Answer Addiction

Tag: self-esteem

  • How Diet Culture Harms Women in Recovery

    How Diet Culture Harms Women in Recovery

    Overlooking the physical impact that substance use disorder has had on our bodies will exacerbate disordered eating and poor mental health. As many as 72% of women with alcohol use disorder also have an eating disorder.

    Diet culture is insidious. We spend our lives obsessed with our bodies — always wishing for a smaller shape, scrutinizing the size of the portions on our plates, and unscrupulously comparing ourselves to thinner people. It’s damaging because it leads us to equate our worth with our appearance. For people in recovery, that is especially harmful. We experience physiological changes quickly — including weight gain — once we find recovery, and we can often leap to the assumption that we have a food addiction and reach for harmful, quick-fix solutions.

    But what if that weight gain is actually the inevitable evolution of our bodies in early recovery?

    When we stop taking drugs and drinking and instead prioritize basic human needs that we previously neglected, like eating, we often gain weight. Unfortunately, before allowing our bodies and appetite to achieve homeostasis, we seek to avoid feelings of discomfort which makes us vulnerable to the pervasive messaging from diet culture.

    What Is Diet Culture?

    Diet culture affects people of all body sizes, but it is particularly harmful for people who have larger bodies. It also perpetuates eating disorders because being seen as fat is believed to be one of the worst things that can happen to a person. And in many ways, it is: we’re treated differently, we’re stigmatized, and we’re valued less.

    The National Eating Disorders Association states: “Diet culture creates the belief that it’s okay to risk the life of a fat person in order to make them a thin person.”

    In order to overcome diet culture, however, we must first create awareness of what it looks like. NEDA identified the key tenets of diet culture as:

    • Encouraging rules about what, when, and how much to eat. This can manifest as restrictive diets — perhaps marketed as juice cleanses or liquid diets — and the trend to label food “good” and “bad.” We can also see it demonstrated in fasting diets and not eating within certain time frames.
    • Suggesting that people are more or less good/moral/worthy based on their body size. As a culture, we reward people for thinness. Compliments are almost always based on how someone looks, and we’re particularly congratulatory if the person we’re complimenting looks like they’ve lost weight. Conversely, we stigmatize, oppress, stereotype, shame, and harass fat people because they don’t meet our perception of how we think they should look. Fatness is the butt of many jokes, it is the source of much ridicule, and it is the reason we make assumptions about people in larger bodies. We assume that fat people are lazy, that they sit in front of the TV favoring binge-eating over exercising, and that they are probably depressed.
    • Creating thin privilege. Weight becomes a barrier to jobs, benefits, support, comfort, and accommodation. Expecting that public transportation, amusement park rides, medical facility waiting rooms, and exam rooms will accommodate you is thin privilege.
    • Using exercise as punishment. Instead of exercise being joyful, movement is seen as a means of punishing ourselves for eating too much, or a way to “earn” a “cheat meal.”
    • Viewing fat people as higher risk medically. Clinicians often recommend restrictive surgeries or prescribe medications to fat people, even though there are serious (sometimes fatal) and lifelong risks associated with these treatments. These invasive and drastic measures are often favored by doctors over evidence-based interventions, completely overlooking the patient’s quality of life and the associated risks.

    The Risks of Diet Culture for People in Recovery

    We often overlook our physical needs in early recovery, instead focusing on getting and staying sober. But programs focused solely on spiritual well-being aren’t enough. Overlooking the physical impact that substance use disorder has had on our bodies will only exacerbate disordered eating and poor mental health. Prioritizing proper nutrition, however, has been shown to significantly improve rates of recovery.

    Substance use disorder can cause considerable damage to our bodies that can take years to even out. It can disrupt metabolic and hormonal processes leading to poor calorie consumption and nutrient deficiencies. These deficiencies can be serious as they impact our mental health, vital organs, and immunity — that’s why we often feel depressed, agitated, and out of sorts in early recovery. What we eat during this crucial time has the potential to impact our mental well-being and how our bodies heal. Part of that healing often includes weight gain, whether we like it or not.

    Once we remove drugs and alcohol, we experience biochemical changes that can lead to an increased appetite and a desire to boost our low mood. Our brains are now wired to seek that pleasure externally, so we look to highly palatable foods: candy, fried foods, fast food, cake, cookies, and sugary caffeinated drinks.

    People in recovery often lack sufficient nutritional education about the right foods to eat. We also move less in early recovery, sitting in meetings, spending a lot of time in coffee shops, or sleeping. The combination of increased consumption of highly palatable foods, disrupted bodily processes, poor food choices, and a lack of exercise inevitably lead to weight gain.

    However, despite the fact that many of us were underweight when we came into recovery, we still treat any weight gain as a negative. That’s because of diet culture. We are quick to label our sudden increase in appetite and desire for highly palatable food as a problem. Some jump to the conclusion that they are addicted to sugar or food.

    Many women in recovery have a disordered relationship with food. As many as 72 percent of women with alcohol use disorder also have an eating disorder. This makes it even more crucial that we allow the process of recovery to take place and eat a balanced diet free from restrictions.

    Carbohydrates are needed to produce the neurochemical serotonin to balance our mood, help us sleep, curb food cravings, and sustain energy. Protein is crucial to healing and mental health: a lack of dopamine can trigger a return to substance use to improve mood. Fat is essential for mental health and also plays a role in stabilizing mood and reducing symptoms of anxiety and depression.

    It can be hard to accept weight gain. It leads us to look at our bodies and our relationship with food more critically. But this hyper-focus on our appearance leads to further harming our already damaged self-esteem.

    “Women in recovery have already been through a tremendous amount of shame,” says intuitive eating coach and RN Tiffany Thoen.

    “Feeling that we are not good enough or that there is something wrong with us is familiar and contributes to the desire to change ourselves to be ‘better,’” she says. “Diet culture preys on these feelings of low self-worth for profit. For women in recovery, this adds to self-loathing by becoming one more way we aren’t good enough.”

    Rather than acknowledge that our bodies need food in order to heal and what we are experiencing is a normal part of recovery, we try to reverse that weight gain by going on restrictive diets, which only undermines the healing process. It can also have disastrous consequences: it can inhibit the healing process and our ability to function, trigger co-occurring conditions like eating disorders, and risk a return to using substances.

    How Do We Combat Diet Culture?

    In order to focus on our healing, we must allow for the process of recovery and not get sucked into diet culture. Thoen recommends that we empower ourselves to reject diet culture by taking these steps:

    • Cultivate awareness around negative self-talk
    • Notice where you might see messages promoting diet culture: on TV, in magazines, or on social media
    • Consider who is benefiting from your believing these messages
    • Set boundaries with friends and family around diet talk and commenting on bodies
    • If you use social media, follow people of all shapes and sizes doing a variety of things, such as the hashtag #womeneatingfood
    • Cultivate respect, acceptance, and gratitude for your body as it is today, because our bodies are doing their best to support us
    • Do the inner work around value, worth, and self-forgiveness
    • Get support from the many available resources, books, podcasts, online groups, coaches, etc. so you don’t have to do it alone

    Don’t lose hope. As Thoen says, “Diet culture is insidious and can keep up in a cycle of self-loathing. Healing your relationship with food and body is possible.”

    View the original article at thefix.com

  • On Ascension: Finding the Courage to Heal and Grow

    On Ascension: Finding the Courage to Heal and Grow

    My optimism was the reason I had stayed in abusive situations as well as my catalyst for leaving.

    The first garden I ever really tended to, I planted with an ex-partner. We’d spent several weekend mornings tilling and nurturing a small plot in my backyard, transforming the soil from arid and unkempt to rich and fecund. Upon harvesting, we filled a large basket with robust vegetables: chards, bright magenta-colored beets, green-leaf lettuce, cherry tomatoes, Anaheim peppers. I was most excited with the constant supply of tomatoes, amazed we’d started the produce from seeds and yielded such healthy plants. 

    Months later it became obvious that the garden was flourishing but the relationship was ending. I realized that after years of single motherhood, I’d allowed myself to attach to an emotionally abusive person out of loneliness.

    When the relationship ended, I was bedridden for three months, falling deep into a clinical depression. Whenever I’d get up, my head felt dizzy, my thinking dulled and lagging. I was unable to keep up with my full-time job and just let it fade away, hoping my savings was enough until I was well again. In the mornings, I would struggle to get my daughter ready for school and I’d return from the bus stop exhausted. 

    The Shame of Mourning

    The garden was forgotten. I couldn’t bear to weed or water, and every plant became shriveled and dry. Winter was approaching and as the cold settled in, I’d look out into the backyard from the window and watch the dead plants swaying with the freezing winds. As painful as it was, I felt stronger letting something we’d tended together die, as if in that letting go I was reminding myself that it had been only temporary, the needing anyone so badly.

    “You need to let go of him and focus on your daughter.” This was the constant advice I received from well-meaning friends. As a single mother, I always found it strange how policed my emotions were by others when it came to any romantic endeavors, how shamed I would be for mourning anyone at all. 

    I’d already known heartbreak, had mothered alone when my baby was only one. I didn’t need the reminder; single moms know well how to mitigate their sadness and still nourish their babies. Although I’d known it before, the depression had never taken hold of me so fiercely. I realized I was mourning more than losing a partner, or the aftermath of emotional abuse; I was also far away from the writing career I’d always imagined I’d have. And I was finally feeling the deep pain I had buried when my relationship with my daughter’s father ended. Even then, I’d been shamed for my sadness and advised to focus on my child. 

    It was a difficult winter, alone in my thoughts. I remember wishing there was a way someone could crawl into my mind and cradle it, almost like holding my hand to lead me out of my sadness. I didn’t even know what clinical depression was, though I realized I had experienced episodes over the years. I remember sitting blankly, staring at the grimy walls of a community mental health clinic where I was finally prescribed antidepressants. 

    Renewal

    A month after that, I was taking regular runs again, a practice I used to love. My stamina returned and the body that had shriveled up all winter grew robust and strong. 

    The following spring, I finally gathered enough intention to walk down the deck and face the garden. Pulling out the shriveled roots, I felt ashamed at my neglect. When I’d finished clearing the space, I watered and turned the soil, taken with how rich it had become. I sat in silence and thought about how that reflected inward, as well. The pain and solitude had alchemized me and what had sat inside that whole winter was now made anew.

    Years later, I’m sitting in my therapist’s office. She’s white, Midwest-born and raised. I hadn’t planned on having a white therapist, but when I’d filled out the preference form I only checked off “woman.” She had an optimism I appreciated, and I didn’t feel especially inclined to inquire whether she was aware just how much of that optimism came from her privilege. I saw parts of myself reflected in her personality. One of the more painful aspects of my internal calcination was accepting how hopeful I’ve always tended to be, even despite the harm I would seek out. My optimism was the reason I had stayed in abusive situations as well as my catalyst for leaving. I’d hope it would get better and once I saw it wouldn’t, I’d hope a doorway would appear. 

    My career was now in motion. I was dumbfounded by the task of negotiating a book contract without an agent and didn’t know how to proceed. I’d written and performed largely for free for my entire career and was realizing that I was afraid to ask for a substantial sum because I still struggled with my own self-worth. 

    A Reluctant Astronaut

    “Did you send the email?” 

    “I didn’t. Not yet, I just, don’t want to seem off-putting, you know? What if I ask for too much and they rescind their offer?” 

    “I don’t think that’s going to happen,” she said. “They approached you.”

    I cradled my head in my hands. “I don’t know how to do this. No one taught me about money. All of this is new. I’m navigating this alone and there’s no map, no manual.”

    “You know what you are?”

    I looked up.

    “You’re a reluctant astronaut. That’s what my mom called me and my sisters when we were afraid. You have the ability to travel through the universe, and you’re afraid to get in the captain’s seat. You’ve trained, you’re ready. You’ve got to get out there for all those who didn’t get the chance, and more so for those who will.”

    I blinked back tears. A reluctant astronaut. In all my life, no one had ever said anything even remotely close to those words, that concept. 

    “You’ve got to send that email.” 

    I realized how much her words had struck me. The queer daughter of first-generation parents, I was told that I would not be allowed to leave home for college. My older brothers were encouraged to exercise their freedom while I stayed in my hometown and worked while I went to school. I could only move out when I found a husband. I wasn’t taught I was a reluctant astronaut. Instead, I was tethered to the ground from birth. 

    I wondered what would have been of me had I been encouraged to fly. 

    ***

    There are times when I have to leave my daughter, now ten years old. Sometimes she’ll watch me pack, her eyes heavy.

    “Mommy, don’t go. I get scared when you’re far away, scared you won’t return.” 

    I don’t tell her I’m afraid, too. I’m not afraid that I won’t return, but that I won’t get to leave at all.

    I need her to be brave for both of us. She’s now old enough to understand she’s a reluctant astronaut, too. I want to make this natural for us, how sometimes I’ll have to go sit in the captain’s chair and close the hatch, home becoming small as a pin before fading out.

    View the original article at thefix.com