarre that the very things I despise about myself are the things I’ve received them for. They don’t make me fall in love with those aspects, but I do find it interesting that people can really seem to want what they don’t have (me included).

It doesn’t and will never make sense to me, but over the years, with the support of an ex-partner and friends, I started to accept my shape and the parts of me I hated because I was loved. Their love helped me build my love I suppose. More recently though, I’ve noticed these thoughts have popped up again, and now that I’ve started getting back into my fitness, they’re rearing their ugly head quite strongly. They encourage me to compare the parts of my shape that I simply cannot change and that I shouldn’t change, because it’s me.

All the years I’ve spent accepting my body and falling back in love with myself have seemed to disappear, and today I cried looking at myself in the mirror.

Maybe it’s the fact I’ve got potential upcoming holidays and I feel like it’s going to be impossible to not compare myself with others. Maybe it’s because I’m on my period and I’m always more sensitive at this time of the month (tmi? Don’t care) or maybe it’s because certain aspects of my family life are still very difficult and this is a way I can try and make myself feel more in control. Either way, I am determined to keep my fitness journey positive because apart from some of these moments, it’s been amazing for my mental health and my stamina. I need to try and get back to accepting myself as I am but not to judge if I have these thoughts. To let them gradually fade away as they have in the past. The actual body shape you’re born with cannot change but mindsets can shift and the thoughts you have about yourself will sometimes be good, and sometimes not – and that’s also okay.

I met with my best friend yesterday, where we discussed the idea that perhaps nobody is ever actually 100% happy with how they look. Maybe people don’t look at themselves in the mirror and thinks ‘oh hot damn am I looking toned, hot and fit as fudge’ today’. Maybe you just have to accept the fact that you look ‘okay’ and that’s fine for now.

Who knows? It’s a journey I guess. And it has its ups and downs. I’m going to roll with it, talk to my therapist about it and try and change the narrative. Because I am enough, and even though I don’t feel it right now, I am enough as I am and how I look. We all are.

Peace out x