Come as You Are- NEDA 2019

Last week was the celebration of National Eating Disorder Awareness week.  This year, the theme of NEDA week was “come as you are.” 

Eating disorders can come in all shapes and sizes.  They do not discriminate based on color, size, race, background, or socioeconomic status.  Eating disorders do not always have to look the same.  And many times, they do not result in extreme weight loss and/or underweight categorization. 

Therefore, the theme this year embraces your body as it is.  Accept yourself.  Accept your body.  Celebrate yourself.  Celebrate your body.  Diet culture and weight stigma can lead to body dissatisfaction, which is a principal risk factor in eating disorder development.  How can we change that?  By rejecting diet culture.

Accepting my body

At some point or another, most of us have attempted to manipulate our bodies by compulsive exercise, food, or both.  Eventually however, weight manipulation fails, and your body returns to its natural weight set point.  By accepting your body where it is, you are rejecting diet culture’s influence to have a certain body type.  We are all different and have different bodies like we do style, height, or fingerprint. 

Respecting others’ bodies

Once you accept and respect your own body where it is, respecting others is incredibly important.  The first place this can start is in the workplace.  Ensure that you have seats for larger bodied people, wide walkways, and are free of body judgement. 

Fighting weight stigma

Respecting your body and others’ automatically fights weight stigma because we are accepting people where they are, not where diet culture tells us to be.  Continue that fight by questioning others and ensuring that weight inclusivity is avoided. 

Spread the word and awareness of eating disorders by participating in these challenges!

Source:

Join the Movement. (n.d.). Retrieved from https://neda.nationaleatingdisorders.org/site/Survey?ACTION_REQUIRED=URI_ACTION_USER_REQUESTS&SURVEY_ID=14492