(Note: This post contains mention of disordered eating and weight-related body image issues. If you think this will trigger you, please don’t read this post. Take care of yourself ♥)

I found out about Goddess Revolution (affiliate link) through Instagram because I spend all of my time there like some weird Internet gremlin. I added it to my Amazon cart not really knowing much about it aside from the fact that it was probably about dieting and probably about empowerment. I was right about those things, but this book was so, so much more.

Something I don’t talk much about is the fact that I’ve struggled with disordered eating and weight-related body image issues for the past 6 years. It feels really vulnerable to talk about this because although I’ve fallen victim to some pretty terrible behaviors, I’m still overweight. In all honesty I probably will be for life – most of my family is overweight and even at my thinnest, I was still technically in the “overweight” category according to my BMI. No matter how much dieting and exercise I did, I’ve never gotten below that threshold. And even at my “healthiest,” when I worked out every day and ate right all the time, I was still obsessed with losing more weight and counting every single calorie I put into my body.

You see stories of people, especially women, who are recovering from eating disorders pretty frequently on the Internet. These women are ALL brave and beautiful and I so appreciate that they’re sharing their stories. But no one really talks about what it’s like when your “after” picture still looks like someone else’s “before.” I’m terrified to speak out about my issues or share photos of my body in case someone out there is thinking “well, she probably SHOULD skip a few meals.” Isn’t that awful? It’s so unfair how cruel the voice in our heads can be sometimes. (And to be clear, I have no health issues related to my weight. My desire to lose weight comes from an unhealthy place of wanting to be thin for thinness’s sake, not from any need to be healthier. That’s probably a key distinction to make here.)

Goddess Revolution was my first introduction to the concept of “intuitive eating,” or the idea of listening to what your body wants to eat and then having that, whether that “something” is pizza or kale. The idea is that your body actually craves exactly what it wants and needs, but we tend to ignore that inner voice in favor of imposing rules about what foods are “good” and what foods are “bad.” The strict rules we give ourselves when we go on a diet only keep us in a cage, constantly obsessing over what we can and can’t eat. When we let go of those rules and trust our bodies, we’ll get the nutrients we need and eventually our weight will settle at whatever its normal setting is supposed to be.

My first thought was that what I wanted was pizza all the time so I wasn’t sure how that was going to work out, but once I started actually paying attention I realized that wasn’t entirely true. Some days I really do crave salads and vegetables. Sometimes I crave protein, and sometimes, yes, I do want pizza. But the pizza cravings are way less than I actually thought they were, and a lot of the time if I have a craving for junk food, it’s actually something else about it that I want – like when I craved potato chips, I actually just wanted something salty and pretzels would do the same thing for me. I think starting to tune into this inner voice has already made me so much more aware of what I eat (and more importantly, how mindlessly I usually eat.) Asking myself “do I want this?” before eating has helped me realize that I have a bad habit of eating when I’m bored or stuffing myself with a food instead of stopping when I’m full. I still do these things – habits take a long time to break – but I feel like I’ve been able to make so many more good choices since I started paying attention. That little voice is getting easier and easier for me to hear.

Another important part of intuitive eating is that you have to let go of the desire to lose weight as your end goal – the goal is just to be in tune with your body and getting the nutrition you need. This is hard for me, because as someone who is already overweight, what happens if I gain more? That’s been such a pervasive fear throughout my life and it’s definitely been rearing up again lately, especially as I HAVE put on a few pounds recently (due to IGNORING my food intuition, not by listening to it.) However, knowing that I’ll only ever be free from my food obsession if I give up this goal has helped me loosen my hold on it (or its hold on me.)

Throughout the book, Mel writes with a gentle, loving, encouraging tone that made me feel for the first time that maybe I really DON’T have to feel this way forever. She shares her story and gets really personal about it, which made me feel like I could trust her – she knows exactly what I and so many other women are going through. I get triggered by “wellness”-ish stuff very easily, as it seems like so many wellness blogs and books out there are determined to tell you that everything you eat and do is wrong. But this book was so far from that. It was very much about finding a system that works for you and throwing those strict rules out the window. Mel felt like a comforting friend who’s been where you are and wants to help you, and while actually making changes in my life will take a lot of time, the concepts she brought up in this book have already changed the way I look at eating and exercise. Before, both of them were things that made me feel bad – I was always eating too much and never felt like I was working out enough. Now, though, I can see that “enough” is whatever feels right for me, not some arbitrary number. I feel like I’ve been able to forgive myself more for “slip-ups” and to realize that I can actually trust my body – it does so much for me!

Overall, if you struggle with body image issues or are constantly on one diet or another, I highly recommend this book. It was exactly what I needed to break the poisonous cycle I felt trapped in, the one that didn’t seem to have an end in sight. I know now that it’s possible to be free of these harmful behaviors and ideas I’ve had for the past few years, and I truly feel that I’m on a better path now than I’ve been in a long time! You can buy it from Amazon here, or check out your local bookstore if you’d prefer ♥

Have you ever tried “intuitive eating?” Do you struggle with stuff like this too? Let me know in the comments (or send me an email at [email protected] if you feel like the comments are too public – I’d love to hear your story!)