#something to do with the protein in the skin idk but i love grapes. and fruit. do not be deceived

[todayisafridaynight]

hey snap you want some grapes? (context: i am not supposed to eat grapes i have a sensitivity to them but i was downstairs eating them anyway because they were there)

i would love grapes my dear friend :) <- should also not be eating grapes

[chasing-rabbits]

I think this is very very true. Also If I can I’d also like to speak from the other side of the coin.  I am not trying to derail your post or your points as they are all very very important and valid. I am not here to say what is worse or not. I would like to speak from my personal experiences too. As a child I was underweight from my very first weight check after being born up until maybe 3 years ago I was always either underweight or bordering the lines between healthy and classed as underweight. Now there were many reasons for this. First of all I was not diagnosed until recently with a milk protein allergy that I have had from birth. Alongside a meat intolerance. This physically made it hard for me to eat food. I would throw up a lot when we ate out probably because when you eat out you get dessert or you indulge in foods that typically have lots of dairy in. I mean who didn’t love the ice cream machine at pizza hut or the big sharing ice cream sundaes you know?  Also portions typically tended to be larger than at home. At home my mum when I was young young she did home cooked meals she didnt do separate meals for us and them. It was smaller portions we ate a lot of pasta it was my favourite. My ideal dessert used to be a bag of grapes where i’d peel the skin and eat that first. I was odd lol or it’d be cherries or oranges. Sometimes I’d have chocolate. I mean I didn’t even like chips growing up I remember when we’d go out to the typical pub grubs for family’s I didn’t really want the chips. When we used to go to Pizza hut for meals I almost never ordered a pizza I got the salad bar and a starter usually the potato wedges starter and occasionally chicken wings or something else. By all means I was a well looked after child who was given a varied and balanced diet including being allowed soda, crisps and chocolate bars.  I also have the issue that I look skinnier than I am as it is. My weight tends to go to places that are less obvious. People haven’t believed me when I went shopping with friends one time I picked up and said what size I was and again the no youre not you gotta be ‘x’ and i wasn’t I didnt get my weight distributed on my tummy or my arms or anywhere truly noticeable. It was my thighs my butt and i had slightly chubby cheeks for an underweight kid i didnt have the typical severely gaunt look someone might have for my weight and height i also had love handles that were hidden well they werent in the typical place they were just off and to the back a bit so it wasn’t noticed i didnt have it where when you wear jeans you’d see it spilling over the top.  I heavily got bullied I had people try to ‘intervene’ as friends or always question what I ate and how much I ate and why I hadn’t finished my food. I had a girl who I remember staring at me and then asking why I hadn’t eaten much and then I told her I felt sick and she just remarked  you said that yesterday and you always say that irony is I did feel sick it was a stupid dairy filled curry for lunch that day. I remember at a mutual friends birthday she stared at me and whispered to the guy next to her because i could barely make it two mouthfuls into the lasagne before i went to the toilet heaving feeling sick. My allergy got worse over time I guess the intolerance I’d built up previous wasn’t so great when I hit mid to late teens. I remember even my own parents being scared I was anorexic and my dad threatening to take me to the doctors to put me on some pills that are meant to make you hungrier or some shit idk I know around my age  my mum had similar issues struggling to eat no eating disorder she also just felt to sick to eat and stuff she never found out why actually idk probably cos shes got food intolerances too.  I remember being so self conscious about my weight that at 16 because of the comments and references to me having the body of a boy and girls intervening like its their business. I remember I started counting calories i took note that when i had my rowing training I always ended up losing weight the week it was combined with PE which was only fortnightly it seemed that extra bit of exercise pushed me over the edge to lose weight so I tried to up my calories I stuffed my face so much even when i felt sick i tried to eat more because meat bloated me out made me feel sick and nauseous i tried to push through the horrible bloating and pain to put on weight. I mean I put on a bit..I got to almost 9 stone then I got really sick I got a virus and bug at the same time I was off school for months i dropped down to 6 and a half stone. Since that point I couldnt seem to put the weight back on..And i was getting sicker with foods and I had seen multiple GPs who kept just giving me different things and explanations none of which worked.  Then I started obsessing over calories in a different way...then when I got depression/bipolar I went from thinking about trying to gain weight to wanting to restrict my calories suddenly I saw myself and didnt see this disgustingly skinny body like I used to see and hate. I remember one day being so mad at my dad trying to get me to eat and forcing me too i just thought if everyones so hell bent on calling me anorexic then fine I’ll become one..or something like that now obviously you cant become and choose to be anorexic. And I in fact before that point had already been restricting calories I was also in denial it was anorexia or any ED. Tbh I am not entirely sure it ever was I think it was a form of self harm as I am an ex self harmer in other ways too. And through out the years from age 18 to now (25) I have had on and off issues with food. When I got put on olanzapine for my Bipolar previous to that I was on aripripazole and i got really manic and combined with not really wanting to eat i almost thought i didnt need to and i didnt have the pain of hunger when i didnt eat so i thoguht well okay.i guess i dont need food and it was part mania talking and part the me that wanted control etc i got down to almost 7 stone..then i doubled my weight in 6 months and hit 14 stone.  Then I tried diets to lose weight i even tried keto whilst eating meat because i knew if i ate meat it would physically hurt and prevent me from eating i did this for a week before the guilt hit me that i was using and abusing animals to lose weight still to this day it haunts me that i went back on my morals as a vegan because i lost it and was that desparate to lose weight. it was I guess my version of the typical laxative taking because one lax’s are dangerous and two i knew that eating meat would make me sick but not cause permanent damage physically at least. I feel guilty like i am not a real vegan cos of this. I even lost a vegan friend who has an eating disorder when i confided cos i thoguht she’d get it but she said she’d sooner die from her ED and blocked me and refuses to talk to me because I guess my whatever it is ‘ED’ or lack of control or need for control and self harming behaviours led me to do this. Since then I’ve been trying to not emotionally eat I went through a year of just binge eating my emotions away. BUt last novemeber I got like really really sick..and it was like a reset button it meant i couldnt like binge eat because i physically couldnt keep food down..and i feel myself lately going back to bigning because im having 2 week long periods and erratic periods and its now making me want chocoalte and carbs all the time because i guess my bodies being drained of energy. I guess what I am trying to say in such a LONG winded response is...we also need to remember trying to ‘help’ a skinny girl out by assuming all girls who are thin have anorexia or that we need to be forced to eat or monitored can actually have the opposite effects. Before any of this I didnt really have any thoughts on my body I wasnt like i was probably sheltered and naive and wasnt exactly like idk i hadnt been influenced by models or celebs or anything...i didnt even get my faceboook account til i was like older ish and..i wasnt really active a whole lot online aside from talkng to school friends on MSN and playing PC games you know?  Idk I was lucky I guess that I remained sheltered from celeb news and online chat rooms and more until i hit like late teens. But..it shows that not every ED or disordered eating behaviours is down to media and models and fashion its purely down to those we know in our lives and how they can socially influence us and that is something that is very hard to monitor and protect children against unless they come to you and tell you about it. I think we need to make sure that in promoting body positivity for plus size people or cute chubby bunnies as people refer to themselves as that we dont prop ourselves up by putting down skinny girls. Its irony because as a fat person I havent recieved stares when I order junk food I havent receieved judgement or looks or comments when I was at work and overweight at a local restaurant/bar as a waitress. I didnt really receive any negativity about my size online or offline I think i received a few hate mails online you know.  but weirdly when I was skinny and online I recieved a lot of hate like go eat a vegan cupcake skinny bitch or how they wanna shove a juciy fat burger down my throat 1. cos i was vegan and 2. because i was too skinny. and then obviously all the comments in real life too...you know i remember being out with a group of girls who i was friends with we used to go to mcdonalds every so often between lectures as one drived two of them were quite overweight one was average sized and i was still at that time very skinny. I remember one day I just ordered a smoothie..nothing else back then I honestly wasnt a fan of the old veggie burgers they had i was just vegetarian at university didnt go vegan til final year. Idk their veggie burgers were spicy and not nice. Point is that day i didnt feel like having fries and i didnt like their veggie burgers all that much. I got a smoothie and the larger girl she had ordered like two ‘meals’ i guess i think one was a meal and one was just the item on its own no fries and she had dessert too. Idk which I just remember it reasonably clearly because I remember feeling so i just remember feeling so self conscious and nervous and shit about myself like I was the one being judged she just commented at me because i only got this smoothie i got this feeling of just..it was not nice..like so i understand how it must feel to be the only larger girl in a group being asked about the food you order or choose to eat. But I do feel as though no one acknowledges this happens to women on either ends of the spectrum skinny or overweight..and i dont feel the attack on slim women or this idea that larger people proprogate that when youre skinnny you get anything you want you can wrap men around your fingers and you get treated better because its sucha  delusional idea that probably increases the fad dieting and increases risks of eating disorders amongst those who are larger because they have this idea that once they are skinny they will get everything i actually had someone on tumblr tell me that because i was skinny i was getting everything and they hated me because they said i had atttractive privilege and they didnt and that eveyrthing in their life went wrong and bad because they were deemed as ugly by society and i some how wasnt bearing in mind i had legs full of scars back then not fully healed obviously self harm related incidents and i was being bullied by one housemate who decided she hated me and another girl living with her because we were skinny..pretty much...she belittled me and put me down every single day because i didnt wear make up because i was a virgin and more. I think the bigger issue here is the infighting between girls the competition we put on ourselves at a young age this need to catfight the way we settle arguments is to go for the jugular with looks and so on harassment and such not fist fights typically note i say typically. Idk this is a long ass post. But yeah..i think you make really valid points and im sure your girl is going to grow up pretty no matter what and loving herself because shes got an awesome mum <3

Creating Healthy Habits & Body Positivity

As I go through my health journey I have come to realize that I dislike the word diet and it’s meaning. Growing up as a big girl I was always placed on diets or given diet pills growing up in hopes that would help with my weight. Instead of teaching me healthy habits and guiding me to have a healthy relationship with food, I was always given the newest diet pill or put on the latest diet. This is temporary and once you stop your diet there’s a chance you may gain your weight back. I know I have been there and done that many times. It still happens to me even as I build my relationship with food. You need to change your lifestyle and create healthy habits. You need to set yourself up for success and not restrict yourself so much. The moment you restrict yourself it can cause a downhill slide.

I’m 28 years old and barley gathering all the information to have a healthy relationship with food. As I am doing this I think of my 6 year old daughter and how I want her to have a healthy relationship with food and her body. Instead of saying we need to lose weight we say that we want to be healthy and stronger than what we are. When she asks for candy or junk food I do my best to offer a piece of fruit or her favorite veggie. But I do allow her to have the candy or junk food every so often because it’s about moderation. I’m not going to restrict my child’s choice to the point it can become unhealthy.

I do my best to not speak bad about my appearance in front of her to set an example. I tell her almost everyday that not only is she beautiful but her body is strong and amazing just the way it is. I have been telling her that since she was a baby and she does the same for me. She will randomly walk up to me and tell me I’m beautiful or say she likes my strong legs or ask me to flex and tell me I’m strong. Building that body image up is important.

This world will tear you limb from limb if you aren’t cookie cutter image of what they think you should be. I want her to know she is better than that cookie cutter because she’s unique. I will do my best to set good healthy habits with food and show her how fun exercising can be. And when and if I get to have a boy I’ll do the same for him. Body image is an issue for men and women but hopefully we can make it better with some body positivity.