Body Image & the Weekends

I'm just gonna put it out there.

Weekends tend to be tough.

I know this is not just the case for me but also for lots of others (eating disordered or not).

Whether it's just the break from the normal routine, or the under-current of pressure to be doing something "interesting" "exciting" "cool", "productive" or "active" , or because we are not all distracted by the business of the work-week, for whatever reasons, as longed-for as they are, (especially apparent in the surge of TGIF posts, tweets, statuses, heck- t- shirts these days) Saturday & Sunday can be rough.

That being said, this weekend has been rather typical, but not terrible for me.

A weird pattern that I'm, noticing, however, is that my body-image tends to plummet on the weekends.

sundays, particularly. This is also true of my symptom-usage, sometimes.

I think part of it is the fact that my weekends recently have been super boring.

Not that the inherent couch-potato & TV lover in me has any problem with this.

My ego has a serious issue with it though. I always feel awful and loser-ish when I just don't do anything "cool" on the weekends. I mean, come on, I live in the city that never sleeps! I'm seventeen! Shouldn't I be out & about, painting the town green and bar-hoping with adorable random boys all night? Should I be out to brunch because it's Sunday and then down to SoHo for the new boutique opening? Should I have spent yesterday morning going for a jog and then the afternoon frolicking &being crazy on the Great Lawn with some cool hipster friends?

I don't know.

In reality, i spent most of the weekend either hanging out with my mom or in my room.

I didn't do nearly as much physical activity as I "should have", and I barely accomplished anything (save spending hours looking in my 2010 Fiske College Guide and creating a colored-post-it system to keep track of the schools that I okay-ed, liked, or adored...yes, i'm a major nerd who wants to get out of high school very, very badly.)

With all of this self-judgement flying around and lots of time to think about all of the things that i feel bad for not doing, I guess it's no wonder that my eating disorder seems to "flare-up", so to speak, on the weekends.

Today was no exception to this weekend-itis.

I woke up ravenous, ate breakfast, watched tv, read my Fiske Guide (lol@me), and napped. A few hours later, I was even more ravenous, so I went into the kitchen to make lunch. I ate. And then I wanted more. And then more. And then I threw up. Meh.

It was the only time i've thrown up this week, which I am really proud about, considering transitions tend to be hard & stressful, and stress increases my urges to either restrict or overeat/purge, blah blah blah, et cetera et cetera.

After that little 'party', i showered and then it was time to get dressed.

dum dum dum.

*enter dramatic music*

Yeah so my body image sucked. I couldn't find anything to wear. And my once tidy room is now in shambles.

Le sigh.

But, never fear, blogging saved the day!

I stumbled upon this (embedded below) video on forever_hopeful's blog, and it literally just made my bad body image crawl into a hole, shrivel up, and die for the time being.  WOOHOO! Rose: 1 ED: 0 cha-ching!

Seriously though, watch it.

I'm not usually one for semi-sappy, quasi-meaningful 'love yourself' videos or whatever, but this literally made me cry (maybe it's my vulnerable state ;) ??? ) and I just really recommend it. So, here it is. 

Hope it touches some of you the way it did me.

xo

Rose

Letter to my Body from Ally Marks on Vimeo.