bik(e)ini body ready
As I get closer to leaving, more people are asking about details of the trip. A common question revolves around food - what am I going to eat, how will I eat enough?
Practically, the question is easy. With a meal plan for ~8000kcal/day based on food that I should be able to get in small towns and at service stations. Bananas, peanut butter, bread, fried fruit; all the vegan staples. Firepot Food are helping out with their lightweight dehydrated meals too (10/10 thank you!), so I’m not stuck eating endless pasta and oats morning and night. With protein powder, a little stove, and a ravenous appetite, I’ll be able to get the macros and vitamins I need for the trip.
But looking around online, others who have done this route in similar time frames have struggled to get enough calories in to keep their weight up. This makes the topic a bit trickier for several reasons.
1. I used to have an eating disorder, specifically Anorexia Nervosa.
2. As someone who is already small, I can’t safely get much smaller.
3. Weight changes your body, and relationships with your body can be complicated.
When I was 14, I was diagnosed with Anorexia - and officially discharged from Child & Adolescent Mental Health services at 18 with “Anorexia in remission”. This did not mean cured, but instead suggested I was only momentarily healthy.
I don’t want to risk relapsing. I lost years of memory, laughter, and independence to my mental illness and I won’t do that again. But tracking how much I eat, exercising heaps, and losing body mass all sound pretty disordered.
Point 2, the fact of body mass. If I lose weight, it’ll be harder to stay warm and more of a struggle to stay energised as the trip goes on. While BMI isn’t accurate, for a host of reasons, there is discomfort in being underweight. And as someone who spent their adolescence underweight, my body does not need that stress again. My solution to point 1 and 2 is to gain weight - so far 10kgs!
But point three is less straight-forward. It is fairly simple that changes to weight often map to changes in appearance. However, our relationship to our appearance can be hard - regardless of any history with sexual violence or eating disorders. We are judged on our appearances. Obvious fatphobia in society means weight gain is often stigmatised, and as more of our lives exist online realistic role models become less common.
Part of recovering from my eating disorder was valuing my body for what it could do, rather than how it looked; it could kayak, run, hug friends and family. But after I was raped that changed. Instead I saw what my body couldn’t do - my body couldn’t keep me safe, and what happened to me repulsed me. This floored my self-esteem and body image. But once you’ve clawed your sense of self-worth back once, you can do it again.
The same behaviours and ideas that helped me come to terms with my body during anorexia recovery, helped me return to my body-neutral norm. Wearing clothes that were comfortable, focusing on skills and strength, eating with a physical and psychological sense of health (e.g. eat the vegetables then eat the cake), and investing in friendships all helped to rebuild my confidence without changing my body. Now these same things are helping me maintain a healthy relationship with my body, while I go against the perceived ideal of thinness by getting bigger before summer.
Bring on the bik(e)ini body.
