QUESTION: How do you accept your body as it is?

ANSWER: How do you do anything you really want to do, that you don’t know how to do? You just jump in and give it a shot! You keep trying until you get there. And you accept that it is a process that will most likely unfold gradually rather than overnight.

I have interviewed many people and asked them about their degree of body acceptance, and can truthfully share that very few – celebrities and ordinary folks alike – accept and enjoy the body that they have all the time. But many, especially those who have overcome eating disorders, have managed to achieve more days than not that they are able to like and accept their own body, shape, size and form.

I can also tell you how I did it – how I achieved a higher percentage of days when I accept and affirm the body shape and size that I have. Like those I have talked to, I do not have that experience each and every day, all day long. But I have significant moments – and that has come to me little by little, effort by small effort, as I have begun to see what is really there rather than what I assume is there when I let the eyes of the eating disorder take over.

I was thinking last night about how it might eventually be a good therapy for those of us with eating disorders to view, day after day, countless photos of girls and women, boys and men, with advanced anorexia, alternating with photos of concentration camp victims in their skeletal frames. I have been doing this work for five years, and when I started I was much less visually clear in my perceptions than I am today. I attribute my clarity today in part to the extensive time I have spent reading letters like yours, viewing photographs of very ill people, reading testimonials and personal stories of the hell that life becomes when an eating disorder is allowed to be in charge, and seeing the comprehensive damage that these disorders can do. Now, when I look at a photo of an ultra-thin model or celebrity, or a person who so obviously is struggling with self-deprivation, I physically ACHE for them – for the all to evidently painful thinness that they are enduring day by hideous day. I didn’t always have this vision. I had to work to develop it over time. I no longer want that painful thinness for myself. Now I want to fold those people in my arms, beg them to come have a few bites or a plate of muffins with me, help them to release themselves, step by small corrective step, from the agony of self-starvation.

You see, having an eating disorder flips our vision and perceptions, until black = white and wrong = right and death = life and starvation = fullness and South = North and so on. We have to find a way to flip it back until black = black and white = white and wrong = wrong and right = right and death = death and life = life and South = South and North points north once again. This is not easy, but it is possible.

I accomplished this by a process of gentle visual and mental correction. First, I began by ‘trying on for size’ what it would feel like if I looked in the mirror and liked what I saw. I pretended, even my own reflection at first filled me with self-loathing, that I liked what I saw. I talked to myself as I imagined a caring friend would, reassuring myself that it was okay to like my body and my shape, and to see beauty where the eating disorder insisted there was none. I also focused during this time, not just on one narrow goal, but on a holistic picture of what I wanted out of life, and factored in where I would have to be weight- and size-wise to have a chance of having everything else I wanted out of life too. I reminded myself, gently but firmly, that accepting my body was not an option – I NEEDED my physical form in order to have the life I dreamed of. I committed to doing whatever it would take, for as long as it would take, to achieve body-acceptance for myself.

Retraining your eyes is crucial. You MUST – simply must – learn to put on a different set of glasses when you view yourself. Deliberately step back from the familiar inner dialogue that responds with knee-jerk precision whenever you catch sight of your own reflection, shut it off, and then tune in to the quiet voice beneath it that wants to like what it sees. You WANT to like what you see – you want to accept your own image. This is the first step. This also proves you can eventually achieve body acceptance for yourself. Wanting – desiring – in other words, being willing, is the first step to achieving your goals. Next comes discipline, perseverance, commitment. Finally, goal achievement is within your sight.

Thank you again for your wonderful question. I have no doubt that every single Good News member will be able to relate to it!

Warmly,

Shannon

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