The beginning of a life mission

Here i begin my new years resolution...To help spread awareness for eating disorders and to promote a healthy, positive body image.

Im new to this whole online blogging business, but I figure that getting over my fear of what people will think of this blog is in no way in comparison to the change I can help start.

Ill start with what exactly ill be blogging about. My focus is to spread the awareness of how serious of a disorder eating disorders truly are. They affect about 10 MILLION females in the United States ALONE. With such a high population suffering from this disorder, the funding they receive for research is depressingly low. For example, Alzheimers only affects about 4.5 million americans, which is less than half the amount of people with ED(eating disorders), yet eating disorders receive 75% LESS funding than Alzheimers does. How is this right? Its not. This is where my mission starts. Raising awareness for this disorder will hopefully raise interest, increase knowledge, and hopefully, eventually increase the amount of funding so there can be more research done to help find better ways of helping people to cope/deal/overcome this disorder.

So what makes me interested in ED? I recently had a 6 month internship at Princeton University Medical Hospital in the Eating Disorder Unit. I feel so blessed/lucky/thankful that i was given the opportunity to meet some AMAZING people who happened to be suffering from ED(eating disorder). The past 6 months I know have impacted my life in so many ways. I know for sure this is the population i want to work with, and want to make it my life mission to help girls and boys with ED.

I have not suffered from ED, but like most teenage females in the US, i have had body image issues. Growing up and due to genetics ive always had a slender frame. But being "thin" comes with both positives and negatives. When i was younger I was "too skinny", being called toothpick, string bean, etc. It didnt bother me too much, especially because my dad would make me feel better by always saying "dont worry, they are gunna be jealous when they are older". and he was right. i went to being made fun of for being too skinny, to in high school being scrutinized by people saying "i hate you, you can eat whatever and your still skinny". I never really paid attention to how I looked until my senior year high school. senior year in high school till almost senior year of college, my weight fluctuated a lot due to just normal growing into womanhood. The idea of "eating whatever I wanted, and not gainging weight" was no longer holding as much truth as it used to. I started paying attention when my pants fit too tight, and my shirts didnt exactly button up well. It was almost daunting to admit I was going from a size 2 to 4. Silly right? I never thought of it as finally getting some womanly curves to my slender frame, i just thought of it as weight. And the thought of weight and pounds overshadowed my view of my transition into womanhood. Of course my body shouldnt look the same as it did in high school, but it took me awhile to realize that. There have beens lots of body struggles inbetween my senior year in high school and senior year in college; the thing though i feel that was most important was when i just stopped. Stopped worrying so much about how i THOUGHT i looked, and just realized that I will have this body for the REST OF MY LIFE, so instead of WASTING my time on why i dont like it, just ACCEPT it for what it is, MINE. Its my body and I shouldnt be so harsh on it. I would never criticize someone else's body as harshly as i was criticizing my own, nor would i even notice or care, so why do i have to be so hard on myself? I dont. I have slowly realized that your body is your own, not someone elses. There is no one else in the world with the exact same body as my own, even if i had a twin, there are always differences lol So why am i going to waste time looking like someone else, when I can spend time on making what I already have look good too? Ill admit, everyone has their days when they feel like they want to be thinner, prettier, sexier, etc and thats ok...but as long as those days arent more than once or twice a month (usually at that time of the month lol) and you are happy with yourself at the end of the day, than i think it makes life a WHOLE LOT EASIER.

and through all that, i find where my 2nd goal of this blog is...to promote a positive body image. By finding good and strong level of happiness with my own body image, i hope that I will be able to spread positive vibes/feelings/thoughts about body image to others. Life is so much easier when you aren't worrying so much about how your body looks. you can concentrate those energies on so many other things.

Well yea, thats my first blog. for those who read it, thanks. I know i ramble and my sentences dont always tie together and i have a tendency to CAPITALIZE words, but i promise i will try to get better as time goes on..in the mean time I am going to put a link to the NEDA website so everyone who reads this PLEASE go and learn something about ED. Expose yourself to knowledge and i hope this is just the beginning of a really good journey to spreading awareness for ED and promoting positive body image :)

<3Stacy Rae