Video Transcription
How Endometriosis & PMDD impact body image & eating
I feel like I’m a stranger in my own body. I can have a different pants size at 9:00 in the morning than I do at 5:00 in the afternoon. But I’m able to quiet that voice now and say, “Go away. Not today.”
Bella: Hi, Bella!
Mia: Hey, Mia! How are you?
Bella: I’m good, thank you. I’m excited to be here.
Mia: I am so stoked to be with you! Who wants to do the first card?
Bella: I can do it—why not!
Mia: Fabulous.
Bella: Okay, if we could start again, what do you wish the term “bikini body” meant?
Mia: I just hate that term—”bikini body.” I think everybody has a body, and anyone who wears a bikini has a bikini body. It’s simple. I wish that’s what it meant. If you put on a bikini, you’ve got a bikini body. Yay, go for it!
Bella: What about endo and PMDD—how has that affected how you feel about your body?
Mia: Oh wow, big one. Yeah, greatly. So, I have PMDD, which is Premenstrual Dysphoric Disorder, for people who don’t know. I experience extreme levels of anxiety and depression. I pretty much feel like I’m walking through a fog that won’t clear. I’m a completely different person—my partner will tell you that, my friends will tell you that. I’m not myself. And therefore, that affects my body image as well. I feel like I’m a stranger in my own body.
It’s the most insane feeling—just feeling uncomfortable in your own skin. Your clothes fit differently, you hate everything in your wardrobe for two weeks. And also, my self-care goes completely out the window. I’m so much more tired. I feel down about myself a lot. And because my self-care goes out the window in terms of exercising and doing things that make me feel good—moving my body—I end up feeling worse about myself. And therefore, I look in the mirror and just feel so dissatisfied in my body.
And it does sometimes trigger those eating disorder behaviors that I used to have. I’m happy and grateful that I’m able to quiet that voice now and say, “Go away, not today.” But that voice still comes back, and it can definitely intensify during those two weeks of every month.
Bella: I have such a similar experience. As you say, I feel like I’m not at home in my body. I feel like it’s not on my side. I have to remind myself that the reason it’s inflamed, the reason I’m bloated, the reason my body is reacting the way it is—is because it’s doing its very best with the limitations it’s been given.
With endometriosis, you have tissue growing outside of where it’s supposed to be growing, and it’s so debilitating from a pain perspective. But as you say, it changes the shape of your body. It’s actually quite a mind-bender, because I went through all the work to have a more flexible and peaceful relationship with my body image. Then I was diagnosed with stage 4 endo.
Part of my eating disorder was that I didn’t see my body properly. But it’s now a very strange thing, as you say, to look in the mirror and say, “I am seeing a different body today than the one I had yesterday.” And it’s true. I can’t just say to myself, “That’s my mind.” It is true.
I can have a different pant size at 9:00 in the morning than I do at 5:00 in the afternoon.
Mia: Okay—how do you achieve body kindness?
Bella: I often have people come to me and say, “Mia, I just want to love my body. I just want to like it.” And my answer is—which body? The one you have today? The one you’ll have in 10 years? The one you’ll have, hopefully, at 90 at the end of your long and lovely life?
So, the kindness is in accepting the transient nature of bodies—and the fact that they are designed to change and carry us through all these different phases of our lives.
Mia: The first day I went into recovery, I called Butterfly.
Bella: Same.
Mia: Did you?
Bella: Oh my gosh—same origin story.
