When It Turns From A Should To A Need
Yesterday I was at the grocery store and I almost had a complete meltdown in the bakery section. I was overwhelmed with feelings of frustration that I have to completely shift the way that I am eating to help heal my body and in that specific moment, I got really angry at my body for just not being okay to eat what I’ve always eaten. What we don’t realize, with body image and body acceptance, is that it also includes listening to what it’s asking for and fulfill it’s desires in order to move forward. What I’ve come to realize is that despite convincing myself that I’ve moved away from diet culture and overriding my body’s needs for food, I now find myself at the other end of the spectrum - I have been saying nay to diet culture, but I have STILL been ignoring my bodies requirements and needs.
It’s rough feeling like crap in your body and in your mind - but it’s important for me NOT to take that out on my body. She’s been trucking along this whole time, giving me signs and symptoms and suggestions while I just brush them aside for the taste of something delicious and the comfort of consistency in my foods. I literally am fine to eat the same thing every single day - but it has to taste good and not be inconvenient.
Running my business left me running my body into the ground because it was the only running I was doing. That was a bit of a joke, but in all seriousness I barely moved my body for 5-6 years aside from my photoshoots and in the airports as I ran from workshop to workshop. While I’ve managed to bring movement back into my life via walking, dance, and self portraiture I have continued to put off my eating habits. When I was running my business full steam by myself, I grabbed whatever would fuel me the fastest and that usually meant food that when eaten occasionally from time to time is fine, but when eaten consistently for 5+ years only contributes to overwhelming amount of stress my body is experiencing.
I think this is an important place to note that I am not referring to weight gain or weight at all.
I am talking about other ways our bodies let us know that something just isn’t going right. For me, my eczema and extreme itchiness have become out of hand - and I am learning that this has to do with overloading my body (which was already in a hyper stressed state) with foods and beverages that pushed its sensitivities over the edge. In addition to that, I remember when I was photographing more consistently and hustling my buns off, I developed plantar fasciitis (swollen and painful feet) due to inflammation. Yet, I thought the problem was just my shoes - because it’s easier to buy shoes than listen to your body.
When the pandemic hit I had to step away from working so hard and it really made it clear how many of my body’s reactions were from the intensity of my workload. I didn’t know the word balance then. Now, however, I have been relatively good about balancing my time in and out of the business. That being said, I was still ignoring what my body has been telling me.
As the world seems to have gotten relatively back to normal, I found myself falling back into old predictable habits (saying YES to everything, booking an obscene amount of travel in a short time, taking on clients when I should say NO, etc.) and shockingly (not so shockingly) my body is once again starting to rebel - this time in the form of skin conditions. I went to the naturopath a few months ago and found out I have sensitivities to dairy & soy particularly and while that advise helped me ditch cheese for the most part, I haven’t really adhered to any suggestions.
But now, I am at a NEED situation, no longer a SHOULD. I need to start listening to my body instead of thinking I know best in the moment -> it’s not different than when I was actively trying to lose weight. This made me realize that the worst part about diet culture isn’t necessarily that it fucks up our metabolism and steals our joy, but it depletes us of our ability to trust and communicate with our bodies far after we’ve left the rest of it behind.
So, this week, I want to encourage you to really pay attention to what your BODY is asking for. Does she/he/they need a drink of water? Get it. Does she/he/they want a veggie? Eat it. Does she/he/they want to move or rest? Make it happen, captain. We need to rebuild our communication with our internal systems that are doing their best to keep us alive and while I wish we could “wait until Monday” the reality will become that you can’t wait at all - and then it becomes even more frustrating.
