Curve and roll, baby!

I was looking back through my post history, wondering if I could re-post an article I previously wrote on body image. But, when I looked back through my archive, I realised that I had written so much about body image and the relationship I had with mine. Every post I read triggered me to remember something different.

Some of the posts were written quickly when I was having a good day and had found that chanting a mantra was the best way forward. Another was after I had read a positive book. Another was after I thought my body demons had gone for sure.

The most accurate I found was this: My Biggest Breakthrough – an aptly named post where I claimed to have solved the problem of my body issues.

Reading through that last one filled me with a smile. I was happy to see that 1 year ago I had realised how much I had changed my relationship with my body and I’m proud to say that I’ve, more or less, been able to keep that mentality.

The theme of this year’s Mental Health Week is: BODY IMAGE. And this is a topic I could write about endlessly – and have in the past.

Rather than spew about how my relationship with my body has changed – there are plenty of articles in this blog archive for that – I would rather tell you about some of the ways I have managed to move past my issues, some of the best people to follow, best books to read, podcasts to listen to and what I do when problems arise again.

But, I will give you a little bit of context…

I stopped swimming at the age of 16 – going from county squad training 3/4 times a week, to nothing. This was at a time when my body was changing through puberty but I didn’t really notice. (I could still eat a whole pack of doughnuts and stay slim). I took these unhealthy habits to uni, where my metabolism caught up with me and I gained a stone in 3 months. I lost the stone over summer and came back to uni and put on 2.

My whole university education was a cycle of diet fads, starvation, punishing exercises, comparisons, tears and veganism when it came to my body and losing weight. That didn’t change until I started working in London, aged 22. And, in the past 2 years, I have finally managed to sort myself out.

But I couldn’t have done it alone and for me, it was important to realise that things that worked for other people did NOT work for me. 

Here are some of the things that got me through:

Number 1…Books

I just love reading and one of the first things that really impacted my mental shift was reading articles and self-help books that helped me relate to other people. I didn’t choose the kind of non-fiction books that put you out there as a medical case but rather chose the memoirs and autobiographies written about people’s struggles. One of the most poignant was Mad Girl by Bryony Gordon which recounted her mental health throughout her life. I found the book so excitingly honest and it was the first book that I had properly read which signalled to me that mental health should not be kept behind closed doors. It was given to me as a gift by my aunt and I treasured it before releasing it, as she had to me, to go and help someone else.

After I read that book, I was in a frenzy and picked up various other feminist and body positive books. One of the books I read was by Megan Crabbe, or @bodyposipanda.

Number 2…Instagram

Though there is often a lot of stick for social media presenting negative attitudes and feelings, if used correctly, it can be a wonderful tool for healing. I removed all the negative, food focused and body/exercise obsessed accounts from my instagram and honed in on the good stuff. One such account was @bodyposipanda and her weekly dances in her underwear. At the same time, I also followed @kate_speer, who documents her struggle with mental illness and branched out into finding a community for people suffering with their mental health.

Number 3…Podcasts

In the search for alternative material to tune my brain into, I headed to Spotify and followed podcasts like Yoga Girl, which helped me to focus my spirit on something else. I enjoyed all the engaging topics and found it refreshing to muddle through real-life problems rather than just what you looked like.

Number 4…Intuitive eating 

With the niggling voice of dieting still kicking around in my brain, I tried a way of eating that wasn’t said to be a diet but still felt as though I had control. When I started intuitive eating, it wasn’t for long but something seemed to click in my brain without me even thinking. Whereas before I had been petrified of the feeling of being hungry (since I associated that feeling with the pain of IBS that would always follow as I was growing up), I learned to allow myself to feel a little bit of hunger before I ate again. I banished meal times and snack times and really listened to my body. In a short time, I naturally realised when I needed to eat, what I wanted to eat and when I wanted to stop. This is a practice that I still continue today and find it super super easy to follow.

 

Though these are the steps that have helped me regain confidence in my body and helped to heal my relationship with food, like I said, they won’t work for every body. But hopefully this story is encouraging enough to demonstrate that even though the road looks hard at the moment, the pain doesn’t have to last forever and there will be that breakthrough moment for you.

Focus on: Mental Health

It probably hasn’t escaped your notice that, in the UK, this week is Mental Health Awareness Week. I think it’s a great time of year and ever more topical as we open our hearts and minds to recognise that life is not always that easy.

I thought a good way to celebrate the week was to give you one post every day in a different area of mental health and how it has affected my life. (Yes, I know it’s Tuesday, but better later than never…)

Today, I wanted to start by going through my memory and focusing on those areas which are particularly poignant in terms of mental health. I’ve been lucky in the sense that I’ve never had any mental health episodes which have severely affected my life – however bad they might have been. But, I have struggled – as we all have. And, happily, I have discovered practices that help me get out the other side when things crop back up.

In my early childhood, gaining mental strength was not something that was heavily focused upon. I remember nights feeling highly distressed as my parents would fight and, generally, growing up – with all the new things and exams – was not the best time of my life. As I got older, I knew that inside I was growing angry with the constant arguments at home and I felt like whenever I talked to anyone about anything that I had experienced, they didn’t understand. Everyone’s parents fought, right? But I felt as though the fighting had left a deep mark on who I was.

When I moved out of home, I had the stress of leaving. I cried for weeks and, in that moment, I realised how dependent I had been on my family. (Little did I know how much I craved and enjoyed the independence.)

Being at University brought an added challenge into my life in the fact that it was hard. And, not only was it hard, but there was a lot of work. And you owed the government before you even started. And there were expensive course books to source. And you had to read every day. And you had to secondary read. And you had to do your class prep. And you had to try and make friends. And you had to drink. And you had to keep on top of your fitness and body.

University was always plugged to me as a dream – and I really had the best time of my life. But what was also plugged was that I would probably meet my husband. My focus shifted onto comparing myself with others. Was I as fun as them? How did people drink and stay slim? Could I complete my course and find love?

Though they had always been niggling in the background, at university was where my body issues really began to show. In the first semester, I gained 1 stone and for the rest of my 4 years (!!) at uni, I became more and more preoccupied with my weight. I would starve myself. I would diet. I would exercise obsessively. I brought WeightWatchers into my life. But no matter how hard I tried, I was never happy with my body.

Almost every day, I would feel unhappy with my weight and began to wear less tight-fitting clothes and often shrouded myself in a jumper. I was frustrated with my body. It never went the way I wanted it to. I got frustrated with my mind, because it never accepted me the way I was.

A big change came as I entered the church and became a Christian. I realised that life was bigger than the fears I had about gaining weight. Church was healing, but soon the old fears began to creep back in.

When I left university, I went to London where I lived with a lot of anxiety dating someone properly for the first time. By the end, I was unhappy and when things finished my mind became wild with opportunity. Suddenly, being single again felt exciting and I didn’t know how to contain it. I had a million ideas pop into my head and I found riding out my job for at least 1 year annoying. I felt as though I had done everything that was required of me: I went to uni and I had passed and now I had a real job. But I wanted to leave.

I felt trapped but also scared because leaving suddenly felt really big. I had no big goal to reach towards and I questioned my purpose more heavily than ever. In a sense, I had just crash landed into a job that I was good at, enjoyed and was well paid. And yet I knew it wasn’t my future. Neither was getting a mortgage. I needed to get out.

But one good thing that happened was, whilst focusing all that mental energy outside of my body, my relationship with food got better. I crowded out my days with yoga, running, meeting friends and writing. I calmed my mind by setting mini goals so it always felt as though I would be achieving. Without really noticing, I started intuitive eating and even though I lost weight, I didn’t even realise. With body issues, my mind was calm. I also started getting laser on my upper lip which gave me an extra bit of confidence in an area I was usually embarrassed about.

Right now, I would say that my mental health is good.

A lot of that is down to the practices that I have put in place to calm my mind and avoidance of triggers. I’m also lucky to find myself in the best, most loving relationship with a travelling ambition and knowledge that soon I will be able to dedicate as much time as I want to write.

But, I still have my days (like yesterday) where I want to push the world away, curl up into a ball and let the earth swallow me whole. But those days where I say “I can’t” are fewer now than before. And for that I am thankful.

repurposing yoga.

Now for the first time in my life I don’t believe that this post on yoga comes from my inner (wannabe) hipster.

Before I thought that’s what it was all about: being indie, caring about chakras and having thick, flowing blonde hair, a beautifully patterned sports bra and a heavenly-toned body to match.

My reason for taken up yoga now has come more from necessity than aesthetic needs. I’ve never been good at taking Instagram photos and now whilst my feed is getting more full of yogic vibes, it doesn’t look amazing.

And I don’t care. That’s not what yoga means to me now.

Why yoga?

There was a kind of cosmic shift that happened in my body as 2018 rolled in. It came from a place a numbness – a place where I was feeling very little and decided that whatever funk and anxiety I WAS feeling was partly in my control. Whilst I had enjoyed riding the wave of emotion which I usually advocate, not knowing why I felt what I felt meant that I couldn’t properly connect with my feelings.

Initially I didn’t see yoga as the medicine to this problem but I was desperate.

I went on a run and listened to YogaGirl and her tips for doing yoga every day. Since I was looking for a New Year’s challenge that wasn’t pointless and impossible for the sake of it, in that moment I decided to take up 30 days of yoga.

18 days in, it is clear that yoga cannot leave my life now.

How my practice has now changed.

One thing I was particularly cautious about when starting my yoga practice was the conflicting messages and – what I thought were – the rules of the flow. I’d dabbled in some summer back garden yoga in my 2nd year of uni and I got really into the spiritual side of it.

What happened is that that side of the practice was not really connected to who I was at the core. However, oblivious to that fact, I continued to find out about chakras and forced myself to believe that the only issue I had was a misalignment of my third eye. I tried to imagine my soul escaping from the holes in my body but this lack of knowledge as to what all this was really about made me start with a bad foundation.

Inevitably, I stopped yoga.

My decision to return was not only informed by a podcast but also because I was running more. I wanted to stretch. And, more than that, through my periods of feeling numb in my chest, I wanted to feel something.

I would start breathing deep to feel my lungs and expand my chest and soon I realised how good and calming that felt.

As I started my 30 day yoga challenge, I married my need to stretch with my need to calm down and deep breathed my way through the practice.

This is what my yoga is now for.

It’s a sacred space (And yes, finally, I feel like I understand what those yogis have been talking about!!!) Not sacred because of any spiritual or religious connection I get on the mat, but because yoga is a treat for my body. It’s a release – and this is why it’s become essential.

In these 18 days, I feel like I’ve never had so much air in my lungs.

Whilst I still struggle with my feelings a bit, yoga gives me a place to reflect. I can calm it down, reconnect with myself and, one of the most important things, be present.

I’m learning that what I call my ‘productive anxiety’ has always driven my anxiety high. I always feel the need to do. The need to be changing the world. Developing new ideas. Donating more of me. Being more creative. Being better at my job. And that takes a lot out of a person!

Usually what happens is that I get too burnt out to ever make those changes.

So, I suppose, yoga is a way of putting myself first so that I can help others as and when that arises. I have learned the power of slow. The power of here. And the power of now.

I have learned (and now advocate) the power of YOGA.