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Normal isn't Normal

Heather Maio • February 23, 2021
So much of my life has been shaped by food and body obsession. The idea that if I could fix the way I looked on the outside, my insides would somehow magically follow…

Spoiler alert: I’ve been a size 0, I’ve weighed my “goal weight,” had a body fat percentage most would envy, and nothing magical happens. It gave me another impossible standard to try to uphold.

The wild thing is, as my disordered relationship with food and my body grew stronger, so did the praise I received for how I looked.  

“What are you doing! You look amazing!”

Oh, you know, just only eating 1200 calories, an hour or two of cardio a day, no carbs. And then, on the weekend, I give myself a cheat meal, which turns into a shit show. I eat until I am in pain, then I throw it all up and start all over again tomorrow with 90 minutes of cardio.

Not really. I told them I was watching my calories and carbs. Not a lie. Also, far from the truth.  

I say this in complete seriousness; be leery of taking health advice from a chic with a six-pack.  She may have an incredibly fucked up relationship with food.  

(I had an incredibly fucked up relationship with food).

The problem with disordered eating is it doesn’t seem so disordered. Our skinny-toned, tight cellulite-free obsessed culture has normalized many things that are far from normal.

Earning our food in the form of exercise or skipped meals.

Burning our food, making up for what we ate with hours at the gym.

Counting our calories, using apps and food scales to tell us exactly how much to put inside our bodies.

Following programs written by strangers with no qualifications other than a six-pack and a smile, letting them convince us that eating an incredibly low number of calories is a good thing, and if we fail…. well, that’s on us. We didn’t have enough discipline.

Cheat meals, the whole idea. What the fuck is a cheat meal? What are we cheating on?

Eliminating entire food groups in the name of weight loss (looking at you, Keto).

Going on elimination protocols again and again. Cutting out grains, sugar, and joy from your diet whenever you feel off track or have a vacation coming up…

Cleansing, fasting.

Eating only organic, natural, clean, paleo foods.  An obsession with eating as clean as possible.  

We have normalized the abnormal.

Take it from someone who from the outside may have looked like the epitome of health. Much of what we glamorize right now is not normal.  It is not healthy.  It is disordered.  Wellness culture is profiting off people who are unwell.  

This week is National Eating Disorder Awareness Week, and it reminds me of our extraordinarily complicated and complex relationship with food. A relationship that starts out so simple. We eat when we are hungry, and we stop when we are full.

When does it turn? 

For me, around eight, when my parents, who meant no harm, decided I was a little too chubby, and they would help me out by limiting the sugar I consumed. I remember my mother buying Snack Wells cookies and fat-free puddings. Special treats just for me. My brothers, however, had no limits. They could have whatever they wanted without question. I learned at a young age having a body that small and socially acceptable gives you a lot of power and privilege.  

High school, when I was in size 10 and my friends all wore 4s.

Having a baby at 18, seeing my body completely transform and not understanding why it didn’t bounce back like the people I saw on TV.

Figuring out I could cut out all carbs and lose 50 pounds quick.

And then finding out two months later, the weight will all come back as soon as I start eating them again…

Learning about calorie counting seemed too good to be true. I could have my cake and eat it too, so long as it fits in my calories. 

The problem was my calories were obscenely low, but you don’t know what you don’t know. I just thought I lacked discipline. 

I didn’t know I was starving myself, fighting with my most basic biological needs. Society told me that eating 1200 calories should be easy.

They didn’t tell me it would send me into binges that were fueled with shame on a weekly basis, and to fix those binges, I would abuse laxatives and purge.  

Sticking your fingers down your throat is a disgusting habit, one no one talks about freely, yet I have encountered so many who have done it. An entire club of us who thought that by purging our food, we could eradicate our bullshit along with it…

I am extremely proud to say I am on the other side of my internal war.  I treat my body with a type of love and respect I didnt know was possible.  But it took me far too long to get here.

Now I see the problem, when I was IN IT I couldn’t… it is hard to see the forest through the trees when focused on a singular goal. In my case, it was to find some form of perfection in my body. At times it was a goal weight. At others, a jean size, having a six-pack… the goals shifted along with the methods.

It never looked like I had an eating disorder because I was doing “normal” things.  As long as I wasn't purging I thought I was healed.  I wasn't, far from it.  The problem is we (society and our fucked-up obsession with being skinny) have made truly harmful behaviors seem standard.

At times I perpetuated these harmful behaviors. I gave women meal plans, I showed people how to log and accurately track their calories. 

Told people to ignore their cravings…take a walk. It will go away. Encouraged weekly weigh-ins, which disgusts me the most… the scale has nothing important to tell you. Ever.

But I did not know what I did not know, and I couldn’t see what I was unwilling to see.

That all along, I had the power and ability to feed myself without the help of apps, programs, rules, protocols, and scales.

You have the same.  

We all started believing the lie we were incapable of nourishing ourselves, thinking we can be trusted around food because every time we don’t have a plan, or rules, the wheels fall off.

Here is what is really happening, though; the secret diet coaches don’t want you to know.

You are not failing because of a lack of discipline. You are failing because every diet, ever, all of them, is designed for you to fail.    

The diet is not going to save you.  

It is what is fucking you up.

I still work with women around food. I am happy to say it looks so much different, though.  

I will never give anyone rules to follow ever again. There are no rules with eating, not even for a few weeks. I see now how harmful they can be for some populations of people, and the problem is people hide their shit well. 

No one would have looked at me 15 years ago and saw a raging eating disorder. They just saw a girl who lost weight—a girl who finally got it together with her body. 

 We applaud weight loss like it is the most important thing it can do. We never think to ask about the behaviors that weight loss was a result of.  

Were they positive? Did they enhance your life? Make you better, give you more energy? Are they things you would want your own children doing?

Or would you rather not people know the full truth? That you go to bed hungry because you think yourself undeserving of feeling fullness until you are in a body that is smaller. 

You are scared to eat even a bite of some things because you are convinced doing so would lead you into a binge you cannot control. (pro-tip= if you are going to tell the future, make sure you enjoy the outcomes).  

Ask yourself before you make any changes with food, are you adding health into your life? Or are you trading one vise for another? Is what you are doing something you feel good about, in alignment with who you want to be, serving your highest and best self…

Or are you punishing yourself into a body under the delusion that by becoming less, you will somehow become more?

Our relationship with food is not logical. But it should never be harmful.

There is so much more to this conversation. It is too large to fit in one post.

My past can feel too raw and close for my emotions to not take over. For now, I am ending with this, do with it what you will:

I tried everything to "fix" myself.

I cut carbs, and I cut sugar.

I measured, I weighed, I counted, I logged.  

I restricted under the guise that it would somehow make the cravings go away. If I just didn’t eat added sugar, or processed 
carbs, or whatever for 21 days, 30 days, 6 weeks, I would one day wake up free of a desire to eat “bad” foods.

I pushed myself to the limits multiple times, with every diet there is.

And none helped me.  

They all made me worse. 

I didn’t heal until I stopped.

No more dieting, no more counting, no more weighed, measuring, calculating. Nothing was off the table. No cleanses, no 
rules, no restrictions.

My relationship with food is not logical. Now I know it never will be.  

But it is no longer fucked up…  

My mission as a coach is to help women heal, feel good in their bodies, cultivate practices and habits they are PROUD of, they make them feel good and whole. And I know- with 100% certainty, there is no place for any rules in that process.    

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