The Inside Scoop on Eating Disorder Recovery: Advice From Two Therapists Who Have Been There by Colleen Reichmann & Jennifer Rollin

The Inside Scoop on Eating Disorder Recovery: Advice From Two Therapists Who Have Been There by Colleen Reichmann & Jennifer Rollin

Author:Colleen Reichmann & Jennifer Rollin [Reichmann, Colleen & Rollin, Jennifer]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Psychology, Psychopathology, Eating Disorders
ISBN: 9781000351866
Google: MRYeEAAAQBAJ
Publisher: Routledge
Published: 2021-03-31T06:00:00+00:00


Aaron Flores, RDN

Dietitian

Certified Body Trust Provider

I can remember the first time I realized that my body was a problem. I was about 15 years old, I was sitting in the car with my mom, and she suggested that I might want to see a dietitian, someone that she’d been working with, who could help me lose weight and eat healthier. Up until that point, I’d felt moments of discomfort around my body, mostly when I would go swimming or play sports, but it was never so intense that it caused any sort of worry for me at all. It felt like a mosquito buzzing around your ear...it happens quickly, startles you and your automatic instinct is to swat it away and that’s what I did...I just swatted those feelings away. Up until that conversation in my mom’s car, I’d gotten used to instinctively swatting away that pesky feeling of uneasiness in my body and would quickly move on to more important things.

As soon as my mom and I had that conversation though, I realized, “Hey, if she notices a problem, then my body must be something to worry about and to control.” Looking back on it now, it was my entry point into diet culture. I’d seen my mom dieting many times. Going on and off diets. Rejoicing at her smaller body and shaming and putting down her larger one. From seeing her, I learned smaller bodies are to be praised and larger ones are to be shamed or rejected. With that in mind, off I went to see the dietitian.

I’d like to pause here and say, my mother meant no harm in her actions here. She was trying to do her best, raising a son as a single parent and doing everything she could to protect me from the world that judges larger bodies as less than. She had no idea the impact it would have later in my life. We’ve talked about it, made peace with this moment and I hold no anger towards her…as for diet culture, well that’s another story, but we’ll get there.

I go see this dietitian and let’s be honest, I didn’t do much of what she told me to do. Let’s just say, I did very little of what she told me and I rode out the series of sessions, never really applying much of anything she said! But what I did apply “worked” and I did lose weight. From that I learned how intoxicating the praise I got was. All my family treated me differently and my friends did as well. It was a hugely visceral lesson that taught me that larger bodies are bad, smaller bodies are good.

That lesson stuck with me for quite some time. I went off to college and as many do, when there are no longer parents monitoring foods and left to our own devices, I gained weight. I also struggled in school. I am the person that would have benefited not just from a gap year, but probably a gap decade if that would have been an option.



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