Image by Gerd Altmann from Pixabay
Once a week, I receive a helpful newsletter from a lovely lady named Isabel Foxen Duke. Isabel is a nutritionist and sociologist who helps women who are trying to break free from the diet mindset, which is a lot of us.
Here is a link to the post she references in her most recent newsletter.
The following is my response.
Hello Isabel,
I am struggling with the "exercise is supposed to make me thin, so why exercise if it's not making me thin?" issue.
I have endocrine problems and, over the course of some 33 years, dieted myself to the point where my body refuses to lose weight no matter how much I starve it. I am no longer able to work because of disability, so doing the punishing workouts I did when I was younger is no longer an option.
I used to buy into the idea that I had subconsciously made myself fat so men wouldn't be attracted to me, and I did this in response to sexual trauma. This is the worst idea ever. Whoever came up with it should be ashamed for multiple reasons.
Please know that I do appreciate your letters. They are a great help in my ongoing battle against my abusive life partner, ED. (Eating Disorder.)
Your pal,
Ornery Owl
I'm going to share with you all a little something that I'm pretty ashamed of.
I missed out on a lot of moments with my son when he was little, because when I wasn't working, I was at the gym trying to punish my body into a shape that it wasn't meant to be. If I couldn't get to the gym, I worked out obsessively at home with aerobics tapes and free weights. My marriage to a man I never really loved (my son's dad) was falling apart. I believed that my life would instantly become wonderful if I could just reach a certain number on the scale. Then everything would magically fall into place.
I hated my body, and, perhaps more to the point, I hated myself.
I really needed help, but I wasn't getting it. Therapists always focused on the wrong thing. They treated me like a silly little girl who would be happy if she could just lose weight. Rather than try to get to the root of the problem, they cheered on my orthorexia and "healthy" eating habits.
I feel that the best therapists know that a client's real problems are not always the ones they present on the surface. At least some critical elements of my trauma were buried. There was an instance of sexual assault that I never even acknowledged to myself until 40 years after it happened. I can't help but think how much it sucks that the guy who assaulted me certainly went on to assault lots of other girls and women in the space of 40 years.
I'm rather certain that the trauma caused by being the victim of sexual assault brings about hormonal changes such as an excess release of cortisol. Cortisol encourages weight gain and causes difficulty in losing weight. Victims of sexual assault may develop eating disorders. The key is to treat the psychological trauma caused by the sexual assault because doing so will help the victim be more comfortable in their own skin, not in order to encourage weight loss because fat is the worst thing a person can be, for fuck's sake.
I'm sick of fighting this stupidity.
Don't treat people like shit based on their size.
Or for any other reason either.
Fucking hell.
~Ornery Owl is Mad as Hell~
Free use image from Pixabay
Hangry Wyrm says:
"Forget about it, Ornery. Let's eat!"
Fierce use image from Pixabay
Sometimes anger (and despair) are totally justifiable.
ReplyDeleteMore often than not, I've found. It's unhealthy to hold in feelings of anger and resentment, which I learned to do at a young age. The problem with not learning to express anger in a healthy way is the alternative is to either rage, which pushes people away, or to hold the anger in until it either explodes outward, which pushes people away, or to hold it in and let it do damage to your own mind and body. I used to do both of these, but in my later years I've trended to just holding the anger in.
Delete