Welcome!!!

I am so happy to start your week off with the FIRST of TWELVE guest blogs happening over the next three months from my wicked healthy living, truly authentic tribe of friends, students, mentors, colleagues and family to help inspire you with their real life stories, struggles, triumphs and tips to help create a little more SIMPLICITY in your everyday:)

My very first guest is one of my Energy Exchange staff, instructors and friends Sonia. For those of you who know Sonia, you know it is impossible not to leave a conversation with her without your abs killing you from laughing so hard and that she leads one of the best restorative practices ever!

Here, she is being real, raw and ready to help you shift from a place of feeling overwhelmed and lost to a place of feeling like with the right tools and people around you, you can make it through anything one step at a time:)

From Sonia ~

Hello, my name is Sonia Viveiros, and I’m addicted to food control feeling good!

I have many loves and passions in my life. I have an amazing partner, a wonderful dog, the best of friends, an awesome yoga practice, a deep love of music and so much more. With all of these passions and desires, nothing occurs to me more than food. I constantly think about food. I think about food almost every passing minute. From morning until night the thought of what I’m going to eat next consumes my thoughts, feelings and actions.

I had formed a love of food at a tender age. It was little wonder that I ended up in culinary school. My mom always tells people that the only time I would cry was when I was hungry. Therefore, since adolescence, I was encouraged, or conditioned, to allow food to soothe me. That’s not to say I blame my folks, how could they have known? How could they know my wanting for food would turn into an obsession? How could they have foreseen that I would become bulimic?

Yes, it is true, and to be honest, I cannot pinpoint when it started exactly. I know I was a teenager and it was around the time my folks split up, but because I lied to myself for so long, I don’t even remember the first time I made myself throw up. I never identified myself as someone with bulimia. I was just a very confused teenager that didn’t want to gain any weight, and I wasn’t willing to give up my food! NO way. I wanted to have it all. Eat whatever I wanted and still fit into my size 5 pants, like my skinny friends. My “image” was as the cute, funny girl, with a wicked taste for music… and at the time, it seemed so much more important than taking care of myself.

 I never let anyone know my intentions of being alone after a meal, so that I could go purge. It was like a whole secret life I had, that I couldn’t tell anyone about. Not even myself; I blocked out chunks of time that I had carved out to go blow chunks. I became so good at pretending to be someone else; I was like a really sad clown (obviously metaphorically because clowns creep me out). My parents saw my moods swing and sway and would accuse me of being on drugs. I blamed alcohol and truly believed that was responsible for my acting out.

Years pass and my secret life continued behind closed doors. I turned 26 and moved in with my boyfriend. To keep up this façade, I would only perform my ritual when I knew he wouldn’t find out. He went away for school for a week every month, and I would spend this whole week binging and purging. At this point, I still didn’t know I was bulimic… until a couple of months later when I saw blood. I certainly had a rude awakening! I knew what I had become, although I refused to say the “b” word and label it. The blood only slowed me down – nothing could stop me – shame, secrecy and all.

DICSCLAIMER: Now, this is not a plug for Jenn Pike or Simplicity. The following names and events actually took place LOL

                  Around the same time, I started attending yoga classes at Simplicity and learning about my body and more about food, my main interest. I began to create more awareness within myself and began taking my health seriously. Jenn was so passionate about educating people and every time she spoke I could have sworn she was speaking directly to me. I could identify with a lot of her words and I wanted to know everything she knew! I was attending all of her workshops and began really taking care of myself. Soon after, my need to be healthy (not skinny) was beginning to come to light and my bulimic rituals were fading into a dim dark hole.

Now I am 29, I have only told my story to a handful of my closest loved ones and by sharing it now my hope is that you can understand and recognize some of the signs in your loved ones, or in yourself. I have accepted my past and I am continuing to work on healing my body. I have found pleasure in things that have nothing to do with food. Don’t get me wrong, I love food, but I asked food if we could just be friends from now on.

Bulimia, to me, was a form of control. It was the only part of my life I felt I had control over. Whenever things get stressful and start to feel chaotic, my thoughts start to drift back to those old ways. Now I have tools to get me through it: I will call a friend and vent, I will meditate, I will do yoga or another form of exercise and by using one of these tools, (or in dyer situations, all of them), I gain perspective over my stressor. I can safely relinquish control and I eagerly raise my white flag.

I sincerely thank you for reading,

 Sonia

Posted in Nutrition, Uncategorized, Well Being