Look at me! It’s a whole new me! I’m better, smarter, faster, thinner, I can play guitar, surf, play the piano, I learned how to dance and paint and I do yoga every single day sometimes twice. I even meditate and drink green juice all day long.
I’m Going into hiding for 45 Days and I’m Going To Emerge as a Whole New Me!
There is a 45 day reboot meme. You go into hiding for 45 days and focus steadily on weight training, nutrition and whatever else. You then emerge a whole new you.
This is simply another diet trope that causes people to do restrictive and painful things that are unsustainable. Think the Biggest Loser.
The idea that you have to hide puts so much pressure on this. But what if every day for 45 days you could instead add something positive? Like more sleep? More water? A daily walk?
It’s so easy to think that you are doing something different to help yourself. But the only way to really feel better is to slow down and integrate positive behaviors.
There are so many other patterns that the eating disorder brain does. Below the surface deep underneath the chatter of your eating disorder is a soft whisper. Underneath “You gotta be thinner! You gotta work out harder! You gotta eat clean!”
Below all that noise is a quiet whisper… “i’m just not good enough.”
Because the pain of that voice is so unbearable, the job of the eating disorder behaviors are to drown it out. You starve yourself or try to fit into clothes that are two sizes too small for you. After that, you beat yourself up because they don’t fit. You do things for other people at the expense of yourself. You obsess on people who don’t give you the attention you need or deserve. You believe that you are not enough and so you date people who also believe that you are not enough. In that way, they validate that belief for you. The way the ED brain works, the underlying etiology of it is that obsessive fast moving brain. We couple the belief “I am not enough,” with a fast moving brain which results in eating disorder behaviors. We have become so used to these voices and behaviors that they barely seem weird to us. We are not aware that it’s poison that keeps infiltrating our system.
You don’t have to work so hard that you’re rejecting yourself.
You don’t have to be the best human being in the world.
You don’t have to hide for 45 days and become “a whole new you…”
Instead consider the fact that space, rest and relaxation can allow that soft part inside of you to emerge. That soft part of you is the need that is buried underneath. It is underneath eating too little or eating too much. It is underneath working too much, taking care of everyone around you and sacrificing yourself for everyone else.
When you try to rest your brain and stop thinking and stop doing and just allow yourself to just be… the parts of you that need tending to will present themselves. Then, that softness inside of you, the part that KNOWS that YOU ARE GOOD ENOUGH JUST THE WAY YOU ARE… It will let you relax, it will let you stop thinking, and it will give you some space to heal.
This is your birthright. Your body and your soul all want to heal. They just need space and the rest to do it.
