No Agenda, Just Community
You are beloved.
You are important.
You are needed here.
Thank you for allowing me to be one of your people. Thank you for being mine.
See you TODAY at 3pm EST for Virtual Connection on IG Live! This will be saved to IGTV, too.
NO AGENDA, JUST COMMUNITY
I’m eating snack; bring a meal or snack
eating disorder recovery
body image healing
HAES, anti-diet
social justice
disability
anything!
If your relationship with food or body or recovery is being tested, please join me! And send this to anyone who you feel may benefit from a safe, supportive space!
*Virtual Connection does not constitute a therapeutic relationship and is not intended to replace individual therapy or nutrition therapy.
Vote Vote Vote
Right now is a lot. We are living through a moment in time that will be forever etched in the history books.
You are a part of that history.
Right now.
YOU.
Books will be written about this moment and your participation in it.
Your inclusion, your oppression, your resilience, and your frailty.
> Please wear a mask. I have the good fortune of being taken care of by nurses whose clinics were closed for the three months that COVID-19 ravaged New York City. They wore PPE while working in ICUs all over the city. And now wear masks. Without face shields. Their clinics are open again. If you need more evidence that face coverings are effective, I’m not sure what to say. Driving through Manhattan? It’s a sea of humans wearing masks, taking this very serious illness very seriously.
Please do the same.
> Black Lives Matter. Black oppression is real. Living in a Black body should not be a death sentence. It is one. And those of us with the privilege of just noticing how. bad. it. is. need to pay attention. Need to recognize privilege as fact, not fiction. Need to stop NOT having conversations about reality. And do anything, everything we can to demonstrate that we are going to do our part to change the trajectory of history in the direction of equity.
> Register to vote.
Get your tush to the polls, if you can do so safely. I’m voting from home. It all counts.
VOTE. VOTE. VOTE.
2020 has been a lot. It’s not over.
We need all of you, right now.
Your earth suit being the least of it.
Permission to Eat at Any Hour, Granted
The truth is, if you stop eating at X hour and wait to eat until the following morning, your body might change. It might not. But it might.
What is guaranteed? Is that you will experience hypoglycemia. Probably nothing dangerous, but your body will be seeking out additional food.
Assuming you don’t eat in the middle of the night. Which you might do. And no judgment, but most of my clients dislike that eating experience. If I’ve not fed myself thoughtfully enough during the day, I get hungry at night and eat. But I’d prefer uninterrupted sleep.
Making rules about when we stop eating, in accordance to a clock, is like making a rule about when we stop going to the bathroom, in accordance to a clock.
Silly. Also, an invitation for a UTI. Fun!
And, normalized restriction.
Somebody, sometime, somewhere, made some statement about the importance of pushing pause on appetites in the evening. I don’t know who that person was, but I do know that they have been fucking with my clients for as long as I have been a dietitian, and I would wager but they have been fucking with humans for a lot longer than I have been in practice.
A stop sign? A rule. It makes sense. Not up for interpretation.
Voting? A privilege and responsibility. Not a rule, but highly encouraged. And critically important.
Putting bodily functions on a timer? Foolish. Unnecessary.
No food after some hour because someone said so? A rule with unknown ideology that is well worth breaking.
Permission to eat at any hour, granted.
One Word to Describe Your Ideal Relationship with Food
This may feel like a useless task, but there is power in speaking to what you want to experience. Say it here, write it in your journal, write it on your hand.
Take it one step further. Say it here, and identify one action item to make it possible. This is incremental. It doesn’t need to be entirely possible right now, but saying and planning step one is the first step in making a change.
Name it. Commit to the action. For today. See how it feels. Recommit tomorrow.
What’s your word? ⬇️
Notes of Gratitude
I closed my office on March 13th.
To think that I have been working virtually since that time, six months ago, is incredible.
I’m not sure about you, but pandemic time is weird. I can’t believe it’s been six months. It feels like time has flown in a flash. And the first several weeks felt like they were going by so slowly. It felt like the month of March was never-ending. I can’t believe that the summer is almost over. And what an odd summer it has been.
I miss people. In real life people. And I’m also grateful for the fact that I’m healthy. The humans around me are healthy. That is a blessing.
My appreciation for humanity has increased exponentially in the time in which I’ve had limited contact with it. Because somehow in this weird time, I still feel really connected. How fortunate.
I made these notes because they are things that I have said to humans that matter to me.
I mean it when I say it, every time, and I am deeply grateful for my connection to each of you.
Please accept these notes with my sincere gratitude. Feel free to tag anyone, in comments, who you wish to share these messages with.
Warmly,
a
Body Image and Self Love
Are you around on Tuesday night?
8PM EST / 5PM PST?
Join me, @tiffanyima, @missalexlarosa, and @tessholliday when we chat about all things body image and self-love with the fabulous humans @moxxiemade.
This event is FREE interactive forum hosted on Zoom, accepting donations for @thelovelandfoundation - an organization supporting the therapeutic needs of Black women and girls. This is an organization that I support independently, and I’m over the moon that this event will further that support.
Head to @moxxiemade to sign up! Or check out the link in my stories.
Can’t wait to see you there!
xoxo,
a
Your Body Knows How to Handle Food
It is expected that you’ll eat past comfortable fullness if you haven’t eaten enough. If you haven’t eaten in too many hours. If you’ve not been able to meet your energetic need. If you’re avoiding foods that satisfy for the sake of the foods you might feel you ‘should’ eat and enjoy.
This is expected. This is not a moral issue.
And if this happens, know that you won’t always be full.
Wait.
Then eat again.
Especially if you’re not a fan of the uncomfortable fullness that follows not getting enough, regularly incorporated food. Or the less happy digestive process that follows irregular energy intake.
Empty isn’t good. Full isn’t bad.
Your body knows how to handle food.
Respect Your Earthsuit
SWIPE THROUGH
Perhaps your body experience is like that of so many others.
Always wishing for the updated version, & often wishing that the updated version was a past version of you. I hear this all the time. From folks who look at photographs of their younger selves, adoringly. Wondering why they didn’t see what they can see so clearly, now. From folks who went through normal developmental stages & were made to feel shame for the ways their bodies completed these processes.
Perhaps the humans who raised you, the people who witnessed your development & aging, never normalized the process. Perhaps they never spoke about their own experiences, or, made you feel as though you & your body we’re going through a stage incorrectly.
Perhaps you are substantially influenced by what you see reflected in the media. And you remain perplexed because you never see you.
You take that on as though it is a YOU problem.
How many of us have spent time wishing for our younger bodies? Elevating them in our minds as though if we could re-experience life in them, we would do it so very differently. I appreciate the human call for a do-over.
Because that is not how life or bodies work, I wonder what it might be like to look at your body, right now, today, & welcome it, in whatever stage it is in.
Your body is good. It is resilient, it has been shaped by your experiences, it has brought you to today. I am grateful for your body. Because that Earthsuit? That’s your carrying case.
That is what brought you here, today, to read this. I have endless respect for you & your Earthsuit.
Writing prompts:
1. What are the factors that influenced the way I experienced my body as it went through life stages? If I could do it again, what would I like more of? Less of?
2. What would it be like to practice accepting the body I live in today? Not loving it or hating it, but accepting it in the same way that we accept gravity as the reason that we are not floating.
3. How might my experience of being in this body change if I were to have compassion for its history, and curiosity about its future?
4. Make a list of five things that make your body uniquely yours.
Exhaustion is Not a Badge of Honor
Zero points awarded for being the first person to hit the wall.
The fatigue that we are feeling right now is a new and very different kind of fatigue. The new normal that is happening around us is exhausting. And because we don’t know when this new normal is going to shift, we need to stay for the long-haul.
Please rest.
Really, It's Okay
Really, it’s okay.
It’s okay if you have a memory of an earlier version of your body that felt easier to live in. It’s okay if part of you believes that your life would be happier and sunnier and brighter if your body were different. It’s okay if part of that is true.
This is what diet and wellness culture screams from the sidelines. “Encouraging“ us to do the next extreme thing. To follow the next diet trend, or exercise craze, for the sake of finding body peace.
Body peace is not found in endlessly pushing to change a body.
It’s okay if you wish that living in your skin were easier. I wish that for you, too.
And if being in your body does not feel comfortable today, know that you can still take care of it just the same. And that self-care, alone, can improve the experience of being in your body.