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Eating Disorders:
Are you starving yourself to look perfect? Are you
vomiting and/or taking laxatives to immediately get rid of the
food you eat? Are you eating huge quantities of food while hiding
from others and then feeling depressed and disgusted with you?
You may have an eating disorder.
In Martha Beck's book, The Four-Day Win,
she quotes statistics in a "recent study of 4, 283 Americans and
more than 600 said they'd rather give up 15 years of their lives
than be fat." Read this again! They'd give up 15 years of their
life to not have some fat on their bodies. How have we landed
in a time where how the body looks is so important that one would
give up 15 years?.
I was anorexic for a couple of decades and I entered
my local eating disorder program with five other women; two were
bulimic and the rest of us were anorexic. Guess what? We all had
the same issues. So no matter what title your disease takes, it
usually has the same root as the other eating disorders.
If you have the beginning of an eating disorder
or it is full blown, you probably say to yourself, "I am not good
enough. I am not thin enough. If I could just vomit some more
food today. If I could just not eat any more food today. Oh God,
let me not eat today, but I'm so hungry."
Eating disorders are unforgiving diseases that don't
care about your background. Do you remember Karen Carpenter?
"Karen Anne Carpenter was one of the all time
great musical sensations of the 70s. On the stage she was glamorous
and loved by the crowd. Thousands of people cheered her on as
she performed classic song after song. She guest starred on
TV shows, was on the front cover of many national magazines,
and even toured the world. But amidst all this fame and fortune,
she was dying. Karen Carpenter was suffering from an eating
disorder not uncommon among the American population. Though
disorder was not rare, it was rarely talked about. Most people
at that time had never heard of the term Anorexia Nervosa. Sad
but true, the death of Karen Carpenter in 1983 opened the eyes
of the world to this life threatening disease." To read the
full article: http://atdpweb.soe.berkeley.edu/quest/Mind&Body/Carpenter.html
I remember the pictures of her in the news and magazines
at the time with her huge head and her bones poking out everywhere.
I too, once looked like that and my children woke me up to the
fact that I needed help and needed it now. They had been at their
dad's all week and they came home, stood on the scale and said,
"We gained a pound. We need to go on diets." This happened on
a Thursday and I was in the program the following Monday as I
did not want this insidious disease to go on another minute let
alone another generation.
Now that I am healed of this, I want to share my process with all of you. I envision a time when you will love the body you inhabit and will treat it with love and affection. I see a time when you walk down the street and catch a glance of yourself in a store window and you smile and are content.
If you would like to book time with me or have me
speak to a group, please contact me at gail@stepstomanage.com
or call me at 503.473.2690. |
