When you have suffered with an eating disorder, you may
recover physically and have periods of positive mental health but, in my experience,
the niggling thoughts never fully disappear. Despite my mental health being the
best it’s been in years, I still have relapses. Sometimes these relapses are
small and easy to get over, but sometimes they threaten to undo all of my
progress. I’m taking the time to write about this because I’m currently in the
midst of a relapse. At the moment it doesn’t seem to be a significant one but I’m
acutely aware that if I don’t nip it in the bud soon, it could evolve into
something much worse.
The best way to counter a relapse and return to a positive
mental state is to work on body confidence. I wish I could sit here and write
about how recovery has brought me an endless and fruitful supply of body
confidence but it hasn’t. In fact, body confidence has been one of the few
things that has been absent from my recovery. I am no longer addicted to
excessive exercise or calorie tracking or body checking; however, I still
despise what I see in the mirror 95% of the time. I realise that this is a
problem not limited to eating disorder sufferers and that due to societal
beauty standards body positivity is not yet normalised. Yet, as someone whose
weight has fluctuated significantly in the past two years, body confidence
seems an almost utopian fantasy to me.
I’m now at a point in my life where things are slowly beginning
to improve and become more stable. I can confidently say that over the past
four months my mental health has improved tenfold. I’m truly happy for the
first time in years but still the one problem which holds me back is my body
confidence. I love myself but I don’t love the body I live in and that’s what I’m
planning on working on. I realise this process, as with most long-term
projects, will not be a linear one. I understand that there will be times where
I think I’ve made a breakthrough only for my optimism to be quashed the next
day with a bout of self-loathing. I anticipate that this won’t be easy but I’m
putting this out there to hold myself accountable.
My plan is to switch my version of body positivity from
aesthetics to functionality. Ultimately your body is there to look after you
and whether or not your stomach is permanently flat and toned does not equate to
how healthy you are. I know that when I look after my body by cutting back on
alcohol consumption, exercising regularly and eating a balanced diet I can’t
help but feel happy in my own skin. Knowing that I’m treating my body with the
love and respect it deserves creates an automatic surge of self-love and
confidence. Everyone has days where they look in the mirror and don’t like what
they see but what about if every time you begin to criticise your external appearance,
you complimented the amazing things your body is capable of instead? What if
your focus shifted from whether or not you have a thigh gap, to how your legs
carry you everywhere every single day? It’s hard to criticise your body when
you think about the miraculous things it can do.
It’s easy to sit here and write about all the ways one can
work on body confidence but over the past couple of weeks I have realised that
unless I work on countering the last of my mental health problems, I’ll never
be able to enjoy all the new amazing things in my life. I’ll keep being held
back by body insecurities and that’s something I refuse to let happen anymore.
So,
if you’re struggling with the same issues, think about how much happier you
would feel if you actually started to love yourself unconditionally and work
from there.
