Do you have an unhealthy relationship to health and your body?
“If you have to force it let it go” ~ Leanne
There are many women right now living with addictions and obsessive behaviors around food and exercise that are being masked as healthful living.
Calorie and portion restriction, limiting food groups (for no specific reason, such as an allergy), overexercising, and always hopping from one trendy diet to the next, are all possible signs of disordered relationship to food and body.
My issues with eating disorders began in my early teens, and morphed into various versions and dynamics with one common thread throughout my lifetime. Not truly loving myself.
When the first picture (above) was taken, I was in a phase of forcing my body into submission.
Forcing strict diet rules, and exercise that my body was saying NO to.
I pushed myself to lift weights do HIIT training, and life weights even when I would almost black out after each set and interval, and had to get my center before starting the next.
I would beat myself up for not being able to do the long intensive workouts others seemed to be able to do with ease.
I starved myself when I was hungry, and counted my calories like it was my full time job using the app My Fitness Pal.
And…I still believed I needed to lose more weight. In the picture on the left, I still felt fat. I know this may sound totally wacky, and looking back now, I can see that is was. The mind can really screw with us if we don’t learn to master it and retrain our brains.
My breaking point was one day, having a spoonful of natural organic peanut butter on my celery that put me over my ‘allowed calories’ for the day, and immediately felt compelled to go exercise it off. My husband looked at me in shock when I expressed how I was feeling, and it was in that moment I started to really recover from my disordered relationship to food and my body.
Developing Adrenal Fatigue was another catalyst for having to make some changes to what I was doing.
Being put on all the strict protocols, detoxes, cleanses, and diets to deal with my Adrenal issues triggered some old behaviors I thought I had moved past.
Part of my healing journey has included recovering from Orthorexia (a newer eating disorder which is an extreme obsession with healthful eating), and some other unhealthy patterns around food and my body.
I has to stop lifting weights, stop going tot hour log spin classes and other fitness classes I tried to push myself through, and started just walking my dogs in nature, and doing a few minutes of stretching.
Some days, sometimes for days I couldn’t muster up the energy to even go for my walks, because I was so tired all the time.
Even though my Ego was telling me “walking isn’t intensive enough”, “You need to do more”, I listened to myself, and my body.
I deleted the My Fitness Pal apps from my phone, took off my FitBit tracker, and started exploring what I call, Body Centered Eating, and letting go slowly of my obsession with weight loss, calories, “clean eating” and exercise, and started focusing on living my life, creating my dreams, and getting in touch with what I truly desired in my life.
While this journey has taken many years, with lots of twists and turns, ups and downs, and falling into old patterns, I am in a place where I can say I am truly free of the ‘inner mean girl’ who used to relentlessly taunt me.
I am free from emotional eating patterns, and sugar addiction.
I am now obsessed with how I feel, how much I am present for my life, my kids, and my life purpose (sharing my inner musings, life lessons and guiding my clients).
As pictured above, I am about 20 pounds more abundant today, but I am truly at peace with myself and body as it is right now.
I am done fighting with myself. I am done following diet rules that feel like a prison. I am done with forcing workouts on my body that don’t work for me.
I am done with guilt, shame, and picking my body apart in the mirror.
I am done with anything that doesn’t feel like love. From myself, and from others.
If you are struggling with Adrenal Fatigue, and your inability to do your typical workouts leaves you feeling guilty and lazy, I invite you to press play on the video below.
You can also download my Weight Loss with Adrenal Fatigue guide where I walk you through steps to take if you desire to lose weight and get healthy, and you also have adrenal imbalance. You can get that here.
This is a very common frustration for women who have struggled with similar issues I have shared here, and can bring up some pretty funky, and uncomfortable emotions when they can’t do their usual workouts anymore.
Be gentle with yourself.
Life is not a race.
Focus on health of mind-body, emotional balance, spiritual and self connection.
The rest will take care of itself.
If you’d like some help with recovering from Adrenal Fatigue and Exercise/Diet fixation, and Emotional Eating, I invite you to apply to work with me! I’d love to support you in finding your Food Freedom, and more energy!