Finally Free from E D 
It is National Eating Disorder Awareness Week

If you are someone who is in recovery or have recovered from an eating disorder and can spread a positive message of encouragement and hope to others, I encourage you to do so.  Your story and voice maybe just what they need to start their own journey of healing and recovery. 

If you have a love one struggling with an eating disorder, maybe this week is about learning and gathering tips or resources for how to help, support and love unconditionally. 

If you have an eating disorder and having a difficult time call the NEDA Helpline at 1-800-931-2237. Learn what support, resources and treatment options are available for yourself or a loved one. 

My goal of this week's email it to change the conversation and perspective about diets, body image, eating disorders, disordered eating and the diet culture. I want to take the conversation off of our bodies, weight and dieting and share with you how dangerous dieting and eating disorders are. 

Eating Disorders Defined: 

According to the NEDA, "Eating disorders are recognized and categorized as a mental illness where there is an unhealthy relationship with food." Many individuals with eating disorders often struggle with body image and disrupts their normal every day activities with unusual eating habits to alter their appearance. 

There are 3 main categories of eating disorders are; 

1. Anorexia Nervosa (an intense fear of gaining weight or becoming fat) 

2. Bulimia Nervosa (the act of binge eating then purging or vomiting)

3. Binge Eating (eating until uncomfortably full in one sitting) 


Causes of Eating Disorders: 

Eating disorders can have one or both causes;  Genetics (the research indicates up to 72% maybe caused by genetics) and psychological (lack of coping skills, control issues, trauma, family trouble or social issues such as the thin ideal or the diet mentality). 


Did You Know: 

• Eating disorders have the highest mortality rate of any mental illness 
• 24 million individuals in the U.S. struggle with an eating disorder
• There is a strong link between eating disorders and depression (of those 24 million, close to 1/2... 50% meet the clinical diagnosis for depression) 
• Less than 10% of individuals with eating disorders receive treatment 
• There is a strong relationship between dieting and developing an eating disorder (35% of normal diets will progress to pathological dieting and 20-25% of those individuals will develop an eating disorder)

The $60 Billion Dieting Industry:

• The dieting industry generated $10 billion dollars in 1980 and presently generates over $60 billion dollars in 2016 and only increasing.
• Diets have a 95% failure rate and those who lose weight gain their lost weight back and put on additional weight within 1 to 5 years

The failure rate is so high, not because individual's aren't good or strong enough but because our BODIES are DESIGNED to FIGHT WEIGHT LOSS.


The Dieting Mentality and Thin Ideal:

• 46% of Nine to Eleven year olds are sometimes or very often on a diet
• 82% of Nine to Eleven year olds, report that their families were very often or sometimes on diets
• 91% of college woman, admit to controlling their weigh through dieting. 22% so they dieted always or often
• 68% of girls ages 10 to 18 confirm that photographs of models and celebrities in magazines inspired their desired body shape
• More than 50% of teen girls and nearly 33% of teen boys admit to using unhealthy methods to control their weights including smoking cigarettes, skipping meals, fasting, vomiting and taking laxatives
   

Dieting Research (food restriction), physiology of weight-loss and weight gain:

• Dieting and food restriction causes intense cravings which often leads to over-eating and over-indulgence
• Focusing on dieting and weight loss is not only distracting but also leads to slower reaction time, ability to concentrate or make decisions due to the lack of adequate nutrients
• Dieting causes leptin and other hormones that satiate people FALL (go down) and a hormone (Ghrelin.. the hunger hormone) that make us want to eat Increase (go up) Dr. Proietti 
• Dieting puts multiple physiological mechanisms in place to get you to PUT the Weight BACK on
• Dieting is an external way of regulating food. Using external factors to determine what, how much and when to eat causes individuals to disconnect from our bodies and our intuition (Getting in tune with one's body and intuition is one of the most important skills that individuals who have eating disorders gain from treatment)
• The more an individual diets, the more weight you gain (chronic dieting history)
• Research shows that those who diet, gain more weight, are more obsessive over food and are at an increase of binge eating
• Research from the winners of the biggest loser competition showed that intensive dieting and exercising were no match for how hard the body fights to keep fat and weight ON.
• Dieting impacts kids, teens, adults and are the leading predictors of weight gain and increase risks of binge eating and eating disorders

Dieting Impact kids, teens and adults (from Evelyn Tribole):

• In kids ages 9-14 (8 to 12%) are at risk for binge eating versus those who never dieted
• Kids who diet, gain more weight and binge more 
• For teens dieting is one of the single most predictors leading to an eating disorder
• Teens who diet, gain weight, binge eat and increase their risk for eating disorders
• Adults who diet,  gain weight, have an increased risk of binge eating and eating disorders

The truth is that almost everything we think we know about obesity and weight loss is a myth.

It's only when we embrace and implement the "science of weight loss" and reject the diet mentality, the thin ideal and the diet culture and learn an integrated comprehensive approach to transforming our relationship with our food, mind, body and self can we make peace with food and our bodies once and for all,  


An invitation to finally make peace with food, eating and your body and join the diet free sisterhood! 

If you are still struggling with eating and your body and it feels like you have tried everything, and believe that freedom from food, eating and body struggles is not possible... Think again!  There is hope and anything is possible!   

I invite you to explore our website, and pic up our free YOU ARE ENOUGH! Finally, Free, Fit and Fabulous Guide...A 5 step guide to peace with food, eating, weight and body image.  

You are worth it. 


Sending Joy! 

Anne Poirier, "Joy Builder"
Founder, Shaping Perspectives... A Woman's Way to Joy!

P.S.  Contact me to schedule one of my most popular signature talks "You Are Enough" Finally Free, Fit and Fabulous! 

Pancakes...and the smell of bacon

As I sit here on a rock looking out onto Lake Winnipesaukee in NH, I realize that I am drawn to water, I always have been...as a kid, I would spend hours swimming at Hoods Pond in Topsfield in the summer.  

My favorite memories are of early Sunday Morning breakfasts.  We would arrive, the family and usually an extra kid or two, at about 7am.  No one was there,it was still, quiet, peaceful. I would break the silence almost immediately as I ran into the glass like water with a splash. Watching the ripples of my entry stream outward 360 degrees around me, smiling the whole time.

The freedom of the water, the dolphin dives down and up over and over again, holding my breath and swimming as far as I could from one dock to the other and back, cannon balls and head first dives off the raft, arms cutting through the smooth water surface in a rhythmical fashion.  

My father would call me in for breakfast, it would already be after 9.  Where did the time go?  I could smell the bacon as soon as I emerged from the water.  MMM...bacon, eggs and pancakes with syrup cooked on the old Colman Grill.  I would cover up in my Steelers (yes, at the time...) sweatshirt and towel, hungry and ready to eat.  The food tasted so good.  There was no thought to how many calories I was eating, how many carbs where in the pancakes, how much exercise I would have to do to burn it all off, what had I eaten the night before.

It was so simple then.  I moved, played, kicked and swam for the joy of it.  I ate when my stomach asked for food...and the food tasted so good.  There was no guilt attached...

By the age of 11 I was dieting, doing numerous sit-ups in my room.  I remember it distinctly the proud moment I left the dinner table in such control...I marched upstairs and did 20 sit-ups, then 20 more, then of course another 10 to round it out to 50....little did I know that by the end of that month I would be multiplying that 50 by 10...

I lost weight, I was always cold, I covered myself in layers, hid myself...Hoods Pond became a place dreaded, it was to cold, I would sit in my oversized sweatshirt and watch others swim, worried about my body, thinking about eating pancakes and bacon, repulsed by my own thoughts.

Decades of overthinking food choices, built a career around moving (that way I could always exercise) that gave me the freedomto eat.  Deep built in messages to eat, you have to eat, why don't you just eat, your so stubborn, its not hard, what are you stupid?  

To this day I get a physical reaction to pancakes(one path in my brain saying too many carbs, and another one saying WOOHOOO Pancakes...)

My eyes begin to tear up...wishing for the innocence of the past, when food tasted so good and had no underlying meaning, and swimming was joyful, not calorie burning exercise where I get too cold.