Concentrate on how you feel and not how you look - Sophie Mei Lan

Why did I still long for that near-dead look?

Surely I could see my emaciated stature and my dead eyes as well as the amount of clothing I had had to layer on top of my tiny frame so that any chill from the wind didn’t feel like it was shattering my bones.

I then flick through the photos and see how my body eventually gained a lot of weight as my eating disorder diagnosis changed from anorexia to bulimia. Both deadly, and actually it was when I was my heaviest that my eating disorder was at its “worst.”

The envy subsides a lot quicker these days. I tend not to look back unless it’s to see how far I’ve come but I was searching for photos to illustrate my first published book on recovering from addictive behaviour.

This process of finishing off my book draft in lockdown has reminded me however of how horrendous I felt despite the fluctuating size of my body. It was my mind which actually had been preventing me from living my best life.

During those years of self-harming through my eating disorder, regardless of my size, I still felt fat, worthless, ashamed and I wanted to disappear. Body confidence tends to have very little to actually do with the size of our bodies but much more to do with how we feel about ourselves.

Shame gets us nowhere. We can feel guilty about our actions but shame is much deeper as it’s about who we are. The hardest freedom to achieve is that from within.

Even after years of therapy, I too had a wobble last week as I realised that my body had changed over the past few months. Instead of stopping me from thriving in my life as it would have done in the past however, I adopted some of my favourite “self love” techniques which I use to help my friends and I.

First of all is to feel grateful for what your body can do, focus on the features you like and practice self care. For me a massive help when I have blips is to exercise because fitness makes me feel good. Rather than seeing it as a way to punish my body I find something active I enjoy doing from dancing to yoga, from obstacle courses with the kids to running.

Self-care also helps take your power back. Treating yourself to a bath, a book, chatting to a friend or booking a hair appointment, whatever self-care means to you.

Then swap any negative self talk with a positive affirmation. Eventually, you’ll then be able to accept your “flaws” because we’re all perfectly imperfect.

Now when I look back, I am going to focus on all the times my body has changed and how lucky I am to have a body that moves regardless of my dress size, a body that has created two humans and a body that is mostly healthy.

Remember it’s only your mind saying you “can’t” do or wear something because of your figure. The real change has to come from within and the rest will take care of itself, once you take care of yourself.

Sophie’s first book Eat. Sleep. Control. Repeat. is out in September. To be the first to receive a copy, sign up to: http://eepurl.com/g39Qx9