Why I Took a Break From Blogging

A few months ago, i had a very interesting response from someone (a woman I highly respect) in regards to this blog. 

"Well, I enjoyed reading your blog until you started posting pictures of those girls with zero body fat and glorifying them like they are the ideal woman. I doubt most of those girls even have a period." 

Her words were disheartening. My intentions were/are not to make "normal" women feel "bad" about their bodies; only encourage and inspire us to all pursue health and fitness. For me, pictures like this:

 @laurasykora

Don't make me feel bad about my body but motivate me to get to the gym and work it out. hard; and NOT because I want to be skinny but desire to maintain long, lean, defined muscle. In my opinion, muscle says "yeah, I work hard and I care." 

And when I say muscle, I mean this...

 

And not this...(even though the dress is fabulous)

And NOT this.... 

 

When we eat healthfully and exercise 5 days a week, our bodies DO become harder, and more defined, with smaller fat cells. It's just what happens. And while the "perfect" body is 100% unattainable for me, a healthy toned body IS attainable (at least until I have kids! lol.).

And it's really, really not about what is on the exterior. 

Someone who is super health conscious and stressed out about it is most likely doing more harm than good, because of all the horrible things that stress does to the body. A healthy heart and mind is JUST as important as eating consciously and getting that heart rate up. SLEEP is super important too! And probably my biggest weakness. I am addicted to staying up late! It's terrible. 

We all have things we are working on. If the images on my blog cause you to feel insecure, or hateful, or obsessed, please send me an email and I will take the picture down. I don't want to create unhealthy thinking in the pursuit of an "ideal". God created your body to be your body, not Miranda Kerr's. You were created for a specific purpose, and your body was crafted for a specific purpose. 

If you are overweight or feel overweight and hate yourself for it, try to reverse your thinking.

Try to focus on what you are putting inside your body, instead of what the outside looks like. 

You will begin to love your body for what it can do rather than how it attracts people to you. 

You'll begin to love yourself, and instead of eating that piece of celery because it only has like 10 calories a stalk (exaggeration, I know!), you'll be eating it because of it's rich vitamin C content. 

You'll drink a green smoothie and appreciate all of the vitamins and minerals that are nourishing your system, and when you're hungry at 3pm you'll reach for some almond butter and apples, because you'll actually be able to taste the real sugar and enjoy the healthy fat. 

Work on the inside, and the outside will come with time. You won't feed your dog chocolate because it's bad for his digestion, so why do you put processed chemicals inside your stomach when you KNOW it is terrible for you? 

Yo Yo dieting is all because of your MINDSET. I used to do it when I had an eating disorder and STILL feel the temptation to do it, but the mentality is sickening. It's so vain! It's all about losing five pounds here, ten pounds there, and it's not about inner holistic health.

Quit the yoyoing. think about your BODY and what you are putting into it. Think whole foods, ones that aren't processed, ones that have a readable lable. If you can't read the ingredients, don't buy it. Stay away from sugars that will spike your stress levels. Pray. Relax. Go for a walk and enjoy the weather. Read a book. Laugh. Be with people. Make friends. Turn off the TV.

Cultivate a spirit of humility, 

a smile of joy, 

a calm center, 

a servant attitude toward the world around you, 

and you will begin to FEEL amazing. 

You'll be full of energy. 

You will look forward to your day at school, or the office, or your children, because you will soak in every moment and appreciate this beautiful life.

After a couple months contemplating the future of this blog, I will continue to post pics of women doing amazing things like kipping pull ups and handstands, because those women are amazing and they are an inspiration regarding how I want to live my life to the fullest and perform everything to the best of my ability. It's not about how they "look," but about their commitment and resolve to live a passionate life.

Take a deep breath. 

<3 Beth

National Eating Disorder Awareness Week

 

 As last week was the National Eating Disorder Awareness week, I thought it appropriate to re-blog this article to promote awareness. Katie Levans is a blogger (you might have also seen her on the latest season of The Bachelor) I follow on the reg, and I love her approach to health, fitness, and body-image. The following article was originally found on Elephant Journal's website. 

 

To read the original article, click here.

To view Katie's blog, click here.

 

Beyond the Body: Yoga & Disordered Eating. ~ Katie Levans

Photo: Courtney Linnehan

February 24 – March 2 is National Eating Disorder Awareness week.

I remember when I stopped eating. It was Christmas break of my junior year of high school. The holiday was over and we had a little over a week before returning to classes. I don’t know why or how but I made a very clear, very conscious decision not to eat until New Year’s Eve.

I’d always had a preoccupation with weight and appearance. I wasn’t obese by any stretch of the imagination (or medical definition), but I certainly held on to my “baby fat” well into adolescence and therefore, never got behind that ’90s girl trick of tying one’s shirt into a crop top with a knot on one side. (In the end, I suppose that’s a fashion bullet I artfully—albeit accidentally—dodged.)

I preferred baggy sweatsuits and leggings and wouldn’t wear a pair of jeans until middle school. Swimsuits were absolutely out of the question unless paired with an oversized t-shirt, an accessory that—let’s be honest—only drew more attention to my feeble attempt to disappear.

Today I’m a full-time yoga teacher and I live and breathe in nothing-left-to-the-imagination spandex, grateful every single day for a strong, healthy body that carries me through life and for the practice that taught me to finally love and appreciate that body.

But growing up my body was at no point something to celebrate. I never saw it as a living, breathing miracle of science rapidly replicating cell upon cell, building a framework of flesh and bone and blood that would house my soul for the rest of my adult life. Instead I always saw it as something shameful, something imperfect, something to change.

Where did I learn this? Certainly not from my mom who didn’t allow scales in the house and always disapproved of plastic surgery horror stories on the news, shaking her head and reminding us we were perfect the way we were. In fact, I can’t recollect a time I have ever heard her speak negatively of her own appearance let alone mine.

I guess I could blame TV and movies, airbrushed magazines that misrepresent what the human form is, and the resulting “beauty ideal” that is neither attainable nor existent.

And, really, it’s a combination of all of the above. The fact is we’re born into an image-obsessed world that is constantly telling us to be something and someone else: thinner, taller, tanner, sexier.

Skinny jeans not working with your actual genes? We can lipo that! Pale? Spray on a tan! Pudgy? Pop a diet pill! Perfect? Impossible!
It’s sick, really.

My decision to stop eating in high school didn’t seem so abnormal to me at the time.

Everyone was dieting. Lots of girls wanted to lose weight. What started as a week of seemingly innocent weight control quickly spiraled into a lifetime of disordered eating behaviors, including extreme calorie restriction, crash dieting, binging and exercise-induced anorexia, all habits that people around me seem to consider “normal” girl behavior.

I always choose my words carefully here: “disordered eating” instead of “eating disorder.” Part of it’s because it sounds, ironically enough, a little prettier. A little less crazy, if you will. And part of it’s that I’ve never had an actual diagnosis and I feel that claiming an eating disorder without really having one trivialize the estimated eight million, sometimes fatal clinical cases in the US.

What I’ve experienced is what’s called an Eating Disorder Not Otherwise Specified (EDNOS), a catchall classification in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-V) that covers any pattern of disordered eating behavior that doesn’t fit the definition of Anorexia Nervosa or bulimia.

Unfortunately, the sad reality is that 70 percent of all eating disorders fall under this category and, therefore, are largely undiagnosed and untreated. In fact, our view is so warped on the subject that clearly disordered behaviors have somehow become the norm: skipping a meal to save calories, over-exercising to compensate for an indulgence, eliminating entire food groups, bingeing (even without purging) and an unrelenting preoccupation with food are all disordered eating behaviors.

I’m not saying that healthy eating and weight loss are to be abandoned, but an unhealthy preoccupation with either can be more damaging—mentally and physically—than most people realize.

Photo: Wanda Koch

Recovery from eating disorders is rare, and while treatment programs can help to normalize and stabilize, most associated behaviors will last a lifetime.

Personally, I’ve never sought professional help, but I have found—quite by accident—some semblance of normalcy only through an unexpected practice of yoga.
When I first started practicing yoga six years ago, I did so (not surprisingly) to lose weight (and ideally look like Jennifer Anniston, who I heard through the tabloid grapevine was on her mat on the regular). But what started as an exercise rooted in a preoccupation with my appearance quickly taught me to transcend beyond my physical body to something bigger.
I don’t recall one specific moment of clarity or the ever-elusive sense of enlightenment yogis chase, but I do know that over time I slowly stopped viewing my body as something to torture and starve and punish with exercise and instead looked at it as an incredible machine capable of carrying me through seemingly impossible poses and into a life of unlimited possibility. For the first time ever my body became something to celebrate.

Photo: Courtney Linnehan

While my experience is anecdotal, I know my story is not the only one of its kind. In fact, there is even some emerging research that supports yoga as a successful adjunctive therapy to standard eating disorder treatments.
One study in the Journal of Adolescent Health found a decrease in eating disorder symptoms and decreased food preoccupation in a group of boys and girls ages 11-21. And another in the Psychology of Women Quarterly found that women who practice yoga report lower self-objectification, greater body satisfaction and fewer disordered eating attitudes.

What’s so beautiful about yoga, I think, is that the practice uses the body to ultimately disconnect us from the body.

It seems counterintuitive at first, but dedication to a physical yoga practice is what led me to the realization that I am not my body, that I am not limited by its physical limitations nor defined by its dimensions. And for that, I am forever grateful.


Katie Levans is a full-time yoga teacher, writer, fighter of hunger and dietetics school dropout with a Master of Science in Nutrition. She lives, works and plays in Charlotte, North Carolina.
www.katielevans.com | twitter: @sweettaterblog | katierlevans@gmail.com