Facebook

In an addicts world, at some point, you hear the phrase, 'change your playground, change your playmates".  It's exactly what it sounds like.  Usually the people and places an addict surrounds himself or herself with encourage the addiction.  It's hard to keep doing anything that is contrary to those around us.  Even the worst behavior feels normal when it surrounds us.  So, as someone in recovery from an eating disorder I've done this throughout my life.  Obviously different from not going in a bar or hanging out with a sketchy crowd, what does that mean for someone in recovery from an eating disorder.

 I've worked hard to be able to ignore the magazines at the checkout stand and their thousands of taglines about losing weight and the perfect body.  I can quickly delete the email from Runners World claiming to have the magical (and necessary according to them) lose ten pounds.  I don't listen to idle chat around the office that has gone from a relatively body talk free zone to a gaggle of body dissatisfaction and wedding weight loss efforts.    I've learned to walk away.  I've learned I can't let those things surround me as normal- especially when some of those dissatisfied have nothing tot worry about (most of them),

And them came facebook, where the walk away is much more complicated.  This is because, in part, you just don't notice.  The 'friend' count grew to include high school and college folks.  What this really meant was I was losing more and more control over my feed.  These were people I no longer really knew.  In my small little world of those days I was the only one obsessed with starving myself and changing my body.  Everyone else was happy; which furthered my fear that something was wrong with me and it had to be fixed.

Those nearly twenty years later, post babies, our twenties, and whatever else later, I was finding that i had grown to appreciate my body, but seemingly everyone on my feed hadn't.  I noticed the beach body posts spoke a little louder, the shakeology posts I lingered on.  Until I got mad at where all these other people's dissatisfaction was taking me.  They were taking me out of a place I fought for.  I fought through a pain I never want to redo

For me shakeology, and these other variety of 'nutritional' shakes mean you are sick.  They mean you have to use them because your stomach just can't take eating any more food that has bulk.  I have real issue with suggesting that drinking a shake has any place in normalized healthy eating, unless you are in a position to need a dose of extra calories that you just can;t stomach to eat.  Because a normal, healthy life with food involves eating all colors, all tastes, all consistencies.

I can't tell you how many people I've unfollowed.  There's always one that slips through like happened tonight.  And she will be unfollowed too.  I wish the best for people.  I'm sorry I won't get to see the pictures of her baby as she grows.  But, I have to protect my playground by keeping an eye on who my playmates are.