A Dancer's Struggle

  Did you know there are 7 different types of hunger cues? Something most people struggle with is reading these senses and acknowledging them. When someone has not been eating enough or restricting certain types of foods their hunger and fullness cues are hard to distinguish. This also goes for people who don’t have a bad relationship with food. It can apply to anyone. When people have a stressful event in their life, they haven’t been getting enough sleep, they are super excited, etc. These factors make your emotions heightened and can throw off your hunger signals that your body will normally give you. Society only deems stomach hunger as being the single way to determine if you need to fuel your body; though that can be hard if your hints of hunger are dismissed.  It is important that we teach others the many different ways we can tell if we need to feed ourselves physically and mentally.  In no particular order the first is Stomach Hunger, which is perceptible by peop...

  You never fully recover. Thoughts still find a way to creep back inside your brain, like an ant sneaking into your house on a warm day. The house is your brain and the ant is the abominable eating disorder opinions. When your house is infested with bugs, you get rid of them. You don’t let the ants take over. So why let ED do the same thing. In the beginning, middle, and end of recovery it is hard to not listen to your eating disorder ways of thinking. It is scary to realize but even after years of being “all in'', there still might be days where your ED gets the best of you. But that is where you take the bug spray and get rid of them because they are not doing you any good. They are harming your body. Just like ants can invade the food in your house, the eating disorder thoughts can lead to more problems than just mental health issues. They could affect your physical health by causing amenorrhea, ostoperious, hair loss, liver damage, and even more. My liver was failing due t...

Body Love is something I have felt so much pressure around. Growing up and having an eating disorder I had outside forces that made me feel guilty for not loving my body. Body Image is how you perceive yourself looking from the outside. How you appear to look in photos, mirrors, certain clothing, etc. It is a person's perception of their physical body. Not everyone has a perfect relationship with their body image. I would even argue to say no one does. At some point, everyone has looked at themselves and have had negative thoughts slip into their mind. This is 100% normal and should be more talked about and accepted.  I myself have struggled with body image from a very young age growing up as a dancer. As I have grown up my physical self image has gotten worse. With that also comes social media telling me to love my body. When people post things about loving their body and “you should love your body always”, it makes me feel inferior. I am substandard because I can’t love my body. ...