The calendar tells us it is summer, over halfway through the year, and months past the post-holidays and New Year’s intentions that were going to change your life.

I invite you to pause and recognize that YOU are enough, at this very moment. 

No pressure to do more, or make radical, unrealistic changes.

What do you really love?

This summer, notice how nature embraces the changing of seasons. 

How do you embrace the coming seasons?

Eating disorders are a collection of thoughts, feelings, and behaviors that are not just weight and food related but also include disordered thoughts about health. This creates rigidity or chaos that impacts quality of life and perpetuates the striving for “healthy” ideals--which then borders on disordered. As the aggregate of thoughts and behaviors become driven, automated, or compulsive, there is initially a loss of vitality and spontaneity replaced by rigidity. At the very least, this creates eating disordered thoughts and behaviors and, at worst, it precipitates an eating disorder. 

If you ask my friends in NYC to describe me, you’ll be painted a picture of a boss lady taking on the city as a full-time professor, writer, and consultant, in addition to being a fitness influencer. They’ll also tell you I’m a people person, excitable, and will always make time to help you move apartments and celebrate your birthday.   

The acknowledgement of gender identity, sexual orientation, race, ethnic background and cross-cultural differences is necessary and vital to building the therapeutic relationship. All of these things contribute towards one’s identity and, in my experiences as a clinician, are always present in the room with clients.

At the NEDA Annual Gala on May 16th, 2018 at the Pierre Hotel in New York City, Becca McCharen Tran of CHROMAT accepted the NEDA Inspires Seal of Approval Award. Her remarks that evening were powerful and we'd like to share them with you here...

Thank you so much Emme for your kind words. I’m so honored to be here with the other honorees Bruce and Mike.

Something monumental happened on April 5th, 2017: for the first time in my life, I spoke openly with my mom about my eating disorder. I had returned home after advocating on Capitol Hill for eating disorder parity and called my mom to recap the day. 

Last Tuesday, we hosted a #NEDAwareness Twitter chat to hear from marginalized members of the body positive and pro-recovery community. The goal of the chat was to gain insight into how food, exercise, and body image issues impact different people in different ways and emphasize the necessity of creating inclusive communities. Here are some of the most important messages from the chat:

In the grocery store checkout line in suburban Orange County, Calif., my mom looked at me and said, “watermelon.”

It was our code word for “stand up straight.” I was a preteen, taller than all my friends, and was constantly slouching. The reminder was so constant my mom decided a code word would make it less embarrassing to hear in public.

Each time I would heed my mom’s advice and stand up straight, I would instinctively look down at my chest, where my breasts were just beginning to take shape. 

When I first started writing this post, my intention was to highlight how eating disorders affect the Muslim community in ways that differ from people of other faiths (or no faith). However, the more I looked into it and the more I thought about what I’ve been through, I realized that I would be doing you, the reader, a disservice. Instead, I want to delve deeper into the Muslim community (a rare occurrence in this context) and explain how Muslims deal with facets of eating disorders that we don't think that they do. 

Gloria Lucas is a self-described “chubby warrior, DIY punx educator, and eating disorder survivor” dedicated to increasing the representation within the body positive and eating disorder community. After struggling with her own eating disorder, Gloria felt the impact of cultural differences with the difficulty she felt about speaking out. Now, she hopes to fulfill her mission with Nalgona Positivity Pride, an organization that centers the diverse backgrounds of community members and gives back to her own community.