When I was little, my sister was afraid of monsters in her closet. I’m not sure who started this, but every night, my dad or I would spray into her closet from a Pledge can we’d covered in construction paper and labeled “Monster Be Gone.” It actually seemed to work.
I know this much is true: it is very hard to say no.
I woke up this morning and remembered my commitment to intuitive eating. I said to myself: Today you can eat anything you want.
I spent this past weekend with my M’s family near Chicago. As I mentioned earlier, M’s grandfather passed away on Thursday morning so the whole family went up to his grandmother’s house for the weekend.
Lately I’ve been thinking about being present. Not in a zen, yoga, slowing down kind of way. But in the way that the present counts for something. I got to thinking yesterday about the way we prioritize a future, not yet attained version of ourselves over the here-and-now-and-imperfect self we actually are. I found myself feeling surprisingly hopeful yesterday. I thought about how giving up dieting has returned me to myself, my present self.
In 2011 I began writing about intuitive eating. I wrote to process and to heal after living with disordered eating for nearly ten years. In many ways, intuitive eating saved me from myself. Most importantly, intuitive eating taught me to listen to myself and to acknowledge a quiet voice that whispered, “You are enough.” I wrote these essays for myself, but knowing how deeply rooted issues of weight are with feelings of identity and belonging, I decided to publish them here in hopes of helping others navigate the road back to oneself.