TL;DR: Go listen to today’s podcast with Dr. Nina Savelle-Rocklin!
As a writer, I’m a little obsessed with semantics (which, according to Wikipedia, is defined as “the branch of linguistics and logic concerned with meaning.”)
I really do, however, that words hold incredible power often when (and even especially because) we are not thinking about them.
I wrote one of my most important blog posts ever on why I’m no longer calling my recovery a recovery (and I’m calling it a “discovery” instead), but I think the word “recovery” warrants some revisiting.
To recover literally means to “get back,” as I discussed in that post, but I think it has some secondary means that we need to address.
Because eating disorders have an extremely and alarmingly high rate of recidivism (or relapse). And so does “non-disordered” dieting. The amount of time we spend getting on and off of the proverbial wagon is exhausting. And I think that one of the big reasons we do that is because the idea of “re-doing” the process is written into the word.
REcovery.
We’re doing it over and over again, because we’re being trained to “recover.”
Whether you’re going into treatment for an eating disorder or just trying to stop dieting on your own, you’re practicing the act of recovery instead of actually experiencing change.
And the more you do it, the better you get at it.
Say the right things to your therapist. Change from vegan to Paleo. Become “strong not skinny.” Do a different cleanse or detox or clean eating challenge. Run less and lift more. Defend your thought patterns. Defend your weight.
Assure yourself—assure them all: I am better enough.
Until you’re not. Again.
And so the cycle begins anew.
This is the problem: we go into recovery or decide to stop dieting while still defending our weight. Defending our fears. Defending our thought patterns. We leave this recovery period seeking different solutions that look a lot like the solutions we found before.
This is why I have followers on instagram whose account profiles say only: “Started my 15th Whole30. Follow my journey!” This is why MLM companies can keep selling you cleanses. This is why you can google “oooaj” and find millions of pictures of people eating oatmeal out of a mason jar as if it’s the key to salvation. This is why you’re still looking for a diet and calling it a detox, and looking for a detox and calling it clean eating, and looking for clean eating recipes and calling it “not about weight loss; it’s a lifestyle.”
At what point do we get exhausted with this game of covering up our disordered habits over and over and over again, but with different names? How many times must we re-cover and re-cover and re-cover before we refuse to accept that the 21 Day Sugar Detox is just another way to say, “I don’t know how else to defend my weight, and I’m scared to let go and trust myself, so I’m calling this freedom”?
I believe that one of the reasons we have so much trouble with recovery is specifically because recovery lets us off the hook. At least I’m eating now. At least I’m running less. I’m still scared. I still don’t want to make mistakes. I still don’t want to stop defending my weight. But at least—at least…
Our lives should not be “at least.” We should not have to live or eat or exist “at least.”
Our lives should be expansive and huge and scary and not always perfect and messy and sometimes exhilarating and not always tasty and sometimes very tasty and unweighed and undefended.
Our lives shouldn’t be a list of reasons why I can’t or shouldn’t or won’t. They shouldn’t be a list of yes foods and no foods or a passionate blog post written at the altar of real food über alles.
Our recoveries should not be re-re-re-recoveries. They should be discoveries. They should be…liberation.
In this week’s podcast with the incredible Dr. Nina Savelle-Rocklin, we discuss why neither of us talk about recovery—and why Dr. Nina believes so strongly in liberation instead:
Stay hungry,
The post UNpodcast 114: Why You’re Still Recovering appeared first on In My Skinny Genes.
