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Hello! Who are you?
Hi! I’m Theresia. A native New Yorker who just moved to Phoenix, AZ with my husband. I’m currently self-employed working as a Coach.
Bodies are fascinating to me. How beautiful and interconnected everything is. How we know so much about them yet so little and how important it is for us to be connected to them.
I do consider myself to be happy. I try to find the humor in things that are otherwise not funny because a lot of things are funny eventually.
What is your struggle and when did it start?
Growing up there weren’t clear boundaries and my caretaker was unpredictable. They were sometimes wise and most of the time unreasonable. It felt like I had very little control over anything until I realized I could control my food intake and my body.
I started with trying to control my body through periods of undereating and then ended with trying to control my body disguised as health and wellness.
Around 13 years old I noticed that I could lose weight by eating less and my yo-yo dieting journey began. Many people commented that I looked great and was losing “baby fat”. Compliments were also motivating for me to control my body and how I looked.
During high school, I went through periods of binge eating and eating too little. I rarely felt full and usually ate to the point of being very uncomfortable. Usually after periods of feeling very out of control, I was so determined to feel a sense of control that I would eat very little even when I was hungry.
When I was 24, I became a personal trainer and realized I could control my body in a new way – through exercise. It was amazing how toned and strong I became.
A few years later I became interested in health and wellness and started to learn about healthy foods, nervous system exercises, energy, etc. And the same pattern of control started again disguised as health and wellness.
Because of the way I was treated growing up and as a young adult, I felt there was something deeply wrong with me- like I was not loveable as I was. I needed to control my body to feel like I was enough, to make myself loveable so that I could be happy.
How did this struggle make you feel at your worst moments?
When I started to get very thin in high school, a teacher would leave sandwiches in their office for me. I thought they were being nice, but looking back they probably knew that I wasn’t eating very much. One girl was mean and said I looked sick.
Another time a friend’s mom said something like “you’re getting thin again” and poked one of my hip bones sticking out of my pants. This felt more like she was accusing me of something rather than trying to talk to me about what was going on.
Once my mother told me to get on the scale and angrily said, “I bet you’re not even 110 pounds!” It was true. I was 108 pounds- the lowest weight I’ve ever been.
Nobody asked me if I was okay. I have a feeling many people thought I was doing it “just for attention” which was definitely true. I did want attention and I loved the attention I got for being thin. But the attention I really wanted was someone to care about my feelings and connect with me just for being me.
Growing up it seemed like happiness was found in food. We didn’t talk about happiness much and I repeatedly heard things like “life is not about being happy.” It felt like if I were happy without permission, I was doing something wrong. So in a sense controlling my body and finding happiness (or what I thought was happiness) through that and the compliments I was receiving was in many ways a rebellion.
When I got into fitness and then health and wellness, I thought happiness had to do with the way my body looked and performed. Again, I was receiving compliments about how good I was looking, but it felt similar to when I was undereating, just disguised as health and wellness.
I wanted my health and energy to be perfect. If I didn’t have a good night’s sleep, I thought something was wrong. I started to pathologize everything and was constantly looking for something about myself to fix. I thought if I could just fix everything wrong with me/my body, then I could be truly happy.
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Was there a moment when you started to turn things around?
Everything changed when I learned about boundaries. Turns out I had a lot to learn about this. LOL.
My mentor and teacher, Randi Buckley, completely blew my mind with the way she taught healthy boundaries. I took her course and became certified as a Healthy Boundaries for Kind People Coach. At the end of it, I “grew” a quarter of an inch!
I realized that I was basing my happiness on my self-worth and I was basing my self-worth on how other people perceived me based on how my body looked and performed. And I thought I could control how other people perceived me, and I could to a certain extent.
Trying to control my body and how other people perceived me was not how I wanted to continue to live my life and it didn’t bring me happiness. The thing that makes me most happy is living in integrity with my values. Randi has a few definitions of boundaries. One of them is boundaries are your values in action and I love that and live it as best as I can.
Another thing to point out is that your values can change over time and that’s okay. You’re not a hypocrite for changing your values based on your season of life or change of circumstances.
What steps did you take to overcome your struggle?
If you want different results, you have to do things differently.
While my methods throughout the years changed, my pattern was still the same. I was trying to control my body so that I could feel I was enough.
What really helped me was seeing this pattern and not judging myself for it. While trying to improve my health was better than undereating to be thin, it still was about control and worthiness.
The first thing I would suggest doing is writing down what it is you really want. Not what society, your parents, your best friend, your guru or whoever tells you to want, but more like the Spice Girls’ song “tell me what you want, what you really really want”.
Figuring out what I wanted was so important. It helped me navigate working with my body in a way that was supportive instead of controlling.
I would ask myself:
- Is this a way to support my body or to control it?
- What am I hoping to get out of this if I implement this change?
- What is it that I really want to happen with this change and is it in line with my values?
- If I were to go forward in time 20 years from now and look back at myself, would I be happy I did this?
This helps me to be very clear about my intention whenever I engage in a new body practice. I’m a person who loves to grow and learn so I will always be doing something new with my body, but now I’ve learned to do things because I’m worth it not because I need to become worth it.
Have you shared any of this with people around you in real life?
My husband has always been my #1 cheerleader. He doesn’t judge me and even when I was trying to control my body through health and wellness, he would gently ask me some questions about it and never made me feel bad or like I was doing something wrong.
I don’t find it difficult to share my stories with people and spaces I know are able to hold the most tender parts of me. Some parts of my story are reserved for my closest friendships and mentorships.
It was difficult to share the more private parts of my story when I didn’t practice healthy boundaries because I had a hard time discerning who to share with. I realized I was sharing very private parts of my story with some people who weren’t able to hold space for me with care and compassion. I didn’t need to pressure myself into sharing it in spaces or with people I didn’t want to.
If you could give a single piece of advice to someone else that struggles, what would that be?
I really really wish I learned about healthy boundaries before I started learning about fitness, health and wellness.
If I could give a single piece of advice to someone else who struggles with body image and trying to fix their body, I would say you are not broken. When you realize you’re not broken and you don’t need fixing, it becomes easier to make the necessary changes to support yourself and improve the quality of your life and feel happy.
What have been the most influential books, podcasts, YouTube channels, or other resources for you?
- Never Broken by Jewel: This is a great book about Jewel’s search for happiness and how she overcame mental health struggles. I love how she doesn’t view people as broken because I agree with that 1000%.
- Unbound A Woman’s Guide to Power by Kasia Urbaniak: This book teaches you how to break out of Good Girl conditioning and learn to know what you want and how to get it.
- Recovering from Emotionally Immature Parents by Lindsay C. Gibson: This book helped me understand why I didn’t know how to have boundaries and gave good background information about why some people behave the way they do and what you can do about it.
Where can we go to learn more about you?
I have a background in Personal Training and Bodywork. I am a Healthy Boundaries for Kind People™ Certified Coach and Z Health™ Master Practitioner. You can read more about me here, on Instagram, Substack, and YouTube
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