The holidays can be tough! Attempting to juggle the stresses of constantly being surrounded by food and people is A LOT, especially if you struggle with an eating disorder or weight-related issues.

As a little girl, my mother and I would sit on the sofa and watch television together. I remember being fascinated by cosmetic commercials as the supermodels floated across the screen, with seemingly flawless skin and long, flowing hair. I wanted to be apart of that world more than anything, and wondered if there was a place for me there, somehow, someday.

We live in a society where we are inundated with messages that promote diet-culture, the “thin ideal” of female beauty, and serve to glamorize excessive exercise. For individuals who are struggling with an eating disorder, recovering within a cultural climate of unhealthy attitudes towards food and exercise can be tough. However, full recovery and freedom from the food and exercise obsession is entirely possible.

Given the complex nature of eating disorders, they often require a professional team approach. That is, eating disorder recovery requires the combined involvement of professionals, including: registered dieticians, psychiatrists, therapists, and general practitioners. However, many individuals do not understand who registered dieticians are or what role nutritional therapy plays in the recovery process.

So who are Registered Dietitians?

At Proud2Bme, we're tired of narratives that portray young people with mental illness as helpless victims. We're tired of one-dimensional characters and after-school specials.

So when we heard about Gren Wells's directorial debut film, The Road Within, which comes out this Friday, we were immediately excited by this refreshing take on an issue we've seen mishandled time and time again.

The Butterfly Foundation, an Australian organization that provides support for Australians who suffer from eating disorders, recently released findings from their report, Investing in Need: cost effective interventions for eating disorders.

Does every woman really have an eating disorder? Of course not. I wrote my book, and started the blog that inspired it, to shed light on the incidence of subthreshold eating disorders, now called Other Specified Feeding and Eating Disorders (OSFED) and subclinical presentations, commonly referred to as disordered eating. One thing I had noticed in fifteen years of working with patients with eating problems was that just because someone didn’t meet full criteria for anorexia or bulimia (or now binge eating disorder) didn’t mean that her struggle wasn’t real.

Life is often defined by measurements. Our age, income, hours we spend working/sleeping/watching TV - the list could go on and on. These external measurements become the way we define success. And in sport, being defined by a specific measurement becomes even more evident. In the end, it seems that measurements define an entire career. 

My name is Kally Fayhee and from the age of 12, my life was been defined by one thing - swimming. Now, as a 23 year old, I’m learning to define my life by something other than the measurements we use every day to define success.

The days come and go like muffled and veiled figures

sent from a distant party—but they say nothing

and if we do not use the gifts they bring

they carry them as silently away.

~ Ralph Waldo Emerson ~

After a busy holiday season of cooking, eating and football at my in-laws, I spent ten minutes writing about my victories/successes of the past year.  I felt ecstatic to pause and look at my accomplishments, a topic that certainly never came up during the holiday.  The write was a way of reclaiming a me deeper than the one laughing with family at the dinner table.  I like the me who joins in the laughter and I love the family and their good spirits, but I also need to keep in touch with that truer and more complex me.