With the following excerpt from my book, Hope, Help and Healing for Eating Disorders: A Whole-Person Approach to Anorexia, Bulimia and Overeating, I share the story of a woman who struggled with an eating disorder for years. It is my hope that, in support of National Eating Disorder Awareness Week, Karen’s story will inspire you to love yourself from the inside out. Though protecting the health of your body is critical, so is protecting the health of your spirit.

“After all, no one ever hated his own body, but he feeds and cares for it, just as Christ does the church,” the pastor said, quoting Ephesians 5:29.

At this point in the sermon, Karen stopped listening. The lesson continued, but she traveled off into a swirling eddy of memories and thought triggered by that passage.

After all, no one ever hated his own body …

Not hating your body was stated as a simple aside, as if the concept itself were a given. But it wasn’t a given to Karen. Even now, she fought to remember that God expected her to love her body.

Her body. She was expected to love her body. This verse wasn’t talking about her mind or her soul or her intellect. It specifically said “body” — her flesh, her bones, her hair and teeth. Her legs and arms. Even her breasts, her hips, her thighs.

KAREN’S STORY

There was a time in her life when the thought of loving her body had been as foreign to her as grace. For years, Karen hated her body with an active, punishing hate accompanied by action. She hated how she looked. She hated who she was. She hated who others wanted her to be. That hatred fueled the need to deprive her body of any sort of compassion.

After all, no one ever hated his own body, but he feeds and cares for it …

For several years, Karen had chosen not to feed or care for her body. Instead, she starved it into submission. With an iron will she resisted its attempts at self-preservation. The more she hungered, the less she ate. When she subjugated hunger, she took on thirst. Every bite, every sip, was done with elaborate calculation and extreme prejudice. She resented her body and its needs. It felt unclean to her. Starvation was pristine — no consumption, no elimination.

In Karen’s mid-twenties, her anorexia turned into bulimia. No longer able to beat her hunger and thirst into submission, she indulged it beyond measure. Oh, Karen fed her body — but only for a little while. Until she purged and felt clean again.

All through this time, Karen had loved God. But often she also feared him and felt distant from him. Yet she clung to the promise of his love, even as she struggled with loving herself. Slowly she was awakening to the thought of actually caring for herself, instead of only caring about herself.

Karen was striving to know God and to trust his expectations.

A CHANGE IN FOCUS

Up to this point, your eating disorder has centered your focus on your outside appearance. You have focused on your desire to be thin. As such, your life has revolved around diets and weight. But inside is where you really live. The body is just a shell — a perishable one, at that — which God full intends to replace.

It is your inside, your spirit, that lasts forever. And this obsession with controlling the body is imprisoning your spirit.

The terrible irony of an eating disorder is that damage being done to the inside, in the name of the outside, will eventually migrate to the outside. Healing comes when you decide to refocus your efforts from diets and weight (the outside) to nutrition and support for your body (the inside). You need to mentally go from food as friend, or food as fat, to food as nutrition. It can be extremely difficult to make this mental jump on your own. You may need to start with a spiritual refocusing.

Self-hate argues against the truth of God’s love for you and the great value you have. It blinds you to an awareness of the beauty of God’s creation that lies uniquely in you. The negative inner message of self-hate deafens your ability to hear God’s voice singing over you as a precious, valued human being. You can decide to stop listening to your self-hate and decide to hear the truth of God’s love for you.

In support of National Eating Disorder Awareness Week, below is an excerpt from Chapter 6, “The Detour of Denial,” from my book, Hope, Help and Healing: A New Approach to Treating Anorexia, Bulimia and Overeating:

Individuals with an eating disorder – be it anorexia, bulimia or overeating – are often unaware of the source of their pain. I believe this is God’s way of protecting us. In order to survive as children, we block our abusive behavior. But somewhere along the line, the adult must discover the wellspring of pain from the past. Denial is a significant detour in that quest.

TWO TYPES OF DENIAL

The first is your own denial of what has happened to you. This may take the form of doubting that what you remember ever took place. Because the abuse has been denied, it may take on an unreal quality when remembered, almost as if it happened to someone else. If the abuse is remembered, it is often seen through a prism that “explains” why the abuse wasn’t really abuse at all.

Denial enters through self-talk. These are the messages we repeat over and over to ourselves as we try to deal with the pain and the eating disorder. Thoughts of “nobody’s home is perfect” or “it could have been worse” or “it wasn’t that bad” or “there’s nothing I can do about it now” allow you to minimize the damage. “I should be strong enough to deal with this on my own” or “everyone turns to food when they’re down” increases frustration at the inability to bring the eating disorder under control. But denial, this minimization of the pain, is merely a coping mechanism to keep the pain at bay.

Denial is the ticket that allows you to transform life-altering pain into that limbo state of “not that bad.” If it’s “not that bad,” you believe you can find the strength to go on.

The other form of denial comes from the person or people who hurt you. They may deny that the abuse ever took place or that there was anything wrong with what they did. He or she may accept that the event or events happened but deny responsibility or minimize the damage. This can happen regardless of the nature of the abuse. Whether the abuse ws a single, specific event or a pattern of hurtful behavior carried out over a number of years, this person may refuse to accept the ramifications of his or her actions.

This person may even attempt to make you feel responsible for the abuse itself or responsible for your “version” of the events. They may deny the damage by calling into question your natural response to the damage. It is to his or her benefit if denial goes both ways — their denial of the event andyour denial of the damage done. They may resist acknowledging your eating disorder, because acknowledgement means recognizing the abuse or pattern of hurtful behavior behind it. So the responsiblity for the abuse itself and the resulting eating disorder could be shoved back at you, increasing the stress surrounding your eating disorder, escalating its progression. As your eating disorder escalates, it becomes easier to focus your attention solely on its progress, diverting your attention from the root cause.

Tomorrow: Accepting the pain of your past.

Follow Dr. Jantz on Twitter

Fan Dr. Jantz on Facebook

To raise awareness and encourage healthier habits, the National Eating Disorder Association named this National Eating Disorder Awareness Week — 7 days every February when this country turns its attention to eating habits that negatively impact the lives of millions of Americans each year in the form of the following eating disorders:

• Anorexia
• Bulimia
• Compulsive overeating
• Binge eating

In support of this movement to raise awareness, I will devote every blog post this week to the subject of eating disorders, starting today with an excerpt from my blog for PBS’ series This Emotional Life. It includes an excerpt from my book, Hope, Help and Healing: A New Approach to Treating Anorexia, Bulimia, and Overeating, from which I will be pulling material all week long.

“The key to an eating disorder lies in relationships, usually the closest of them all – relationships within the family. As noted in my book Hope, Help & Healing for Eating Disorders: A new approach to treating anorexia, bulimia and overeating:

”The behaviors surrounding an eating disorder are the result of a relationship – perhaps several relationships – tilting off the mark. You may be able to pinpoint immediately where and when your life diverged from what you wanted it to be. Or maybe you can trace a slow slide from the ideal to the real.’ [Read more, including Emily's story...]

For more information, click here to learn what you can do to support National Eating Disorder Awareness Week.