006: The Cost Of Skinny (The Truth About What the Diet Mentality is REALLY Costing You)

Rewind about 12 years ago…

My anesthesiologist has me counting backwards from 100 as the surgical team gets ready to go in microscopically and remove the calcified, hardened disc fluid that had been sitting on my nerves for the past 8 months.

A procedure I endearingly call, the Cost of Skinny…

I was so focused on getting 'skinny' or 'lean' or 'toned' or 'hot' or whatever words ruled my brain at the time, that I didn't pay attention or tune in to what my body needed and what my body was screaming at me to do.

If only I had listened to the screams from my body to "slow down!", "chill out!", "and while you're at it, go eat a friggen sandwich Leanne!", maybe it could have all been avoided.

But I didn't care! I just wanted to be skinny and beautiful. And no back pain or injury or pesky flare-up was gonna stop me!

Until it finally did stop me.

It didn't just stop me—it landed me on an operating table at Cleveland Metro for major spine surgery at the ripe ol' age of 25.

But that was just the tip of the iceberg.

And it certainly was not the ONLY Cost of Skinny…

When I started looking back at my life, I realized that decades of the "Diet Mentality' and all the self-loathing that came alongside it had a cost that I didn't even know to look for — that I didn't even know to try to avoid.

★ A Food Prison that had me chained to the handcuffs of restriction, deprivation, control, and OBSESSING over every morsel of food that touched my lips…or (when I couldn't possibly take it any longer) veering over to the OPPOSITE side: care-free abandonment, eating everything in sight, feeding my sugar addictions, and using food to comfort, distract, or numb myself. (And then of course the cascade of guilt, shame, and self-loathing that would follow suit).

★ A Body Prison where I felt like I was walking around in a body that didn't reflect the woman I really was — like the outsides didn't match the insides — but that I felt powerless to change. A prison of wearing 'fat clothes', covering my body with cardigans, and refusing to wear shorts or tank tops (or god forbid be seen in a bathing suit!) even when it was 95 degrees outside. Not to mention allowing my body to BE the barrier that kept me from doing what I wanted to do, feeling how I wanted to feel, and showing up as the version of myself that I really was…but I just couldn't access her.

★ A Shame Prison where I was outright ashamed that (after decades on this planet) I was STILL struggling with food, still struggling with my body, and still on this up-and-down roller coaster. I felt like a fraud — like if anyone ever "found me out" they would see how crazy or broken I really was. And of course there was the shame that followed me around every single day because of the identity that I had created about my struggles — that I WAS my body, that I WAS my addictions, that I WAS a failure.

And of course…

★ A 'Fat Head' that (no matter how much weight I lost or how 'successful' I became) my Self-Image saw me through goggles seeing me as 'fat', 'unloveable', a 'failure', 'embarrassing', and that I would never be enough — skinny enough, successful enough, enough period.

And all of this left me in a prison of pain, disconnection, and loneliness.

Physically. Mentally. Emotionally.

And in those moments of clarity, that's when I realized:

"Whoa! This is not unique to ME!"

Every woman that feels stuck on the diet and weight loss Roller Coaster is paying their own Cost of Skinny too!

And in this episode of the Stressless Eating Podcast we get into the in's and out's of how to avoid YOUR 'Cost of Skinny' in your own journey.