Tag: anxiety

It’s Just What I Do Now…

Erica3 Comments

Well folks,  I wanted to share that I have actually been consistently working out since about April of this year. (Yay me!)

Back before I began working out, I read a blog post by my cousin Will – who is an avid workout-er… I guess you could call him an athlete – and he talked about how so much of our actions revolve around instant gratification, and how it’s hard to buckle down and do something when you know you won’t see results for a while. His blog motivated me to stop thinking and wishing that I was working out, and just do it. So I started telling myself that exercising was just “something I do now.” Like brushing my teeth or taking a shower. It’s not something I have to wonder if I’m going to do, I just do it.

Honestly, this mindset has been a great strategy for me. Other times when I began trying to work out consistently (my longest stretch in the past was 6 months before I gave up cold turkey), I was always in it for some goal. I wanted to get to a certain weight or look a certain way or be able to run a certain speed or distance. But this time, there’s not a distinct goal – it’s just what I do now.

If I’m honest though, I did have two motivations for starting working out: one was my physical appearance, and the other was my mental health. If you’ve read my blog before, you know physical appearance is something that I can get consumed with. I sometimes struggle to accept how I look. Well, I knew working out would not make me look worse, and I hoped it might improve how I felt about my body as well. I actually have read that working out can make you feel better about how you look, even though you might not look any different at all. I don’t remember the science behind it all, but that intrigued me.

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A Photograph Doesn’t Lie

Erica3 Comments

At 7am bright and early this morning, my family had our pictures taken by a local photography company here in Abilene. The last time we had professional pictures taken was for Calvin’s newborn session (he just turned 2 a few weeks ago) so it has been a while!

While I am super excited to get some new family pictures,  I am also a bit anxious about them. Three of my recent posts have been about body image and the struggle I have had with feeling beautiful enough. Well, pictures are not the funnest thing for a person who doesn’t like their appearance much of the time!

I was trying to explain to my husband what it’s like to get my picture taken. I explained it as follows:

“It’s kind of a mixture of fear and dread. I have no idea what I’m going to see when I look at the screen (referring to having my photo taken on a phone). Sometimes I might see this cute person that I recognize from looking at myself in the mirror, but sometimes I see this completely different person, a horribly disfigured version of myself that I didn’t know existed. So there’s always a fear of looking at a photo of myself, because I never know which person I’m going to see.” 

Does anyone else sympathize with that? I know it’s not just me. Even in the past few days I have heard from others the negative experience that comes from having their picture taken:

“I think the problem is that the picture always ends up looking like me.” (said jokingly…)

“I hate getting that done, but I guess we’ll have to.” (referring to getting pictures taken for an ‘About Me’ page on a professional blog)

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My Obsession: Down the Rabbit Hole

Erica2 Comments

Orthorexia – an obsession with eating foods that one considers healthy

We’re about to go down the rabbit hole into my obsession with having perfect skin and beating acne. Last chance to turn back…

Image result for down the rabbit hole

To give context for this post, in another post I talked about my struggle with acne and the connection it had to my body image. I talked about how I had taken Accutane and the worst of my acne had cleared up. And while it had some pretty substantial results, it was not a complete miracle. I found that I still got breakouts more often than I wanted.

By this point and time, I was hyper-sensitive to any breakout, whether it was one or 100. Even one blemish was too many for me. After having gone through a few years of my face being completely covered with acne, I think when even a few spots started coming back, it triggered significant fear in me. I was determined that I would never go back to looking like that.

A pivotal point in my life was when I found the book, “The Clear Skin Prescription” by Nicholas Perricone. I remember being in a used bookstore and coming across it, and thinking it was worth a shot. The book is based on the premise that diet is the main contributor to inflammation in our bodies, which causes acne. So, the book outlined a very specific low-glycemic diet, which recommended cutting out sugar, even sources like bread and certain fruits and vegetables. This was over 10 years ago, before Keto and Paleo were big – so it was a concept I hadn’t heard of at that point.

I had always heard that what you ate didn’t affect your acne. I read it in teen magazines under the “Acne Myths” section, and it was plastered all over posters at the dermatologist’s office: FOOD DOES NOT CAUSE ACNE. Young and naive Erica never thought to question that “fact” and so I never worried about my diet. And since I didn’t have any weight issues, it meant that I ate whatever my heart desired, such as ice cream for breakfast and lots of fast food.

I decided to give the diet a try, and lo and behold, it really did make my skin look better! (You’ll notice I said BETTER and not perfect.) With this newfound information that diet was the key to clear skin, all I had to do was find the perfect combination of foods to eat (or not eat) to solve all my skin problems. And thus, I spent the next several years in search of the ultimate clear skin diet.

(Here’s where the rabbit hole really begins…)

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