“Are you free?”
The evening before my family’s Easter gathering my dad asked me that simple, powerful question. It was the question that began something I like to call: The Unlearning Process. A mental process of leaving behind old thought patterns and picking up new, healthy ones. Living outside of captivity necessitated change. Chains had become normal and comfortable. To live without chains, I had to learn a new way.
Initially, I was convinced I would just begin to eat like normal again. No restrictions. No extra workouts. However, as I took steps toward normalcy, I noticed that every step required an intentional, courageous shift in my mindset. It’s okay, Celeste, you can eat that. Love is greater than fear. You will be okay if you gain weight. Slow down. This exercise doesn’t have to kill you. You look fine. Stop checking yourself in the mirror. Each of those thoughts were small mental shifts away from the learned method of relating to food and my body. I knew life with an eating disorder was exhausting, but this path to recovery was unexpectedly draining. It went against the mental programming that my brain had been hard-wired to follow. My mind was accustomed to having so many body conscious thoughts throughout my day that I didn’t know a life without them. For roughly a year, I had learned a way of relating to food, to eating, to exercising, and to my body. The best way to understand the unlearning process is to first understand what it is I had learned in the first place. The mental programming. The thoughts. The behaviors.
What exactly did I learn that needed to be unlearned?
The following letters represent the way I had learned to view my relationships with food, eating, exercise, and my body. These were toxic, deeply-rooted, intensely learned ways of living.
Dear Food,
You are my friend. Sometimes. I have you segregated into “this” or “that” categories that way we can exist together in better harmony. I wouldn’t want all of you to be with me. Only the better types of you. I live for you. We spend most of my waking moments together up inside my head. You create anticipation in me. Anxiety in me. Fear in me. We have a love-hate relationship, and I’m pretty sure we both agree that it’s an awful sort of toxic. Please know that deep down I’d love to have all of you, but it just can’t be that way. If I want a better me, then I can only have the better you. I’ve told you before that the better you is the reduced fat, unrefined, carb-free, sugar-free, dairy-free, organic, fiber-filled, low-calorie version of you. You tell me the other types of you are fine to enjoy, but I know you are lying. You tend to do that to me with quiet and frustrating whispers. Stop telling me “in moderation.” I know better than that.
Yours truly and wholly, Celeste
Dear Eating,
Things have been strained for awhile. I bet you are adjusting too. Before you know it, this will become our new normal. We are usually alone together. We don’t tend to spend time together with others. I know we used to, fellowshipping at the table with others. I’d share you with my friends and family. Not anymore. You and I have a hidden relationship. I’ve cracked down the past year and made our time more controlled. We only gather over my types of food. To be honest, I used to enjoy you, but I’m beginning to forget the last time that I did. Sad, but true. It’s okay. You aren’t completely not in the picture. I think that’d be too drastic of a change for me. Not having you around would be altogether deadly. That’d be the end of me. So I’ll keep you around on my terms. We treat food like the currency for the “better” body I’ve been telling you about. You know, the one we are working to attain. Keep that in mind anytime you think our behavior is too restricted. Believe me, cutting food up into pieces, spending my time with you rather slowly, doing things different than my friends, all of it. It will pay off in the end.
Until next time, Celeste
Dear Exercise,
I really didn’t want to speak to you. I know I need to apologize for the way I use you. Things have just been really hard for me with food and eating. The way I see it, I come to you when things aren’t working out with them. Awful, I know, but necessary. I mean sometimes I come to you first, but only ever so I can spend more time with them. I use you one of two ways. The first way is to punish myself. You aren’t evil. I promise. You usually make me think better and breathe better. Yet, I don’t spend time with you for those reasons. I spend time with you because I’ve spent too much time with the other two. You tell me that it’s fine. That you want me to spend time with them. Deep down I feel you’re jealous, or maybe I’m needy. I think you want all of my time. I think I need to give it to you. Really, we’re just a mess. The second way I use you is to free me. It’s weird. When I spend time with you first, I all of a sudden feel like eating and food aren’t so bad after all, so I go to them with disproportionate expectations of how much I can handle. Then I come back to you feeling sad, and our unhealthy cycle happens all over again. I think that’s why I didn’t want to write to you…because I just don’t know what’s going on between us.
See you soon, Celeste
Dear Body,
Today is a good day for us, or at least it’s looking that way. Most of the time I can put up with you. But I get exhausted with your slowness. I keep beating you upside the head to remind you what we are here for: the ideal image. If we come together, I know we can achieve a better you. If I left you to yourself, you’d relax and think you’re fine. Well, you’re not. You are letting go again and that just can’t be. I mean, honestly, all of this time and effort spent reshaping you would be for nothing. At that point, I think I might just stop talking to you altogether. You have to look good. You have to show up. You have to show out. A few more months and my communication will ease up. I’ve been a little stressed lately and I’m taking it out on you. Just give it a few more months. My tone will go back to normal. I’ll top raising my voice. My judgment will cease. We won’t spend as much time in front of the mirror or on the scale or at the gym. When we go into fitting rooms, I’ll stop picking you apart. But for now, just know, it’s because I love you.
With high hopes, Celeste
These letters explain what I was working with, a version of Celeste who had learned to be restrictive, defensive, self-centered, harsh, and ultimately destructive. Believe me when I tell you that the unlearning process was unnatural. I had to have others teach me what normal was because I had genuinely forgotten.
For example, I remember this one day I sat with my family in our garage. Out of nowhere, it started raining. Amazed at the sudden and intense downpour, we set up lawn chairs inside the garage and watched the rain. It fell in thin sheets then scattered as it struck the pavement. To add to the moment, one of my siblings went and got Cookies and Cream ice cream, my favorite type of ice cream, but also something I had learned I could not eat. I watched each of my family members as they rose up from their chairs, enticed by the sweetness, to go grab a bowl for themselves. That’s when my self-talk began. Skip out. That’s what’s best. You don’t need ice cream to enjoy this moment. And maybe a few of my thoughts had slipped out or my countenance was too strained to go unnoticed because I remember one of my parents saying to me, “You can have ice cream too.”
I can? Yeah, I can. “Okay,” I breathed out, realizing restriction wasn’t going to have its way with me this time. I felt a light warmth rush through my body. “Be right back,” I nearly sang as I ran inside. That day, I learned how to eat a bowl of ice cream.
The unlearning process was not only unnatural but also uncomfortable. I had to have others talk me through moments when I felt full. One day, because I began to eat a normal amount of food again, I felt bloated and guilty. Why did you eat so much? Restrict. Go for a run. Drink more water. “Mom, I feel fat.”
“What did you eat?”
I pointed to the half-empty bag of tortilla chips and my almost empty plate of rice and beans. She reminded me that I hadn’t eaten that much. I nodded my head firmly, internalizing that everything was okay. I would be okay. Eventually the feeling of being full faded away and so did my guilt. That day, I learned that feeling full was something I could be thankful for.
Unlearned: Workouts have to be intense. Learned: Going for a walk and giving my body a chance to move is working out.
Unlearned: Some foods cannot be eaten. Learned: Food is meant to nourish my body and to sustain life. I can eat freely.
Unlearned: To be fit, I have to speak down on my body. Learned: To be healthy, I can speak words of grace over my body.
Unlearned: I can’t live without chains. Without control. Learned: I can walk in freedom. With complete surrender.
Recovering from an eating disorder is committing to an unlearning process. It takes time. It takes surrender. It takes community. It takes courage to interrupt my thoughts everyday and tell them they have no place taking up residence in my mind. And then–I speak words of grace and truth about deep beauty and resilience that is allowed to flourish inside of my soul. If I could go back, I would tell fourteen-year-old Celeste to trust that the unlearning process is worth it. I would tell her to be strong in moments where old patterns of thinking wander back into her mind and whisper sweet nothings about the life control and obsession will give back to her.
Don’t believe the lies. You will make it out.
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