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body dysmorphic disorder

loving yourself, self-esteem, self-image, eating disorder, body dysmorphic disorder

Today, I don’t hate my body. I can’t even remember the last time I could say this and not be being sarcastic. It may be the first time since I was about 6-years-old that I didn’t look into the mirror and wish that what I saw reflected back at me was something/ someone else. It’s been happening gradually over the past few years. Don’t get me wrong, this body is not the end result that I am looking for but I am losing that all-consuming uncomfortable in my skin feeling. I don’t loathe the skin I am in today. I don’t feel disgusted by the gentle curves and sway of my body. I feel protective and loving towards it.

I’m not sure what changed in my way of thinking or shifted in my perspective but I do know that the other day as I was changing my clothes, I caught sight of my naked body. I stopped and looked at myself; really looked at my body. I’ve been too afraid to do that for many years because it always ended in disappointment and dissatisfaction culminating in anger and frustration. I was never happy with what I saw staring back at me. It made me feel small and defeated because I just couldn’t get it right. I preferred to look in mirrors the least amount possible because it only served as a reminder of my physical shortcomings. Remember, my seething case of body dysmorphic disorder?

But the other day when I saw myself in the mirror, I saw a woman who doesn’t have any wrinkles, only a couple gray hairs and though I am a few sizes larger than I want to be, this body still has some appeal to it. My legs look good, they carry me to all the places I need to be. My arms may have residual wave because I am sporting a slight case of bat wings from weight but these are the arms that allow me to hug and cuddle those people in my life that mean the most; the family I love and the friends I adore. My hips and waist are bigger than I would have ever wanted but they have also carried my babies. These are the parts that my children hold tightly to when they hug me. My breasts are further south than I thought it possible for breasts to go but they have breastfed my daughters; these low hanging breasts have given my girls nourishment and a healthy start in life. I am not my parts. I am the woman who lives behind the mask of my body. I am the great and powerful OZ of myself.

I’m not saying that I am a reformed body dysmorphic disordered woman or that I can just wish away the years of eating disorders but after 15 years of being recovered I am finally saying that what I see in the mirror doesn’t make me want to starve myself, vomit or punish my body into submission anymore. I know that I want to be healthier and I know there are the right ways to do it and I know those options are available to me. If I want it, all I have to do is work hard for it; slow and steady by not giving up, not getting discouraged and not thinking that I don’t deserve the success. I’ve hidden behind the curtains of excuse too long. The body that I have isn’t so bad. My body just needs a little TLC and my heart needs to exercise a little more forgiveness towards my body. I am worthy of love and I deserve happiness. What’s the point of all this misery, anyway? Who is it appeasing? This struggle with my body and my mind is self-inflicted. No one else thinks that the size of my body determines my worth. It’s me. It’s always been me.

You can’t force acceptance. It has to come naturally or it isn’t acceptance at all. Like love, when you are not looking is when you will find self-acceptance and learn to truly love yourself. I am on the precipice of changing my life forever by changing my perspective. I don’t know how this happened or what changed my way of thinking.

I do know that I will not be who I am today for much longer. I am metamorphosing my life from the inside out. I am not giving up my dreams of long lean legs and non-flapping arms (a girl’s gotta dream) but I am giving in to loving myself as I am because just because my body doesn’t fit a mold doesn’t mean that it is not amazing. There is beauty on the inside that surpasses any superficial beauty I could ever imagine. I don’t judge the people I surround myself with by their appearance and I don’t imagine they do me either. We love the substance, the meat of the person, not the make-up, clothes and hair. It’s time I allow myself the same unconditional love that I would extend to anyone else in the world.

What do you love about yourself?

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Am I Ugly, internet, teens, girls, tweens, Youtube.com, body image, slef- confidence

Throat Punch Thursday,Am I Ugly, videos, teens

Am I Ugly?

Teen Girls are asking the world, “Am I Ugly?” ~ This is a recipe for disaster. As if the media is not already loading the gun with bullets of self-doubt with impossible standards perpetuated further by models and actresses embracing these standards, now our daughters are taking to the internet to ask a world peppered with miserable trolls, “Am I Ugly?

This scares the hell out of me. The potential for catastrophic long term effects from this seemingly innocuous question is beyond belief. I know how a simple critique can go into a young girls ears and get twisted and bent until it has burrowed itself so deeply into her psyche that there is no chance of recovery. To think that a young girl would willingly open herself up to this kind of criticism is unbelievable. I would take the computers and phones away, home-school, whatever it took to spare my daughters of the pain of  living with and suffering daily with body dysmorphic disorder.

Am I Ugly, internet, teens, girls, tweens, Youtube.com, body image, self- confidence

 Why Am I Ugly?

Let me assure you, there is no such thing as an innocuous question when you are opening yourself up to the world to ask  Am I Ugly? There will always be someone who will say yes, even if it’s just to go against the grain. To this new fad of asking the entire world, Am I Ugly? I give the throat Punch because I can assure you that somewhere in the world there is a young girl who just lost all of her self-confidence because the reply to her video was yes.

Somewhere in the world, seeds of self-doubt have been planted and are taking root in a child’s brain. Somewhere in your neighborhood, a 12 year old is crying because she was just told that her skin was bad. Somewhere else, a little girl is running before school and skipping lunch because her reply was that her face looked chunky. There’s a little brunette who is waxing her face for the first time because she was told that maybe if she didn’t have a mustache; she’d have a boyfriend. A blonde with natural curls is wearing a hat because somebody called her hair frizzy. A red head is trying to scrub the freckles off of her face. Another girl is hiding her smile because someone said her teeth are crooked. And yet another tween is crying because her bangs won’t lay right, last night she was told her forehead was too big.

Once these things have been said to these girls, you can’t unring that bell. The girl is changed and she is now self-aware of every real and imagined flaw that have ever existed within her. This is a slippery slope that many girls come to in life and fall down and never recover from it.

It will never end. Beauty is respective. The standard is impossible and the system of measurement is skewed. These little girls need to hear it from their parents, from the time they can hear, that they are beautiful; they are smart; they are funny; they are athletic; they are strong; they are miracles! They need to be self- aware that they are capable of everything, not made painfully aware of their one shortcoming.

What would you do if your daughter made one of these videos? How do you feel about these videos being uploaded by tweens? How do you encourage your daughters to have self-confidence? How do you foster self worth? Don’t let our girls fall victim to the internet by asking Am I Ugly?

Don’t ask Am I Ugly; ask What’s my most Beautiful Quality

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Judgemental Doctors, Throat Punch Thursday, Doctors

Throat Punch Thursday,Judgmental Doctor,doctors, obesity,weight management

Judgmental Doctor You Suck

Tonight’s Throat Punch is brought to you by a judgmental doctor. Don’t get me wrong some of my favorite people in the world are doctors; my brother in law, one of my best friends to name a few. I realize that they are, in fact, human; just like you and I. But I expect a standard of professionalism when they are practicing medicine. What they say at home, that’s between them and their HIPAA conscience. But when a doctor brings assumption and judgment into the exam room, we have a problem .

I’ve been having persistent coughing fits for the past 2 weeks and decided to go to the local RediMed, as I don’t have a GP here yet. The doctor walked in the exam room ( after I had waited 2 hours to see her) with a less than enthusiastic attitude, as if I had done something to deserve to be sick. It was apparent from the moment she walked into the room looking through her nose at me, that she was a judgmental doctor.  Worse still a cold bitch, as the room dropped 10 degrees when she walked in.

She began by asking me the standard questions. How long have you had the cough? Are you feeling any sinus pressure? Are you feeling any pressure in your ears? I say yes. She asked, “Pressure? or PAIN?” Her tone was as if I had misunderstood her question. I had not. She had a very thick accent. I’ve grown up immersed in thick accent as my fathers mother tongue is not English. I don’t usually have an issue understanding accents but hers was quite thick.

Judgmental Doctor, Throat Punch Thursday, Doctors, Body issues, weight, body dysmorphic disorder

Judgmental Doctor You are No Lady

“Do you have any allergies?” Yes, I have seasonal allergies.

“When you cough are you bringing anything up? Yes (I’m assuming she was referring to phlegm).

This is when it all fell apart.

At this point she is looking at me, as if I have totally done something wrong, “You really have to watch what you are eating late at night!”  I eat at 5:30 every night.

I have no f*cking idea what she is talking about.

“You must cut back on the greasy food! Take some Prilosec and stop eating these kinds of food!!!! ” She’s practically yelling. I feel as if I am on trial.

“Stop drinking all the sugar, sodas and coffee at night. You need to watch what you eat so you don’t destroy your esophagus with your unhealthy eating habits.”

I don’t!I don’t! I don’t!

What the f*ck is she talking about? Since when did a cough warrant a scolding on non-existent eating habits?

Judgmental Doctor Say What

Then it hits me like a ton of rocks hurled by sizists at the fat kid. Somehow, when I was explaining to her that when I lie down at night the coughing fits get worse, she heard “I’m a big fat asshole who has acid reflux because I can’t control my binge eating at night. I drink 2 liters of soda and pots of coffee with reckless abandon because I just don’t give a shit about my health!”

She was being very condescending and rude.

I know I am out of shape. I am heavier than I ever wanted to be.

I DO NOT HAVE ACID REFLUX.

I HAVE NEVER HAD HEARTBURN. I don’t even know what it feels like.

I came in for COUGHING FITS not a judgmental doctor with a side of asshole bedside manner. Who did she think she was?

I seldom drink caffeine, never at night. I’ve never been a binge eater. I’m a restrictor. To add insult to injury, I’m pretty sure that the reason I am as heavy as I am now is partly from all the damage I did to my body when I was in the throes of my 8 year battle with eating disorders. Doesn’t this bitch know I have body dysmorphic disorder?

Of course she doesn’t, she’s just the freaking drive thru of doctors and she doesn’t have my full medical records. That insensitive bitch just used her judgmental doctor powers on someone who has to talk herself into accepting herself on a daily basis. I’ve never felt so ugly in my life.

I was deflated. Enraged. Wanted to throat punch her and cry simultaneously. On top of everything else, it’s shark week and I’m not feeling especially happy with excessive water weight that I’m holding.

Thanks for the pep talk, Dr. Kevorkian.My throat Punch goes to the wicked stupid, judgmental doctor with the sizist attitude and atrocious bedside manor.

Hope you will link up your Throat Punch Thursday posts with me. I wanted to extend a personal invite to all of you to link up any posts in which you air a grievance, call out any asshatery,or just dole out a well deserved throat punch to one of societies shortcomings or political douche canoes. If not this week, I do it EVERY single Thursday and would love for any or all of you to join in! All you have to do is grab the Throat Punch Thursday button ( listed under the “about” tab at the top of the page), put it in your blog post and link up. If you’d like to stay in the Throat Punch know, I’d love it if you would email subscribe ( as GFC will stop working soon). Just say No to a Judgmental doctor.

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disfigured body, Disfigured, How a Disfigured Mind destroyed my life

Disfigured~ to impair (as in beauty) by deep and persistent injuries (real or imagined).

Recently, I watched a movie on Netflix called Disfigured. Disfigured was about two women, one who was severely overweight and the other anorexic. Disfigured began with a group of overweight women sitting in a circle at a meeting for a group for “fat acceptance”. This blew my mind.

What comes first the disfigured mind or the disfigured Body

As many of you are aware I have a history with eating disorders and it’s always been a battle for me to accept the skin I am in. I’m not sure that I’ve ever truly been comfortable in my own skin, it’s been more a range of tolerance. There have been times when I could tolerate the body that I live in more than others but I’ve never looked in the mirror and thought, this is good; I am happy with what I see. When I heard this group of women talking about acceptance, it was a foreign concept to me. In fact, it was so foreign that it was unbelievable.

READ ALSO: To the Bone

I would love to believe that there are women out there who are overweight and are happy. Women who accept and embrace their curves. God, I hope there are. I hope there are actually women in the world who are comfortable in their own skin and love their bodies, every single inch of it.  I’m not one of them. I will probably never be one of them just because my way of looking at my body has been fucked up for so long and I have an actual diagnosis ( Body Dysmorphic Disorder) that prevents me from seeing myself as I really am. I feel disfigured at my core. I wish that I could just stop being the way I am. I’ve tried but something always creeps back in and plants a seed of doubt. Watching Disfigured was very uncomfortable for me. It’s hard to explain to you unless you’ve spent your life struggling to achieve an unattainable goal and I am sure some of you have. I feel like I have to creep up on happiness because if it sees me coming it darts off in the opposite direction. It’s a moving target like a toddler being chased in the road.

A disfigured mind can destroy your life.

What transpired next was even more unbelievable to me, or believable or just too fucking relate-able. At this ” fat acceptance” group a recovering anorexic woman walked in and wanted to join the group. I completely understood this. While, I am nowhere near my former bulimic/anorexic self I remember well the feeling of making the choice to recover and having to face the feelings of shame, guilt, anxiety and disgust every single day that you eat normally. When you go from starving yourself, to eating anything at all, it is very uncomfortable. You feel like you are losing control and you feel shame that you can’t control yourself and you feel fat. Yes, fat. Even if you are bone-thin and to everyone else, you look like you need to gain weight. When you are in that part of recovery…you truly do need to learn fat acceptance.

Disfigured Soul

Of course, the anorexic walked in the room and the women who were moments earlier preaching acceptance just as quickly threw her out. She was reaching out for help and they wouldn’t help her because she was too thin. I guess acceptance is a one-way street. They wanted acceptance but only for themselves and only on their terms. This pissed me off. I have been on both sides of this spectrum and both are equally as hard, as dangerous, unhealthy and both leave you feeling ugly and disfigured.Unwanted.Unworthy of happiness. Both make you feel like you are weak. Both fill you with shame and cause your quality of life to suffer. The two main characters became an unlikey pair trying to help the other find acceptance of herself through accepting one another,even though they were one another’s biggest fear. They had everything in common even though their respective situations would lead you to believe otherwise. They both were uncomfortable in the skin they were in.

READ ALSO: A Day in the Life of a Girl with Eating Disorders

The identification with both characters had a very profound effect on me. It’s so hard to look at yourself when you are ashamed of what you see in the mirror, too fat or too skinny. It’s not physical at all, it’s all that your perception is of yourself. It’s hard to accept responsibility for making the choices that make you feel so worthless. Unhappiness with what I see in the mirror comes from putting conditions on my own happiness and hiding behind self-imposed superficial limitations. The reason that I can’t be happy with my body is that I am hanging the success of my entire life on what I look like. How ridiculous is that? How has it taken me all this time to finally see what the obstacle truly is? It’s me. I need to get out of my own way.

I need to accept that I deserve all the happiness that the world has to offer. Not when I get the perfect body, the perfect life or only when what I see reflected back to me is acceptable by my impossible standards. I am good enough now! Right now. I have not thrown up or restricted my calories to dangerous levels in about 12 years but I’ve also not allowed myself to fully enjoy my journey. I have to learn to love and accept myself with the unconditional love that I have for others.

What stops you from reaching your bliss? Do you make your happiness conditional based on money? weight? your partner? your house? degrees of success? your child?  Why do we have to wait for tomorrow to enjoy our today? We have been misguided. We are not disfigured. This is the almost story of how a disfigured mind destroyed my life.

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self worth, body dysmorphic disorder, Self confidence, self acceptance, Self worth, self-worth, self-esteem, feelings, skills, self-respect, self esteem

Today, I’m linking up my Self-Worth post @ Ciaomom.com. I stumbled across her link up as, one by one, all of my Twitter friends were sharing it. Of course, I wanted to know what all the excitement was about and then I read her post and I knew. In a world full of self-doubt and deprecation, she is spreading the idea of self-love and self-worth. Can you imagine?

Self-Worth

I am the Mommy of two daughters and my biggest fear in the WORLD is that they will follow in my footsteps down a path of self-doubt and poor body image. In my teens, like most girls, I was very unsure of my place in the world. I was tall before any of the boys in my middle school. Then puberty hit and all the body changes that accompany. In a matter of a summer, I went from the cute, smart girl with the big almond eyes to being an amazon by middle school standards, breakouts, breast buds, braces, body hair, hips and being extremely uncomfortable in this new foreign body. 8th grade was a hard year for me. I no longer tried to stand out for excellence, I wanted to be invisible. I was afraid that if someone saw me they would notice (or worse) point out my flaws.

It didn’t help that my parents were both in great shape. My dad was very athletic and, once puberty started for me, he had the habit of telling me that I “needed” to run more. In my head, I heard ” You are not good enough yet, you need to run so that you can be perfect and worthy of love“. This plants a seed of self-loathing. Have I told you how much I hate running to this day? My already uncomfortable place in my new skin became unbearable. By the time I left for college, I was so afraid of the Freshman 15 that everyone had been sure to warn me of that I was resigned to subsist on the least amount of calories possible. 17, that was the age I was when I started on my 8 year battle with anorexia/bulimia. I never binged and purged. Never. I was a perfectionist. I starved myself to about 600 calories a day and then I vomited it all up. Everything, even water. If it went into my mouth, it came out almost immediately after. The very thought of food in my stomach was enough stress mentally to make me vomit involuntarily. It left me feeling NOT GOOD ENOUGH!

But this is not what I want for my girls. I want them to have an exorbitant amount of self-confidence, self-esteem and most importantly

Self-Worth

To do this, I have to lead by example so here is my list of what I love about myself ( after years of therapy and self-understanding:)

I love those big, crazy almond eyes of mine because I can see and cherish my daughters’ daily

I love my voice because it sings to my girls and speaks to those I love

I love my hair, it’s curly and sometimes straight and it’s beautiful

I love my strength of character because it has helped me to survive my past and go after my future

I love my resolve because it helped me overcome 8 years of eating disorder

I love my intelligence and wisdom to know what I can change and what I can not (even when it’s hard to accept).

I love my laugh, it’s loud and crazy like Ricky Ricardo but it is authentic and when you hear it; my heart is happy

I love my body for allowing me to conceive, grow and birth my children

I love my wit and humor which has allowed me to keep perspective

I love my personality that has landed me my wonderful husband ( of course the 25-year-old tits and ass didn’t hurt either:)

I love my uncanny knack to assess a situation, size up people and never back down from anything

I love that I don’t know the word quit

I love that I am so socially charged that I am NEVER uncomfortable in a group, in fact, I thrive amongst people

I love that I am honest to a fault

I love that I am genuine

I love that I love with the same faith in people that I have in God

I love that I can forgive and move past circumstances

I love that I have grown to love my own skin for all that it’s worth ( I still battle the body dysmorphic disorder) but even on days when my eyes are unhappy with the mirror, my mind knows better.

I love that I am not perfect but I am worth it. To quote Selena Gomez ( yeah I have kids…busted), I’m no beauty queen, I’m just beautiful me and that is better than good enough. And today, “I WOULDN’T WANT TO BE ANYONE ELSE!” Where does your self-worth come from?

Self-Worth

 

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Yesterday’s Be A Better Me (You) Challenge -Day 12 ~ See yourself through your child’s eyes
 is not always easy, especially when I feel like a hot mess or am overwhelmed by it all. But if I listen to my children, somehow in their wisdom they see the me I am on the inside. The Me that I have always been and will always be..the beautiful Mess that is me. So, today I am embracing the Me that my girls see every time they look at their Mommy, its probably very much like the best versions of them that I see every time I lay eyes on their small little perfection. Hope you are embracing the awesome you that your children know you are; because I think kids have special powers they can see the real us….even if we forget what that person looks like.

Today’s Be A Better Me (You) Challenge – Day 13~ Love yourself unconditionally. It’s exactly what it sounds like. We have to learn to stop putting ourselves down and comparing ourselves to some kind of unrealistic standard..that doesn’t exist. We need to take yet another lesson from our kids and love ourselves the way they love us; the way we love them.  No one is perfect, that is a fact. What we must strive for is to be our best selves. I have always been my hardest critic. I’m too fat. My skin is flawed.I have too many freckles. I’m not tan enough. My hair is not perfect enough. My smile is not white enough. My clothes are not right. I should be doing more with my life. I don’t have a career worth mentioning. I am not a good enough daughter, sister, Mother, wife, friend. Its always something.  I always feel like I fall short.You know why? Because the standard is impossible. To meet the standard, every  waking would be needed to acquire the impossible dream there would be no time for real living..loving..laughing. My challenge for you is to love yourself, for who you are..not who you want to be. You deserve to be able to love yourself;no matter the size of your jeans, in spite of your imagined imperfections. You are more than you give yourself credit for. Would you not love your children because they weren’t perfect? Of course you would and so should you love yourself. You can never be your best you, if you don’t truly embrace the person you are now.

You are worthy of all that life has to offer. You just have to believe that yourself. That is the key to acquiring all that the world has to offer and to, more importantly, enjoying it! Now, tell me how you can make efforts to love yourself unconditionally. This will be the hardest one for me thus far. A little body dysmorphic disorder goes a long way. Please link up!

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