The Eating Disorder Voice—It's Like The Kardashians

When you're struggling with an eating disorder, it's a constant battle between the Eating Disorder (ED) voice and Your True voice. It's that controversial friend you aren't sure how to cut ties with. It's like watching the Kardashians—one minute you find yourself losing brain cells from the mental energy of it all, and the next you're suddenly entertained by Kylie's purse closet. It's a love-hate relationship. And yes, I said purse closet. When you're a billionaire, purse closets are apparently a necessity.

Anyways, back to the ED voice... It's quite the internal dialogue. For example, it can sound like the following:

"I shouldn't eat that piece of cake... Imagine the calories! I can't cheat on my diet. I've been so good. That will just mess everything up and I'll never lose the weight."

OR

"Okay, fine. Just this once. Tomorrow you start your diet, so honestly, eat whatever the hell you want today, because that's the last time you'll get to eat cake and pizza in the same month."

The ED voice is the voice that tells you that you should have ran those ten extra minutes on the treadmill. That you shouldn't have eaten the slice of pizza at Brian's housewarming party. Or that you should have ordered the salad at Olive Garden. It's the voice that convinces you that you aren't good enough. That in order to acquire "true happiness" and acceptance, you have to change the way you look.

The ED voice has a mind of its own. It is more powerful than I could possibly ever explain. But know this... The ED voice isn't there to help you. It may seem that way, but it doesn't have good intentions. It doesn't care about your long-term well-being. The ED voice is self-serving, superficial, and toxic.

Believe it or not, this constant internal dialogue can go on for hours. Yes, I said hours. Think about it... If you were to reflect on all of the reasons the diet industry has made you question your worth, is it really that hard to believe that the dialogue can last hours?

Unfortunately, no, no it isn't.

As a society, we have normalized thinness as the "ideal" form of beauty. I don't blame us for thinking this way... It's what's sold to us on all sorts of social media platforms: television, movies, advertisements, Instagram, Tik Tok, Snapchat, Facebook etc.

We are made to believe that if we follow a diet, we will lose X amount of weight in X amount of time, and that we will "never have to diet again"—that all of our problems will dissipate. It's an association made between a behavior and a consequence. It's called operant conditioning...

"If we diet (behavior), we will lose weight (consequence)."

And conversely,

"If we don't diet (i.e. eat whatever we want—behavior), we will gain weight (consequence)."

Ironically enough, we are told we will "never have to diet again," yet we find ourselves right back where we started—searching for the next best diet to help us lose those "last ten pounds of stubborn belly fat."

If we truly never had to diet again, the diet industry wouldn't profit billions of dollars from us... If diets truly worked, we wouldn't have to go on a diet ever again, and the diet industry wouldn't exist today. People would simply go on a diet, lose the weight, never regain it, and move on with their lives.

Just the mere fact that the diet industry still exists today, is evidence in of itself, that it's an industry that sets you up for failure from the very beginning...

Because guess what? Diets. Don't. Work. Diets are a short-term solution to a much deeper and internal long-term problem.

Society has conditioned us to believe that we aren't good enough. That we aren't worthy enough. That the way we were born is somehow defective. Society has socialized us to believe that an individual's beauty stems from his or her physical appearance. And that my friends, just simply isn't the truth.

I'll leave you with one of my favorite quotes by Joseph Colombrita...

"She is beautiful, but her looks never stood a chance compared to how breathtaking her soul is."