We Bite Back: Post - Proana Has Finally Arrived

I first came across the site We Bite Back while searching for positive Eating Disorder Recovery information. I followed a link which led me to a wonderful project called The Orange Revolution. I was very taken with the project as I read accounts of women from all over the world who, armed with post-it notes, are fighting against eating disorders and reaching out with a message of hope and positive body image. Stuck to the mirrors of public restrooms, the walls of fitting rooms, stairwells, trees, bulletin boards, trash cans, and slipped between the pages of books, those participating in the Orange Revolution are spreading the word of self-acceptance; love yourself and your body.

Imagine coming across a brightly colored post-it that says, "You are beautiful just as you are. Love your body," or "You are simply amazing. Love it! Embrace it!" What an incredible idea. What a powerful message! I was impressed and inspired. I wanted to participate and help spread the word.

My contributions so far: a stall of a rest area bathroom, two dressing rooms, and a tree on a well traveled walking/biking path.


We Bite Back describes their site as Post-pronana. Most everyone knows what proana is but post-proana? What is that? We Bite Back has the answer. "Post-proana is an online subculture made up of people actively working to decrease disordered eating habits. Recognizing that proana communities provided teens and adults alike with an appreciated supportive environment, we have created a community that provides support without encouraging anorexic or bulimic behavior patterns. When the mirror lies, each person must learn to rely on the eyes of those who care about us. Those eyes are reading these pages. Working together as a team, we are overcoming our eating disorders together. Successfully."

"This is the site that comes after the madness. Have thinspiration pictures lost all appeal? Wonder what it would be like to finally not be punishing yourself for punishing yourself in an endless cycle? Choice is powerful.Tell Ana to go suck a lemon, and begin your recovery by biting back! Us Oranges are collectively defining a more sustainable, healthier standard of beauty. Join the fight. You don't have to do it alone!"

Sharon Hodgson, the creator of We Bite Back had previously moderated "a rather 'moderate' yet still decidedly proana forum." Her and others on the site "were starting to grow weary with the whole proana schtick, even though they formed a community that was outwardly labeled as such." When the board announced it would be closing she and her friends realized they would be losing their support base. She knew they needed a place where her and her friends could "stay positive and not be alone in their recovery struggles," so they would not have to return to a proana community and risk becoming progressively worse. On May 10th, 2006 she set up We Bite Back with funding help from a friend.

Known on the site as Ms. Orange, Sharon Hodgson has created an online environment at We Bite Back where those seeking recovery from their eating disorder find a warm welcome and positive support. The site includes forums that deal with not only anorexia, bulimia, compulsive overeating, and ENDOS (Eating Disorders Not Otherwise Specified) but include subjects such as exercise, recipes, and artwork. Registration is free.

"You are who your friends are," she says on her site. "If all your friends are miserable and you are feeling vulnerable at the time, they will drag you down. If you are down and you surround yourself with people who are all actively pursuing recovery, health and happiness, they will help you stay strong."

"Instead of swapping tips to lose more weight, people on We Bite Back encourage one another to be stronger, happier, healthier people."

"It's time for people to actively pursue their own recovery, and bite their eating disorders back. It's time for ethics above aesthetics. It's time to bite back!"


Medusa has a great post: Are Thinness Laws Too Heavy Handed?. Be sure to check it out and read what Sharon Hodgson had to say in the "Globe and Mail."

Sources: http://www.webiteback.com
pictures: We Bite Back orange logo

post-its: MrsMenopausal

Recovering From Anorexia: Fighting, Facing--and Finally Embracing--Food

"In the wild ride that is life, some of us seek to find control in food. We use it to make ourselves feel better or worse. We restrict. We binge. We purge. We deprive. We use. Why food? Well, that’s the question, isn’t it?"

"There were times in my life I fasted for days, consuming nothing but water or diet Coke ... Sometimes, as I went between wanting to recover and wanting to wallow in my disease, I’d eat one meal a day—dinner—which was not nearly enough to satisfy my deprived body and mind. I remember summers of living on rice cakes at night after a 12 hour day of work. I did not have a good relationship with food." These are the words of Arielle Lee Becker, a young woman who's blog is an inspiring testament to her recovery from Anorexia .

"I came to a crossroads," she says in her blog entry, Fighting, Facing--and Finally Embracing--Food. "I really wanted to recover. Really wanted to be all right. Really really wanted it. Wasn’t just wishing, wasn’t just hoping—I was willing to do something about it. I was willing to work, to learn, to try."

"I got good at just saying 'No. ... When I’d feel that familiar grip of anorexia, I’d say, 'No.' Figuratively, literally, whatever it took. I was bold with myself—with my disease. I did not take shit ... It takes a lot of willpower. More willpower than it takes to starve."

"I wrote. Daily. I used my writing to help me, to save me, to direct me. ... In the process I learned about myself, sought to love myself, wrote about my pain and my feelings, wrote about my struggles. I began to feel better. I began to stop counting. This was tough—to forget about sizes, forget about calories, forget about a number on a scale."

Arielle writes about giving up her scale, "...you have to work at it. You have to be strong and not allow yourself to give in. And in time you will be okay. You won’t be a slave to a device that conquers your mood and your sense of well-being. And let me tell you, without a number to dictate your daily mood, you begin to listen to yourself and to how you feel without that number. You know yourself as you never knew her before. You feel good. You feel free. You begin to finally see that you feel so good that there is no way you’d ever want to go back to that dark, horrible place you were before."

"I gained weight, but instead of being horrified by the way I looked, I appreciated the curves that were slowly showing themselves. The mirror was—strangely, I thought—more of a friend to me when I had put on some pounds than it was when I was sickly thin and longing to be thinner."

"The right path is never the easiest one, you know," she writes, "And the more you struggle, the better you will feel when you’ve overcome what it is that is bringing you down. In essence, everything worth fighting for starts with a struggle. And believe me, your health and your happiness are definitely worth fighting for."

"Listen to your soul...................... It's all about empowerment!"

To read the above in full, plus more of Arielle's inspiring writings and poetry, visit her blog: Actively Arielle: A voice with a Commitment.

Sources: http://tearstowords.blogspot.com/

Eating Disorders: Inspirational Recovery Quotes #2

Health is not merely the absence of disease, it is the balance of mind, body and soul.
Hippocrates

Finish each day and be done with it ... You have done what you could; some blunders and absurdities no doubt crept in; forget them as soon as you can. Tomorrow is a new day; you shall begin it well and serenely.
Ralph Waldo Emerson

Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities.
Voltaire

There is nothing noble in being superior to your fellow men (sic) - true nobility is being superior to your former self.
Author Unknown

Success is the sum of small efforts, repeated day in and day out.
Robert Collier

When the power of love overcomes the love of power the world will know peace.
Jimi Hendrix

The future is not a result of choices among alternative paths offered by the present, but a place that is created --- created first in the mind and will, created next in activity. The future is not some place we are going to, but one we are creating. The paths are not to be found, but made, and the activity of making them changes both the maker and the destination.
John Schaar

The greatest weapon against stress is our ability to choose one thought over another.
William James

Sometimes I go about in pity for myself, and all the while a great wind is bearing me across the sky.
Ojibwa saying

The more faithfully you listen to the voice within you, the better you will hear what is sounding outside. And only a person who listens can speak.
Dag Hammarskjold

Kindness in words creates confidence. Kindness in thinking creates profoundness. Kindness in giving creates love.
Lao-Tzu

When I began to listen to poetry is when I began to listen to stones, and I began to listen to what the clouds had to say, and I began to listen to others. And what is most important for all of us, is to learn to listen to the soul, the soul of yourself, in here, but which is also the soul of everyone else.
The Native American poet Joy Harjo on PBS

When you do things from the soul, you feel a river moving in you, a joy.
Jelaluddin Rumi

There is a vitality, a life-force, an energy, a quickening that is translated through you into action, and because there is only one of you in all of time, this expression is unique. And if you block it, it will never exist through any other medium and it will be lost. The world will not have it. It is not your business to determine how good it is nor how valuable nor how it compares with other expressions. It is your business to keep it yours clearly and directly, to keep the channel open. You do not even have to believe in yourself or your work. You have to keep yourself open and aware to the urges that motivate you. Keep the channel open.
Martha Graham

It is the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain a thought without accepting it.
Aristotle

Don't ask yourself what the world needs ... Ask yourself what makes you alive because what the world needs are people who have come alive.
Ranier Maria Rilke

Common sense is not so common.
Voltaire

And the day came when the risk to remain tight inside the bud was greater than the risk it took to bloom.
Anais Nin

It's Never Too Late to Be What You Might Have Been. George Eliot

When one door closes another door opens; but we so often look so long and so regretfully upon the closed door, that we do not see the ones which open for us.
Alexander Graham Bell

The thing always happens that you really believe in; and the belief in a thing makes it happen.
Frank Loyd Wright

Success is the good fortune that comes from aspiration, desperation, perspiration and inspiration.
Evan Esar

There is only one person who could ever make you happy, and that person is you.
David Burns

Happiness is not a matter of events, it depends upon the tides of the mind.
Alice Meynell

Goals are the fuel in the furnace of achievement.
Brian Tracy

The greatest mistake you can make in life is to continually be afraid you will make one.
Elbert Hubbard

Our greatest glory is not in never falling but in rising every time we fall.
Confucius

We are still masters of our fate.
We are still captains of our souls.
Winston Churchill

Constant dripping hollows out a stone.
Lucretius

The whole of life is but a moment of time. It is our duty, therefore to use it, not to misuse it.
Plutarch

Press on! A better fate awaits thee.
Victor Hugo

See also Using Affirmations

See sidebar for more inspirational quotes and quotes of the week.

sources: http://www.overeaters.net/inspirations.html
http://www.freewebs.com/rayneonthemoon/inspiration.htm
http://www.inspirational-quotes.info/
Picture source: MrsMenopausal

What I Gained From Giving Up My Eating Disorder: One Woman's Recovery

A youtube video by theicanc

I came across this video on youtube and love how positive it is. Though theicanc states she recovered without therapy or family support, I believe that therapy is an important part of recovery and increases success and enhances the recovery process. I also believe that being secretive can be counterproductive as it's all too familiar ground for those with eating disorders. Still, the video shows a wonderful celebration of recovery with a positive feeling that's contagious.


source: http://youtube.com/watch?v=HeOzxhPa__Y

Eating Disorders: Inspirational Recovery Quotes

"A lost battle is a battle one thinks one has lost."
Jean-Paul Sartre

I finally figured out the only reason to be alive is to enjoy it."
Rita Mae Brown

"When you are a Bear of Very Little Brain, and you Think of Things, you find sometimes that a Thing which seemed very Thingish inside you is quite different when it gets out into the open and has other people looking at it." The House at Pooh Corner
A.A. Milne

"I count him braver who overcomes his desires than him who conquers his enemies; for the hardest victory is over self."
Aristotle

"When you love your body, you are most able to share its pleasures with those who light your heart."
Huitaco

"Life itself is the proper binge."
Julia Child

"If one is a Greyhound, why try to look like a Pekingese?"
Edith Sitwell

"It matters more what's in a woman's face than what's on it."
Claudette Colbert

"Trouble is part of your life, and if you don't share it, you don't give the [people] who love you enough chance to love you enough."
Dinah Shore

"It is not easy to find happiness in ourselves, [but] it is impossible to find it elsewhere."
Agnes Repplier

"It is time for every one of us to roll up our sleeves and put ourselves at the top of our commitment list."
Marian Wright Edelman

"Go within everyday and find the inner strength so that the world will not blow your candle out."
Katherine Dunham

"By very slow degrees, and with frequent relapses, that alarmed and grieved my friend, I recovered."
Mary Shelley (from Frankenstein)

"When all is said and done,
it is persistence that is the antidote to powerlessness....
The sight of goodness undeterred
has more power than all the forces on earth arrayed against it."
Joan Chittister

"The best way to make your dreams come true is to wake up."
Paul Vale'ry

"Try.
Fail.
Try Again.
Fail Better."
Samuel Beckett

"Remember: Only one thing registers on the subconscious mind: repetitive application - practice. What you practice is what you manifest."
Grace Speare

"It is easy to dodge our responsibilities, but we cannot dodge the consequences of dodging our responsibilities."
Sir Josiah Charles Stamp, an English Economist

"If you live your life with a shield up, even the good things in life will pass you by."
Anonymous

"The attainment of wholeness requires one to stake one's whole being. Nothing less will do; there can be no easier conditions, no substitutes, no compromises."
C. G. Jung

"What gets us into trouble is not what we don't know. It's what we know for sure that just ain't so. " Mark Twain

"Courage is not the towering oak that sees storms come and go; it is the fragile blossom that opens in the snow."
Alice M. Swaim

"Dignity consists not in possessing honors, but in the consciousness that we deserve them." Aristotle

"The only journey is the journey within."
Rainer Maria Rilke

"Yes, know thyself: in great concerns or small, Be this thy care, for this, my friend, is all."
Juvenal

"Every day do something that will inch you closer to a better tomorrow."
Doug Firebaugh

"Insist on yourself. Never imitate."
Ralph Waldo Emerson

"It is hard to fail, but it is worse never to have tried to succeed."
Theodore Roosevelt

"Our greatest glory consist not in never falling, but in rising every time we fall."
Oliver Goldsmith

"Happiness resides not in posessions and not in gold; the feeling of happiness dwells in the soul."
Democritus

"There is only one person who could ever make you happy, and that person is you."
David Burns, Intimate Connections

"The rose is fairest when 'tis budding new, and hope is brightest when it dawns from fears."
Walter Scott

See also Using Affirmations

See sidebar for more inspirational quotes and quotes of the week.

Quotes compiled from the following sites:
http://www.poppink.com/inspirations.html
http://www.inspirational-quotes.info/growth.html
http://eatingdisorders.suite101.com/article.cfm/more_quotes
http://www.swedauk.org/poems/quotes.htm

picture source: MrsMenopausal