Small Strokes Big Oaks

Today’s guest post on body image comes from Amanda ReCupido. You can read more on her blog, The Undomestic Goddess, and you can follow her on twitter. This post is a cross post from her blog.

As mentioned, I’m doing some self-reflection this year thanks to the recovery of my childhood diaries. I came across this entry about making resolutions:

Dec. 30th 1995

It’s almost the turn of the year. Here are my resolutions:

1. Think before I say things and act.

2. Follow my diet. Hardly any sweets. Half my lunch. Run for at least 15 min. per day.

3. Listen at all times during school and do homework first thing when I get home from school.

*The bold is mine.

At the time of this writing I was 9 years old. For pages and pages before this I wrote about what and how much I ate at dinner and with friends like it was proof that I was happy. And I was always eating cake, be it birthday cake, Communion cake, Friday cake – you name it, I was eating it, and writing about it, joyously. I would list “I didn’t get dessert in my lunch” under “Bad Things That Happened Today.” Just a year before at my dance recital I had written self-affirming sentences like “I have a great smile” and “I look so pretty in my costume.” Why, at 9 years old, was I so obsessed with my weight?

An even better question, why, exactly 14 years later (at the time of this writing it’s December 30, 2009 – yay for auto-post!) do I still create the same mental lists? “Only one sweet per day. At least one workout per day. Walking 20 blocks can count as a workout. Not eating chocolate for a day can count as a workout. Skipping a meal can count as a workout.” I’m still bargaining, I’m still running that dangerous inner monologue that got me where I was in high school and college. As a friend once pointed out, those who dabbled in eating disorders are just like any other type of addict – the disease, the obsession never fully goes away. Sure, I’m not as self-destructive as I used to be, but for all the feeling happy with myself and talk about wanting to work out for my health (which is true!), I still want to get back the dancer body I had when I was exercising a minimum of 3 times a day, which is neither realistic nor healthy.

So how can we resolve to change? How do we hug our 9 year old selves, and our current selves, and tell both that they’re beautiful and that everything’s going to be okay?

I guess like any addiction, the journey away from self-hate and towards self-actualization starts with one small step. Here we go.

See all entries from The Journal Project here.