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Kimi Marin

Kimi Marin is a yoga therapist based in Portland, Oregon. She provides us with beautiful yoga poses and meditations to support eating disorder recovery. Website

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I don’t know about you, but when I was in my eating disorder I could make even the healthiest eating program disordered. Including, I’m sorry to say, Intuitive Eating.

I conveniently skipped the most important principles of IE and focused only on eating based on my hunger and fullness, which turned out to be impossible since I’d worked hard for 20+ years to never consciously feel either!

Now, three years into recovery, I find that Intuitive Eating is, in fact, a great way to eat.

Since I am finally tuned into my body, I now feel both hunger and fullness. But I didn’t start there - I started with recognizing and rejecting diet culture, mourning the impossible body I had been pursuing for my whole life, and learning to feel my feelings instead of trying to process them with food or starvation.

It’s been a journey, and I’m still on it.
💕
Image quote from @evelyntribole - thank you for all that you do xoxo

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Wishing for a smaller body size is like wishing to be taller or have smaller feet. It’s most often biologically impossible, with tremendous side effects. And it’s an unnecessary distraction from the important tasks that our minds should be focusing on - the things on which we can actually make a difference.

Parents who ask their kids to have small bodies are unintentionally encouraging their kids to shrink emotionally and mentally.

It takes tremendous social rebellion to get parents to stop asking kids to be smaller. It takes a huge cultural shift for parents to drop fatphobia and trust their kids’ bodies to do what they are supposed to do.

But it’s the right thing to do. We can do it!💕

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It’s never, ever too late to try something new, to learn to relate to people differently, and to find the love and connection we do deeply desire and deserve.

I think this is our great opportunity - to accept more love when we need it, and to give more love when it’s needed by others.

I hope you get all the love you deserve today xoxo

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Adult children often resist and/or dread seeing their families for the holidays. And their parents feel hurt and surprised.

Here’s just one example of how being with parents (and siblings, cousins, grandparents, etc) can feel bad for adult children.

Can you relate? What happens to you when you see your family for special occasions? Do you feel good about yourself, or uneasy? Do you relax, or do you find yourself reaching for something to numb your pain?

I have a new article on More-Love.org that outlines why adult children struggle with family during holidays, and what parents can do to improve the situation. Check it out if you think it might help you understand this tough situation 💕

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When we tell our kids they need to eat less and stay small, they take it as a message about their whole selves - their bodies, their minds, and their spirits.

No parent wants their child to restrict and shame their mind and spirit, and yet when we treat the body that way, the mind and spirit follow.

It doesn’t make our kids healthier to teach them to stay small. It only leads them to body hate, disordered eating, and eating disorders. And keeping the body small is a huge distraction for their minds and spirits.

A person of substance is someone who strives to live a meaningful life and who chooses to participate in rather than be a spectator in life.

Whatever their body size is (who cares? And you can’t do much about it anyway!) let’s raise kids who are thoughtful and kind, brilliant and curious, conscious and mindful.

Let’s raise kids who make a difference in the world in any body.

Let’s raise kids who are substantial.💕

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In the U.S. we are heading into an intense week during which some of the most important and formative people in our lives can trigger all sorts of feelings that we don’t want and don’t understand.

This is a reminder that we’re not crazy for having these feelings and struggling during Thanksgiving. We are hard-wired to be influenced by our family members. They literally shaped our brains. No matter how much we grow and develop, family members can make us regress like nobody else in the world.

So go into the week with a lot of compassion for yourself. If your eating disorder behaviors are lurking and begging to help you, thank them for their concern. Then seek alternative ways of getting your needs met. It will look different for each of us, but let’s just all do our best to hold on to whatever recovery we have achieved.

Sending you so much love and strength💕

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Sooooo hungry. For food, for love, for attention, for understanding, for belonging.

We all hunger for human connection and will literally die without it. But feeding our need for human connection can be confusing and hard. Food, on the other hand, is readily available.

That’s why some of us look to food to fill us up. Stomach hunger is our first hunger and the one met by the person who matters most in our life, which wraps eating up with love right from the beginning.

When we eat more than our bodies ask for, it’s not strange or bizarre. It’s an adaptive way to seek what we need. To be filled. To be nurtured. To be sated.

There are many reasons for binge eating, and all of them make perfect sense when we think of them through a compassionate lens💕

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Thanksgiving can be a very stressful holiday for anyone who has eating issues. It’s a food-based holiday, and often brings up lots of insecurities and discomfort.

To help yourself, your child(ren) and loved ones have a happier Thanksgiving, take the focus off the food and invest instead in opportunities to connect with each other.

Four great ideas are:

1. Get outside - go for a walk, explore a new park, look at trees, make snow angels, analyze clouds. Just get out of the house and into nature together.

2. Play a game - pull out the board games and set ground rules for fair play and good behavior. Pull out the wiffle balls and plastic bats or turn the patio table into table tennis. Play for fun, and play with love!

3. Get crafty - grab construction paper, pens, paper, scissors, glue, feathers, pom poms, glitter, and googly eyes. Buy everyone a mini pumpkin and carve away. Draw silly portraits of each other. Get messy and have fun! Yes, this is for both kids and grownups!

4. Volunteer together - find a cause you care about and do something meaningful. Serve food for the homeless, muck out stalls at an animal sanctuary, pick up trash, make cards for service people overseas, or plan a fundraiser for a Native American organization.
🍁🍁🍁

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Our children can feel our disapproval, and when parents disapprove of a child's body, children internalize the idea that they are wrong, bad, and inappropriate.

Even if parents don't say anything out loud about a child's weight, if they feel that their child's body is a problem, the child knows.

Weight stigma is pervasive and constantly reinforced in our society. It's not your fault, but it is your responsibility.

Yes, it's uncomfortable, and yes, we still need to talk about it.

Parents, please learn about weight stigma and internalize Health at Every Size principles to avoid unconsciously passing along feelings of inadequacy to children 💕

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If you ask a female child what type of body she wants, most of the time she will say “thin.” If you ask a male child what type of body he wants, most of the time he will say “big and strong!” But the maddening thing is that they have already been duped.

First, there no such thing as an ideal body type. There is only the body type that society currently tells us is ideal.

Next, we don’t get to choose our body type. We just have it.

Popular culture tells us that anyone can achieve the body that the culture tells us is ideal, but it’s just not true. And many people who do fight to achieve the current ideal body do so through disordered eating and exercise practices.

It’s time for parents to explicitly tell our children that there is no ideal body type and that the vast majority of people cannot achieve the current physical “ideal.” Here’s what I say: Your body is your body. No need to starve it or go to great lengths to control it. Just be kind to it - sleep, eat, move, and get some sunlight. You’re gonna be OK💕

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A teen may cry for help with self-harm, starving, binge eating, purging, substance abuse, promiscuity, shoplifting, or any alarming behavior.

And adults often say “they’re just looking for attention.” Or “it was just a cry for help - nothing serious.” Um. No. That’s not how it works.

When a teen cries for help, we should respond immediately and compassionately. The stakes are very high.

We should jump to their aid and work deeply and for a significant amount of time to uncover what the cry was for.

At first it may seem obvious - a breakup, a loss, a bad grade. But dig deeper, and you will find a wound that needs to be healed by a loving, attentive adult.

Don’t stop when the first explanation arises. Don’t stop when the behavior stops. Don’t stop until you have treated the deep wound.

Only then have you actually resolved the reason behind the cry for help. And that can be life saving💕

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Recovery awakens our true selves. It releases our trapped needs, wants, and desires. We become more assertive, and in the process of doing so may sometimes err on the side of aggression because stating our needs clearly is something we are learning.

This process of awakening can be very hard on our loved ones. They didn’t know what we were hiding with our eating disorder, and it can be a shock to see us emerge and blossom into our whole unbridled selves.

This is why parents who have kids who have eating disorders benefit from therapy and support. Parents need guidance as they discover the child within the child they have known. It takes time and patience, but the recovered child will bring so much joy and peace if parents can learn to accommodate them.💕

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Every parent has “stuff.” If we don’t work on our stuff, we risk passing it on to our kids. But that doesn’t mean that we can’t be good parents if we have/had an eating disorder. In some ways, at least we know we have stuff - many parents don’t think about it.

We are highly sensitive, intelligent, very committed people, and we can be great parents, especially if we are working towards mental health, practice mental hygiene, and, ideally, have professional support.

An eating disorder does not mean we can’t be the parents we want to be. It does not mean we are destined to raise disordered kids.

There is no such thing as a recovery fairy who will one day deem us ready to parent. What we need is the self-awareness to own our stuff and work on it diligently as we actively work to be the best parents we can be.💕

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We can stop our eating disorder behaviors through force of willpower - for a while, at least.

But true healing comes from knowing that our true self, our inner child, that sweet, traumatized little one, is seen, heard, and accepted.

Full recovery comes when we trust that we deserve love and are worthy regardless of what we do, what we look like, and how big and unruly our feelings get.

It is through relational safety - feeling emotionally safe with at least one person - that we come home to our bodies and believe we can live free of our eating disorder behaviors and the beliefs that drive them.

If you have a child who has an eating disorder, what can you do to see and welcome their hurting inner child? What can you do to support their sense of worthiness at any weight, with any grades or career, and as a whole, independent being who is separate from you? These are good questions to ask as you support your child’s healing journey.💕

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Our eating disorders can be a deep, primal cry for help. They may be our child-selves begging for healthy relational nourishment.

When we see the suffering child within, and get care for that child, we may find our healing path.
💕
I am forever thankful for
@gabormatemd and his books, lectures, and articles like this one in @fix_addiction_recovery

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1. Most eating disorders begin in adolescence.

2. Adolescence is a time when we undergo massive body and brain changes.

3. So many parents dread the teenage years and complain that teenage girls are difficult, dramatic, and terrible.

Is there a correlation between these three things? Possibly.

Let’s be kind to teens and respect the journey they are on.

Let’s support parents who have teens, not by agreeing that teens are terrible, but by reminding parents that teens are still children who are usually the most challenging in the exact moments when they need more love 💕

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Eating disorder behaviors are not just because we can’t help ourselves.

The eating disorder behaviors are how we try to help ourselves.

Our eating disorder behaviors are not the problem. They are the solution we have found to help us feel better.

When we get to the root pain of why we feel so bad, full recovery is there waiting for us.

When we heal the emotional distress, which is never as simple as food and body issues, we solve the eating disorder’s problem and it can go away.💕

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Sometimes an eating disorder is a way to have a voice when we feel powerless and pissed off.

Sometimes an eating disorder feels so right because it is the only way we can possibly tolerate the way we believe we have to live to be loved.

Sometimes our food behaviors are the only way we can express how shitty it feels to exist in our society.

I wish we could all be free of the bullshit that makes us so angry and sad that we have to take it out on our own bodies💕

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