Day 183: Anorexia – Lifestyle or Disease?

When I was browsing through the internet on Eating Disorder related websites, the topic of ‘Lifestyle or Disease’ would always pop up over and over again.

On the one side you have the people who believe they are suffering from a disease and require to be cured – and that this disease is involuntary.

On the other side you have people who believe that they are following a lifestyle which should be respected by others and that you have a choice to participate within Eating Disorders or not.

The first group is considered to be ‘authentic’ within having a mental disorder, while the second group is considered by the first group to be ‘wannabes’.

The thing is that they’re both right and they’re both wrong.

Is anorexia or any other Eating Disorder really a ‘disease’? And is it really ‘involuntary’ like ‘catching the flu’ and having ‘eating disorder genes’? It’s a nice side to take because if you’re ‘sick’ and you’re ‘suffering’ and you didn’t have ‘any choice’ within it – then you are left in a position of zero responsibility because ‘you had nothing to do with it’. I find that to be unacceptable with regards to Eating Disorders or even other mental disorders like ‘Depression’ which are portrayed to be ‘diseases’. These mental disorders don’t just manifest overnight. Things like anorexia, bulimia and depression are manifestations which develop through time. You have to actively think about your body in a particular way, you have to actively take comments personal, you have to actively compare yourself to others, you have to actively, obsessively go through fashion magazines while being hypnotised by the ‘thinness’ you perceive, you have to actively put yourself in front of a mirror and remind yourself why you are not good enough, you have to actively not eat and hide your eating patterns, you have to actively put your finger down your throat and puke. There’s no ‘disease’ making you do those things: it’s all you!

Now, people don’t want to hear this because they immediately take it personal and believe that there is something wrong with them and that it makes them ‘look bad’ – because obviously they and everyone knows that this type of behaviour is quite disturbing. So if the behaviour is ‘out of your control’ you can wash your hands clean and just kind of shrug your shoulders at it. The problem with saying that you have a ‘disease’ and that it’s ‘involuntary’ is that you are placing the Eating Disorder separate from yourself, where it’s some sort of ‘Alien invader’ where you have no say. How are you supposed to cure/recover from that? You can’t, because you only have the ability to bring about change within yourself, you only have the power to change you. So if you see your eating disorder behaviour as ‘not you’, then all you can do is stare at it and be completely powerless – you’re placing yourself in victimization mode. On the other hand, if you realise and acknowledge that you are the one acting out this Eating Disorder and bringing it ‘to life’ – where you are the one driving it = you have the power to change it, because you know it’s you. You might not like it because it means that all these disturbing behaviours are indeed coming from you and your decisions and choices to participate within non-supportive thought patterns and actions – but at least you are then placing yourself in a position of self-responsibility and can actually make a difference within your Life.

This does not mean that I agree that ‘anorexia is a lifestyle’ – because obviously, there is a missing link between ‘Starving Yourself’ on the one side, and ‘Life’ on the other side. It’s more of a ‘abusing myself style’ than anything else and should in no way whatsoever be ‘respected’ or ‘recognized’ as a ‘formal lifestyle’ as ‘one of the many ways one can choose to live their life’. Eating disorders are harmful and damaging and you’re basically squeezing the Life out of yourself for the sake of your appearance matching some picture presentation. There’s nothing ‘Life’ about that, you might as well be a plastic doll or an image in a magazine. Though what people from this side do get, is the point that you are the creator and maintainer of your Eating Disorder and so it will be easier for them to stop – but of course only if they want to. Obviously if you see starving yourself as a lifestyle then there’s some serious mental disorder existent within you and as such you might not want to give this up at all as a result of that.

So No, Anorexia is not a Disease and No Anorexia is not a Lifestyle.

It is what it is = it’s mental disorder. And not in the sense of a ‘disease ’ or ‘condition’ of which you are the victim. It’s a mental disorder because you’re actively disordering yourself, and a long with it your body as well (and your body is really the real victim here). Anorexia or any other eating disorder can only exist as long as you fuel/participate within it. You have to in every moment decide whether you are going to act upon the thought that ‘you’re so fat and shouldn’t eat’.

Sure, there may have been events and circumstances which would make someone participate within an Eating Disorder more likely – but in the end it’s still up to self whether you make that decision to harm yourself this way or not.

The whole Pro-Anna (or ‘wannabes’) movement is merely an extreme form of what Eating Disorders actually stand for. They’re direct and straightforward about what they’re doing and how they’re doing it – and are only able to do this due to the vast level of acceptance and value that has been placed on one’s appearance over one’s physical well-being. I mean, is it a coincidence that with the advent of mass-media where we are bombarded with images from billboards, magazines, tv, internet over the last decade – that there has been an 80% rise in Anorexia cases? And where children are being diagnosed with eating disorders from an earlier and earlier age? I mean, there’s FIVE YEAR OLDS that have eating disorders! This is not normal, this is the direct result of our society’s values falling further and further away from valuing life and actual well-being over appearances and fake happiness. Our world is becoming more and more superficial and our bodies are the one’s suffering just like the Earth is suffering more and more under our unhealthy ideologies which do not promote actual well-being.

Check out the Desteni I Process Lite – a free course – to assist and support yourself in getting to know yourself and your mental disorders and assist yourself to a sound mind.

Check out the Equal Money Website as an alternative economic system that actually values Life and actual well-being over unsustainable economic growth.

Related articles

• Day 169: Turning my Back on Anorexia, Anorexia turning its Back on Me
• Day 172: My Dirty Little Secret
• Day 166: From Anorexia to Bulimia
• Day 171: Hiding behind Anorexia
• Day 170: Starving and Binging - Two Sides of the Same Coin
• The Internal War Of Anorexia - Day 296
• Day 274: Eating Disorders and Desteni
• Day 162: Eating Disorders and Unforetold Consequences
• Day 157: Generating an Eating Disorder - Part 1

Day 23: Decisions

I forgive myself that I haven’t accepted and allowed myself to see and realise that I have never made a real decision within my life

I forgive myself that I haven’t accepted and allowed myself to see and realise that I in fact have never made decision within my life – as all my decisions have only ever been based on past experiences as memory – and never a seeing in the moment what would be Best for All

I forgive myself that I haven’t accepted and allowed myself to see and realise that I have never made a real decision within my life, as within every moment of decision I draw on my past, past experience and memories to tell me what to do – where I accepted and allowed my past to tell me, direct me into a particular decision – and thus it was never a real decision as it was already pre-determined based on my database of past experiences and memories

I forgive myself that I haven’t accepted and allowed myself to see and realise that my decisions are based on personal likes and dislikes as positive and negative energy annotations, based on past experiences and memories – where within every moment of decision will base my decisions and what route to talk on my personal likes and dislikes based on memory as past events and experiences – and thus never actually practically deciding within the moment within the starting point and context of what is Best for All

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to have defined myself according to personal likes and dislikes – and to believe these to be real – while obviously they cannot be real if everyone has different likes and dislikes and there is no uniformity or absoluteness in anyway whatsoever, and thus I forgive myself that I haven’t accepted and allowed myself to see and realise that personal likes and dislikes can never be what is Best for All as it only considers what is Best for Self as Character

I forgive myself that I haven’t accepted and allowed myself to see and realise that I am in fact a pre-programmed organic robot, executing and performing tasks based on my memory as all the inputs I’ve received throughout my life and the inputs I placed in myself within back chat – and thus any action, task, decision was never real but only ever based on past experiences as memory

I forgive myself that I haven’t accepted and allowed myself to see and realise that with every new step, with every new decision – I am not in fact stepping forward, as I simply repeating and recycling my past within myself where I take all I have ever done and all I have ever experienced and run it through the equation of the decision I have to make in the present – and thus all that can ever come from this decision is more of the same, more of the past – and within that supporting and keeping myself as character in place

I forgive myself that I haven’t accepted and allowed myself to see and realise that I have ever only existed as characters, as different sets of values as likes and dislikes – where I will move from one character to another as the input/environment changes and within this I forgive myself that I haven’t accepted and allowed myself to see and realise that I have in fact never lived but only lived as fragmented characters within separation of myself, in constant fluctuation – instead of being here, stable, within every moment of breath

When and as I see myself being faced with a decision, and decide upon something – I stop and I breathe – I take a moment to evaluate how I accepted and allowed myself to come to this decision and ask myself: what variables were involved? What values were involved? Is this really what is best for all or is it a decision based on personal likes and dislikes which in no way whatsoever considers what is best for all? And within that I commit myself to evaluate the decisions I have made and the decisions still to make to check myself and my starting point within making decision and teach myself to make decisions which are in fact best for all and not automated decision making based on personal likes and dislikes

When and as I see myself shifting characters – I stop and I breathe – I see and realise that I am not in fact here, present as breath within every moment – but am allowing myself to be a program running in automation mode where I will change and adapt myself according to the various inputs coming from my environment and my self-taught outputs as a response to these inputs – I see and realise that this is not in fact real living and thus I stop and stick to breathing, here

Within that I commit myself to for myself identify all the various characters I’ve accepted and allowed myself to create within my life to deal with various situations, people – and to walk the process of Self Forgiveness and Self Correction pertaining these characters so I can merge all the fragmented, separated parts back together here as me and transform myself from being multiple disordered character to an actual living being Here

When and as I see myself making a decision based on personal likes and dislikes as positive and negative energy, I stop and I breathe – I see and realise that this is not real decision making but running an automated program which is not reliable at all as it is only based on self-interest and the survival of self as character and thus I do not accepted and allow myself to go that route and re-direct myself to really look and see what requires to be done within the moment which is in the Best interest of ALL

Minority Report – Once you’ve seen the Future, you can change it

I recently watched the movie ‘Minority Report’ with Tom Cruise.

The movie is about a ‘Pre-crime’ unit in the near future (2054), who rely on three “psychics” who are able to see a (murder) crime before it had been committed. The visions they get are placed on high tech screen panels where the detectives of the pre-crime unit try to find clues as to where this crime is going to take place. Once they know where it is they pack themselves with their futuristic gadgets, search robots – get out there and arrest the criminal just before he/she commits the crime.

One of the Detectives (Tom Cruise) then finds out that one of the precogs (= one of the psychics) had a vision of him killing someone that he doesn’t even know. He is now obviously wants to prevent this murder from happening. While he runs from the authorities he tries to uncover why he would want to kill this person. He is also faced with a dilemma. The whole Pre-Crime unit is based on the starting point of pre-determination (= pre-programming). If he is able to prevent the murder then he can clear is name, but then at the same time it would demonstrate that people have “choice”, and thus that ‘Pre-Crime’ is not absolute.

In the end he is just, just able to prevent the murder from happening. As he is standing ready to shoot the guy and all the points are coming together for this single event to happen – one of the precogs he took with on his search, Agatha, tells him “You don’t have to do this, once you’ve your future you can change it”. And then he ends up not killing the guy.

But now in the end of the movie they used this whole point of “choice” as an excuse to shut down the whole pre-crime unit. But the only person who ever had a ‘choice’ from all those who had been spotted as future criminals was Tom Cruise, because he was the only one of them who had seen their own future. All of the other ones, would have still committed the crime because “they didn’t know better”. So now in a way what the movie is implying is that everyone can change their future, but like they demonstrated earlier this is not true. Only those who have seen their future – who in essence have seen their programming – can change their future. So you really only have choice within that one single moment, where you see how you operate and how you are programmed to behave – and then you either decide to follow your pre-programmed path – or you choose to step of it. But unless that point is not present, the point of seeing your future/programming – you do not have a choice and you are simply a slave to your ‘destiny’.

And this is exactly what one of Desteni’s objectives is – to show and teach people how to see their own programming, to see how and what they’re going to do before they’ve even done it – and give them the practical tools to change their fate. Because – what is implied in the statement “Once you’ve seen your future you can change it”? It implies you do not only know your future, but you also know your past. And it is by knowing your past, by knowing the exact factors, events, people, reactions that played a role in moulding and shaping who you are today– that you hold the key to see the future, you hold the key to change your future.
See your Future, check out www.desteni.co.za