You know, I really don’t like my body. In a big way. Yeah, yeah bring on the violins. I’ve got the use of all my limbs, I’m not suffering chronic pain or uncurable illness. But it’s a problem, nonetheless. My body-image impacts pretty much every area of my life – including my relationship with the Lord. It’s also ungrateful, given all the time and effort that God put in to making me. And it’s a denial of his ‘goodness’ in …Read More
What is it that causes us to make the same mistakes, even when we know how they have cost us in the past? They can be more or less significant – from looking at pornography to leaving a half hour message on your old flame’s answerphone, just to let him know just how Over him you are. Some of these are funny. But some of them are unbearably painful. We see it too in families. Children scarred by their parent’s …Read More
I’m struck by how I seem to be endlessly fighting the same battles. It can feel like there’s one or two issues that keep cropping up, say a longing for a partner or a family – you pray about it and give it to the Lord and for a little while you know real freedom. But then, perhaps you’ve had a tricky week, or you’re tired or it’s a bad time of year, (New Year’s Eve for example. Always a …Read More
Earlier this month you may have heard about so-called ‘managed anorexia’, as espoused by former Big Brother contestant Kenneth Tong. Anorexia has the highest mortality rate of any mental illness. ‘Managed’ anorexia is thus a deadly contradiction – like dipping your toe into a whirlpool or being slightly pregnant. However, according to Tong, if you’re bigger than size zero, then you’re fat. Instead he has used his twitter feed to suggest that followers ‘get thin or die trying’. Wonderfully, however …Read More
Women who undergo plastic surgery have a much higher risk of killing themselves, say experts in the journal, Current Psychiatry Reports. Cosmetic surgery patients also had a three-times higher rate of death due to self-harming acts, such as binge-drinking, drug overdoses and reckless driving. Their conclusions were based on five large-scale, independent studies, which found that the suicide rate is up to three times higher in women who have had breast implants. Another report published in the journal Plastic and …Read More
Last week Marie Caro took her own life. Marie was the mother of Isabelle Caro, the deceased model who fronted a campaign to show the real face of anorexia. According to her husband she killed herself because she felt responsible for her daughter’s death. Isabelle, the ‘ambassador for anorexia’, died last November, aged 28, after being admitted to a French hospital suffering from dehydration. Her parents are alleging that the hospital switched off her life support too early, but the …Read More
So… we’ve been thinking a bit about binge eating. You might not term it an eating disorder as such, much less admit it to others – but there’s a problem. There’s something in there – in you – that won’t be silenced. And you don’t have a name for it. But it’s big and dark and most of all, it’s Hungry. Starving. No amount of cookie dough will satisfy it completely. But it quietens the growls, at least for a …Read More
When you think about it, ever since the Garden of Eden, humanity has been experiencing the effects of a cosmic eating disorder. In choosing their own sustenance, Adam and Eve rejected the Lord and experienced nakedness and shame, for the first time. Since then, we have followed in their footsteps by seeking more creative ways of making our own coverings. Separated from the Lord, from each other and even from ourselves – our bodies have become foreign to us, vessels …Read More
Continuing on from yesterday’s post .. What is it that makes us binge-eat? It’s a practice we rarely discuss and yet it affects one in fifty of us. I wonder if, as a culture, we embody a kind of eating disorder – an ambivalence towards consumption which drives us to new levels of excess, followed by restraint. But why? To begin with, let’s look at some of the traditional ‘risk factors’ for binge-eating. These are similar for those with any eating …Read More
I’m guessing that most of us have been there. Those days when everything’s a bit much and what starts with a cup of tea and a Kit-Kat morphs into a packet of chocolate digestives and a tub of Haagen-Daas. But at what stage does ‘comfort’ cross over into ‘binge’ eating? When does a normal desire to indulge, tip over into hunger so vast that nothing can satisfy it? And how can we understand and challenge such behaviour? This’ll be the …Read More
