Hello! This week we’re talking about internalized weight stigma.
In my eating disorder, my mind often felt like a whirling tornado of thoughts. I was like that little wooden house in the Wizard of Oz, swirling and tumbling helplessly through the storm.
I felt ungrounded and estranged from my foundations, and I frequently ended up in a fantasyland where the solution to all my problems seemed simple: follow the yellow brick road (the latest diet), lose weight, and return home to safety.
Inside the storm of eating disorder thoughts, I tried to ground myself with the thought that if I just lost weight, I would be safe. But the weight my mind believed would make me safe was at odds with the weight at which my body felt safe.
My dream weight was unsustainable, so the tornado kept whirling. My feet would touch the ground for an instant, only to leave again, snapped up in raging thoughts about how to restrict, exercise, and purge my way to safety.
As long as I stayed in the cycle, which was grounded in the belief that weight loss was my salvation, I was trapped. To change my life, I had to change my belief about what safety is and how I could achieve it.
Keep reading with a 7-day free trial
Subscribe to Recovery by Ginny Jones to keep reading this post and get 7 days of free access to the full post archives.