Recovery- Part 2... Shine Your Light

If you or someone that you know is in recovery from an eating disorder, here is an awesome opportunity... so please take note!!

The Renfrew Center Foundation is offering a FREE seminar on January 5, 2010 at 9 different locations. The seminar is entitled Home for the Holidays: Shine Your Light and topics advertised as included for the workshop are:

*eating challenges during holidays

*how to alleviate holiday stress and pressure

*taking responsibility for your own health and recovery

*survival strategies to stay focused on your recovery

*creating and sustaining relationships at home, work and school.

For a little background.. The Renfrew Center was the first freestanding facility in the US for specifically treating eating disorders, and they now have seven facilities in five different states. The Renfrew Center Foundation is a non-profit organization that serves to educate and train professionals, promote healthy body image, conduct research, advocate and educate policy makers, and provide assistance for women and girls. It receives its funding from The Renfrew Center, as well as private donors. The Renfrew Center and The Renfrew Center Foundation are committed to raising awareness about eating disorders as well as treating them; together they have had a significant impact on the lives of many young girls and women.

If this interests you, these FREE workshops are being held in Radnor, PA; Coconut Creek, FL; New York, NY; Ridgewood, NJ; Wilton, CT; Bethesda, MD; Charlotte, NC; Brentwood, TN; Dallas, TX. If you are close to one of these locations or desire to travel to one of them and are interested in attending, follow this link to register. If you are interested in attending the Florida location, click here as the registration is different.

A Walk Down Recovery Lane with Jenni Schaefer

Jenni Schaefer is the author of two books- Life Without Ed and more recently, Goodbye Ed, Hello Me. She is an activist, educator and motivational speaker, seeking to raise awareness about eating disorders. She is also a musician; she writes music and sings! She recently gave an interview (back in November) sharing her thoughts about being in recovery from an eating disorder. Her most recent book, Goodbye Ed, Hello Me is focused on her life post- ED (the name she gave her eating disorder) and her experience of living and loving life without ED! Below is the interview, copy and pasted from November 4th's Planet Blacksburg, the collegiate publication of Virginia Tech.

Q: How would you describe a life of suffering with an eating disorder?

Schaefer: It’s a complicated illness, it doesn’t make sense. I always ate normal when I was around my family. I didn’t really think I had a problem. I knew there was something wrong but didn’t define that as a problem. The denial is so huge in this disease. My friends would comment on my weight, but I thought everyone was jealous. I was lying to myself, not them.

Q: Describe the relationship that you formed with Ed.
Schaefer: I was always depressed. I thought I was never going to get better. My therapist, Thom, kept telling me that was Ed, not Jenni. The eating disorder was my identity. I really thought I was the eating disorder. We label ourselves as the anorexic girl, or the skinniest girl in the world, or the bulimic girl. But that’s not us. And we really grieve when we have to let that identity go.

Q: Your eating disorder started in college. What exactly prompted it?
Schaefer: I have an older brother and a younger brother, and I was the perfect child going to medical school. I appeared to have this perfect life and I always smiled. I knew instantly it was about perfectionism. I was always called ‘Perfect Jenni.’ It was about criticism, and very low self esteem. I realized that my eating disorder helped me control emotions and feelings. I struggled with Ed thoughts at the young age of four. These thoughts grew louder as I grew older. I didn't question the thoughts until I was 22 and at rock bottom.

Q: Who was the first person you told?
Schaefer: I finally got up the courage to tell my ex-boyfriend at the time. I was so ashamed. I was silenced by my eating disorder. I had him tell my parents. I didn’t want anyone to know, not even my brothers. My eating disorder was not going to get better if I stayed silent. I tend to have black and white thinking. That’s part of my recovery, to fight that. Nobody’s going to know, or everybody’s going to know.

Q: How did your family react when they discovered you had an eating disorder?
Schaefer: I remember my mom calling me after she found out I was struggling and getting help. Knowing that my mom went to a library and was trying to learn more showed me that she really cared. Both of my brothers never realized that someone could be struggling with something so deadly, but appear to be so normal. They thought someone with an eating disorder was extremely emaciated like those you see on TV.

Q: One of your famous quotes is, “Never married, but happily divorced.” Can you explain this?
Schaefer: I am divorced from my eating disorder, not a person. I was actually taught by my psychotherapist in recovery to treat my eating disorder as an abusive boyfriend, or husband. Really, that’s how it felt. I felt controlled and abused by my eating disorder. Ed actually had a chair in our therapy sessions.

Q: In your interviews you never discuss your lowest or highest weight throughout your treatment. Why is that?
Schaefer: You can be any size and have an eating disorder. It’s not about food or weight, it’s not about size. That doesn’t matter. It’s really about what’s inside. It’s a huge paradox; it’s not about the food and weight, but it’s all about the food and weight. Definitely don’t talk about specific behaviors. People use numbers as bullets.

Q: Do you believe recovery is possible for all individuals?
Schaefer: It’s a constant process. Recovery is a very long process. But I do believe you can be recovered. Food is something we deal with at least three times a day. It’s not something you can just quit, give up. With an eating disorder, it’s a continuum. It’s something you have to do every day, three times a day. It’s a real struggle to find the balance with food. Food is everywhere. It’s how you celebrate holidays, and it’s how you celebrate birthdays.

Q: Then how were you able to recover?
Schaefer: That is a million dollar question. I think there are so many aspects of eating disorder recovery. For me, it was about using all the resources I had and constantly staying connected to my therapist, to my family, to my doctor, and not isolating. It was also never giving up. Every time I relapsed I had to stand back up again. My favorite quote is, “fall down 7 times, stand up 8.” It’s very, very frustrating and very, very hard. It’s a spiritual process as well. We don’t want to talk about higher power; we hate them because we think they gave us the eating disorder. It was a big disconnect.

Q: Describe this disconnect.
Schaefer: You disconnect with everybody. I had spent 10 years trying to avoid my friends. I alienated all my friends. I’d say, “I am completely self sufficient.”

Q: So how did you reconnect with God?
Schaefer: First of all, I had to just yell. I had a journal about how God hates me, and listed all the reasons. For me, I really had to meet people in my life that were spiritually fit, spiritually healthy; who had a good relationship with God. I had to look to those people as guides and mentors. It’s not what happens to us, but it’s how we respond to it. Use things that happen in a positive way. Turn it around.

Q: During your recovery process, when you would fall into a pit of relapses, how would you pull yourself out?
Schaefer: I fell into relapse often. In fact, it got worse before it ever started getting better. I had to hold onto hope that recovery is possible. Connecting with others always helped.

Q: What inspired you to finally make a change, accept help, and move forward with your life, independent of Ed?
Schaefer: Like I said above, I got help because I hit rock bottom at 22. I was depressed and hopeless. I couldn't function as a productive member of society. I often couldn't get out of bed.

Q: How did you realize that you actually wanted to recover?
Schaefer: I was frequently afraid to let Ed go. Ed was my main way of coping with life. To fully let Ed go, I had to find other ways to deal with life. I also had to be willing to let go of the things I "liked" about Ed. I liked how Ed made me feel special (i.e. being the thinnest one in the room). I had to find other ways to feel special: by just being myself.

Q: What advice would you give to others suffering with Ed?
Schaefer: I can’t emphasize enough the importance of telling someone and getting professional help. Making one phone call; that is such a key to start with. Learning how to love myself was a key. A real key.

For more information on Jenni Schaefer, or to find out more about either of her books, follow this link to access her website. For the original interview, follow this link.

You'd Be So Pretty If....

The title of this blog post sounds a little terrible, right? I actually ripped off the title from the name of a book that I recently came across!! And for the record, the book is anything but terrible :). Dara Chadwick has written a book called You'd Be So Pretty If...: Teaching Our Daughters to Love Their Bodies--Even When We Don't Love Our Own, and she also writes a blog with the same title. She recently posted a few tips for modeling positive body image that I want to share because I think they are great. I would also like to point out that even if you are not a mother, or you are a mother and do not have daughters, this information is still really applicable. We may not have daughters (who are therefore influenced by the views we have of our own bodies), but we certainly impact the people in our lives (especially and specifically other women) based on the ways that we see ourselves. It is interesting to consider how learning to accept ourselves can actually help others to accept themselves as well.

So, while this may sound easier in theory than in practice (like a LOT of things!), here are five things that you can try (compliments of Dara Chadwick), that no matter how you feel about your body, may help you learn self-acceptance, as well as model it to others!

1: Silence the Critic. If you tend to say negative things about your body, criticize certain features you dislike or are not comfortable with, or make jokes about yourself, stop. Whenever you notice that you are doing this, stop yourself.

2: Act "as if." Imagine how you might feel or act differently if you were your ideal size or shape. Would you participate in different activities? Say hello to more people? Buy a certain style of clothing? If so, act out your feelings or engage in those activities and see if you notice a change in how you feel or how others respond to you. (Hint- you most likely will!)

3: Choose one thing. Focus on making one healthy choice each day- whether it is eating your breakfast, taking the stairs up one floor instead of the elevator, etc..

4: Be OK with change. Focus on being the healthiest, most content version of yourself that you can be. We all change as we get older, and as we go through different life experiences, our bodies change. Appreciating what our bodies do for us, considering the purposes that our arms/legs/hips/etc serve, and recognizing how functional they are can help us to accept our bodies/body parts rather than criticize them.

5: Find your own body image role models. Find women who model a healthy, positive attitude that you admire and respect. Maybe it's Scarlett Johansson, Kate Winslet, a friend who exudes confidence and charm, or a friend whose personal style you admire. By holding up a role model of unattainable perfection, we struggle to accept ourselves because we are never able to reach this ideal.

While change is often tough because it requires extra effort, energy, and a lot of extra thought, I believe it is worth it. It is worth it for us to accept ourselves, to feel good about ourselves and our bodies, and to encourage other women (friends, sisters, daughters) to accept themselves as well. For more on Dara Chadwick, follow this link.

The Body Image Project

Body image has been on my mind a lot lately. I feel like no matter where I go, who I talk to, what I'm watching on TV or reading, it seems that I have been encountering a barrage of fat talk and concern over weight and bodies. Yes, I may be more aware and sensitive to such topics than the average person, as I do therapy with many women who have eating disorders. But my observations about body image lately are those that go well beyond my work. I have felt the intensity of the media's powerful communication of messages through images (and otherwise) and have really been at a loss. It seems that our culture is so saturated with the value of beauty = skinnyness, and it is difficult to avoid unless you hunker down and go live in a cave! How did we get here? That question has been occupying a lot of space in my thoughts recently.

Let me be the first to say that we ALL struggle with body image- no one is immune from waking up, putting on a pair of jeans and sometimes just not feeling great! It happens to all of us. But when our feelings about our bodies, and our looks, determine how we truly feel about ourselves and our worth, or they influence our moods and the course of our days, this is troubling territory that we enter into. Body image and weight are idols in our culture and in order not to be ruled by these idols, we need to be transformed by the renewing of our minds (Romans 12!).

In my flurry of thoughts lately about body image, I have gotten stuck wondering why things are the way they are. That is probably a topic for another post :), but I decided that maybe a more productive question to ask is where we go from here. Certainly determining a course of action requires considering the previous path, but I wanted to shift the focus towards action. I have struggled and tried to brainstorm ways to begin to change the current tide- all well beyond my capabilities at this point. Sometimes the degree and depth of change that needs to happen feels so overwhelming, especially when approaching this issue from a big picture perspective! What I realized when I stepped back a little bit is that small changes can facilitate larger changes, and starting out small is important! I came across a great website this week: The Body Image Project. The goal of this organization is to "reframe body image and enable everyone, everywhere, to discover and celebrate the real you." It may sound a little cheesy.. But the momentum behind this movement speaks to the very nature of the issues I have raised. Small changes often help to facilitate larger changes, and reaching one person at a time is often how collective change ultimately happens. If we can each focus on working towards discovering and celebrating ourselves, as opposed to comparing ourselves to others, then perhaps this is a good place to start.

The Body Image Project can be accessed online by following this link. I would encourage you to take a look at some of the videos that they feature (access them here). Men and women have courageously shared their own body image tales to inspire and encourage you on your own journey to embracing you. The videos are definitely worth watching, and they add new ones each month. Below is a video that The Body Image Project has created that I encourage you all to watch as well- you can click on the Look at You//The Body Image Project to watch. Change begins with one person inspiring another, and that person inspiring another. If anything, maybe these videos or stories will inspire you to begin loving yourself or will inspire you to share this site with someone else who may benefit.

Look at you // The Body Image Project from Body Image Project on Vimeo.

EXTREMES!

One thing that I tend to mention a LOT on this blog is the impact that the media has on our perception of beauty, as well as body image. The media communicates powerful messages about beauty and it is important for us to be able to discuss and challenge these messages as we see them. I just read a great post that Lee Wolfe Blum made on her blog (You, Me and ED) and I wanted to share it- I think that she has some great things to say about the media's messages. I have posted the content of her blog below- I hope you enjoy it. You can also access her post (and blog) by clicking here.

EXTREMES!

Last night after a 12 hour day working with eating disorder patients I was anxious to chill on the couch and watch some brainless TV. The only options were:

1. The biggest Loser

2. Victoria’s Secret Fashion show

Really? Is this what our society has come to? On one show you watch people working as hard as possible to lose weight. The other show looked like a runway of anorexics. We live in a society of extremes don’t we?

Bad or Good.

Fat or Skinny.

And these extremes are pounded in our heads through the media.

So I ask you to consider as I do…what is the truth? The TRUTH is that God made bodies of all different shapes and sizes.Yep he did. We are not a one-size-works for all! And did you know that only 1% of the population has the genetic make-up to look like those Victoria’s Secret models! The rest of em…my guess is they are starving themselves. I had to laugh at one model's quote that came out today, One Angel, Selita Ebanks told the New York Daily News, "It's all about creating the illusion of this amazing body on the runway. People don't realize that there are about 20 layers of makeup on my butt alone."

And how about Heidi Klum who just had her 4th baby? She is not normal. Do you hear me. Not normal. Watching her walk down that runway and having people gush, "oh and she just had her 4th baby!" How about the millions of women who just gave birth who think they can look like her..then they become entrapped in Pregorexia! (Pregorexia is A condition where a pregnant mother is obsessed with being thin)

So what do we do with this land of extremes? How do we navigate it all? I encourage you to work towards body acceptance. Look at your body and when you aren’t living in extremes (over-eating or under-eating) what is your body shape, body size when you eat in moderation, exercise in moderation, and still enjoy life? Your body will find its homeostasis. And by not living in extremes your metabolism will level out. The yo-yo dieting, the overeating, the extremes will mess it all up. The key really is BALANCE and MODERATION!!

So I turned those shows off, grabbed my book and curled up in my bed. I don’t need the media putting images in my mind. I just want to be the person I was meant to be. I want to feel good about who I am. I want to walk down the street and scream out “I AM OK WITH ME DESPITE WHAT THE WORD TELLS ME TO BE!” . . Not the person Victoria’s Secret tells me to be. BUT ME. With my imperfections, stretch marks, and flaws. Me at the weight I was meant to be at! That makes me REAL!

So – join with me in learning to love and accept yourself for who you are. don’t buy those magazines that fill your head with unrealistic images, watch shows that give you unrealistic ideas, or play around with your diet because of the latest trend! If you are still struggling with eating issues...please get help! Take care of yourself. Do the things you love. Spend time with friends and family. Those are the things in life that matter!!

Happy Living!

Lee