Important note on “healthy is the new skinny…”

orthorexia2In many ways, healthy IS the new skinny — in the sense that, for some, it has become a new, politically correct way for women to shame, judge and fear themselves (…and others). 

Unfortunately, this is to the detriment of a growing list of women I hear from regularly saying things like “I don’t hate the way my body looks, but I hate myself for eating the wrong foods — I hate that I can’t ‘treat my body right’.”

Moralizing “health,”
that is,
allowing our health choices to dictate our self-esteem,
or attaching our worthiness as humans to our ability to make “healthful” choices,
is not really all that different from allowing our weight to dictate our self-esteem,
or any other material circumstance, for that matter. 

What we allow to prove or disprove our “failure” or “success” in this life,
will inevitably drive us into obsession.

How could I not become obsessed with what dictates my self-esteem?
How could I not become obsessed with what I believe makes me a worthy, lovable, and righteous human-being?

Like with body image,
the only way to stop feeling “crazy around health,”
is to remove the morality from our heath choices.

To learn to see our health choices as true choices,
rather than as tests of our righteousness as human beings.

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