I don’t work with extreme eating disorders. Because I don’t want to.

I am also not qualified to, and I never personally had one, but mostly… I don’t want to. It’s really hard, dark, heavy stuff.

And most importantly, you cannot save someone who does not actually want to be saved.

You can’t change someone who is only half willing to change.

My personal issue with food and weight was obsessive, miserable, chronic dieting and orthorexia, plus body dysmorphia, horrible body image, and weight fixation. And still, nobody could have saved me from myself. Nobody could get through to me past my own decision about what was important. I had to come to it on my own. And I had to want it badly.

I had to surrender to my biggest fear: being ugly. While at the exact same time, actively changing my beliefs about beauty and worth.

That’s a paradox: do the work to unlearn what you’ve learned about beauty. Unlearn all the reasons you believe gaining weight would make you ugly and unworthy. But at the same time, accept the possibility of actually being ugly.

Because if you feel worthy even if you believe you aren’t beautiful, you can’t lose.

That’s really what it comes down to: Wanting to be happy more than you want to be beautiful.

And I must always remember that I can’t force that epiphany on anyone – just as nobody could have forced it on me.

If The Fuck It Diet helps you with your eating disorder recovery, great. That’s wonderful. But I am not in the business of healing people or converting people, because I don’t believe you can do that.

The truth remains the same no matter how far down the food/weight rabbit hole you are: If you aren’t willing to do the really scary work, you won’t recover, no matter how many of my blog posts you read.

The desire to heal has to be stronger that your desire to stay feeling control.

Your desire to feel discomfort and pain has to become stronger than you desire to numb.

The desire to be healthy has to be stronger than your desire to be skinny.

The desire to live has to be stronger than your desire to wither away.

You have to be willing to face your biggest fear of being bigger. And nobody can force that on you.

Again, your desire to be happy, has to be stronger than your desire to be (your definition of) beautiful.

The Unwillingness to Be Alive

The other thing with eating disorders, both mild and extreme, it is a subconscious unwillingness to be in your body, to have a body, and to be a human.

It is an unwillingness to “be here”. On this earth. In this body.

Your body is where all the pain and trauma is, so the idea goes that if you can just shrink it, you can avoid some of this earthly pain.

But it’s inherently anti-life. And in order to heal, you have to be willing to ride in the messiness of humanity. It’s not easy, that’s why so many people are looking for a way out.

There has to be a major choice for something different, because how do you heal if you aren’t willing to be fully alive? You can’t.

You have to want to be alive and ugly, more than you want to be beautiful.

“Fat Shaming is Trauma”
-Jes Baker

In Fuckiteer Academy, I teach how our limiting beliefs are causing panic over weight and eating, and what to do about it.

And it’s true. They are.

But it is important to note that you are not stupid or foolish or silly for believing the things you have been taught about weight. You are not weak for being afraid of gaining weight – because we live in a society that is absolutely cruel and brutal to fat people.

Being shamed overtly or covertly, is trauma. Living in a society that fat shames is constant trauma too. This is why gaining weight causes major panic – we live in a society that tells you that gaining weight is the last thing we should do. We live in a society where people are openly ridiculed for gaining weight or being fat in the media. This is trauma, this is cruelty, and this is very real. It is happening constantly. Of course we have developed coping mechanisms to try and do anything we can to avoid the pain of being shamed and ostracized.

Experiences of being shamed, or feeling shamed, or witnessing other people being shamed based on their body, and then being told that you deserve to be shamed because your weight and body size are all your fault, will lead you to develop coping mechanisms to try and avoid this pain in the future.

Not to mention that one of our top ways to try and avoid feeling this pain, is to put our bodies through the physically traumatic experience of dieting and restriction and metabolism fuckwithery, in order to try and avoid triggering the trauma of being privately or publicly shamed for your size or looks. That is all fucking trauma. And it’s also trying to avoid trauma with more trauma. It is painful, it is real, and it’s no wonder we are all so emotional and anxious and hard on ourselves.

All we can do, is our best. All we can do is try to discharge old stuck energy in our bodies by grounding and being in our bodies. All we can do is try to be aware of the limiting beliefs we have subconsciously taken to be true that are causing extra pain. And all we can do, is whatever work in this world that we are meant to do to make it a kinder place.

“Why am I so tired?”

You’re Not Eating Enough

When you’re restricting food in any way (read: famine state) the body conserves energy by lowering your metabolism in case you continue to not feed it enough. This state has you running on adrenaline instead of food -running on adrenaline is extra-depleting. Answer? Eat!

You’re Exercising Too Much

The same thing happens when you exercise too much. The body considers that a crisis time, and will do the same thing metabolically to conserve energy and fuel. You’ll also be running on adrenaline and stress hormones here. Answer? Rest!

You’re Not Sleeping Enough

Sleep more. Duh. I’m not elaborating on this one.

You’re Not Resting Enough

We need to chill out more. If you are constantly stressed out, pushing yourself, and living on adrenaline, you’re going to become depleted, fast. And thanks to #America, and puritan ideals, and minimum wages, and our beliefs about worth and productivity, most of us are living this way. Rebel. Rest.

You’re a Workaholic

Lots of people use constant work to basically ignore their bodies and desires and emotions and needs, and we use constant busy-ness to try and convince ourselves that we are extremely responsible and worthy of adoration or praise or future rest – which never comes. Workaholism is like dieting, it’s a way of feeling control, and feeling temporarily calm and worthy. We think it’s all energy well spent, until we wake up one day and wonder where all the years have gone. Answer? Rebel. Rest.

(Obviously working isn’t inherently bad, but workaholism is.)

You’re worrying too much

I know, I know, easier said than done. But control issues, perfectionism, and worry, will sap the life force right out of you. The truth is, things will work out the way they should whether you worry or not. Trusting that is your best bet, and figuring out what extra and unnecessary stress and worry your limiting beliefs are causing.

You’re Spending All Your Energy Not Feeling Your Emotions

You have some stuff: some old emotions, some pent up energy, some trauma, that you’re afraid to feel. Feeling it is scary and not fun, so you spend all your energy working or dieting or whatever else, to try and avoid slowing down and actually feel your body and your emotions and old traumas. And that will get you nowhere, fast.

You may have some chronic health stuff going on

You may also be tired because of some “health interferences,” as I’ve started calling them. I used to be obsessed with health and food purity – that was one of the ways I obsessed over food – which is not gonna help you because: worry. After leaving all of that behind, I have re-entered the health world with a totally new lens and understanding of purity and perfectionism. If you think that you have some chronic health “stuff”, potentially manifesting as chronic fatigue, check out these lessons: Healing Without Diets or Dogma.

You have a million shoulds

We grow up learning from society and families and belief systems, what we should be doing, or thinking, or wanting, or striving for. We subconsciously carry these shoulds around and let them shape our experiences, desires, choices, and our feelings about ourselves. We believe we need to work, and play, and eat, and look, and love, and … whatever else, in a certain way, or else we aren’t doing it right. We aren’t doing what we should. This will cause constant low-grade anxiety no matter what you do, and most people won’t even know where the anxiety is coming from. And the antidote to this, in my opinion, is some deep, existential rest. I teach tools for this in the Rebel’s Survival Guide / Fuckiteer Academy.

You are living someone else’s life 

If you make all of your choices based on other people’s expectations and desires, or your community’s ideals that don’t match your own, you are going to wake up one day realizing you are living someone else’s life. Or maybe you won’t realize it and will just walk around every day for the rest of your life wondering why you are so tired and miserable.

I also coach people on creating and maintaining hardcore boundaries, which is the best way to make sure you aren’t living someone else’s life, or getting depleted by other people’s shoulds.

Life is a lot easier when it’s aligned with what you really want to be doing. When you are spending all your energy on things you don’t even care about, that’s a way to get depleted, fast.

Rebel.