Let’s All Stop Hating Our Bodies

In a recent therapy session, my therapist asked me to think of a recent moment in which I felt dissatisfied with my body. This wasn’t very hard, because I experience fleeting moments of dissatisfaction every day. Most of us do. Fortunately, these moments happen less often than they once did. The hatred I felt for my body was once all-encompassing, causing me to obsess over every bit of food I ate and every bit of physical activity I endured. Now, my self-hatred crops up most when I’m under a great deal of stress, or when I feel a lack of self-worth due to some other part of my life.

When my fiance and I broke up a few months ago, my self-hatred reached new levels. Despite being the one to end things, I felt rejected, unlovable, and generally not “good enough.” I knew that the relationship had become toxic and that we both deserved better, but ironically, this enormous move toward self-love left me feeling less lovable and more lonely than ever before. I began adopting old disordered eating behaviors in an effort to feel “small enough,” “pretty enough,” simply enough. But my eating disorder had been so quiet for so long that its resurgence frightened me. I started seeing a new therapist who specializes in eating disorders. He helped me acknowledge the painful truth that my lack of self-worth and self-love had never been fully or truly resolved. So Thursday morning, when he asked me to…