When clients are at the end of their treatment at Monte Nido they have a graduation ceremony. We ask them to write and read out loud an “Eaters Agreement” which is a concept taken from a book called Nourishing Wisdom by David Marc. Writing an eaters agreement is making a vow to yourself and setting intentions for the future. At some point you might want to write one yourself. But for now we wanted to share with you some of the agreements clients have written. We hope that they will shine a light of encouragement and inspiration on whatever darkness might be lingering within.
“Many times I’ve said I wish my body could be a separate person from me so that I could apologize to it for the pain I’ve put it through for the last 15 years. I would tell it that it has never done anything to deserve the punishment it’s received and all along it’s only been an innocent victim to the darkness in my head. And I imagine my body looking me straight in the eye with a knowing look and asking, ‘What do you plan on doing now?’ and this is what I would say…I plan on restricting, not my food but the part of me that lived on self-hatred. I will starve, but only my shame, guilt, and fear. I will continue to purge, not the food I eat but my feelings. I will let them all tumble out when they need to, instead of letting them build until I don’t know what to do with them and the feeling is unmanageable. Over-exercising is going to be a given, but not in the gym or by moving my body. I will over-exercise my right to exist, be seen, heard and most importantly to love who I am. I will do the best I can and reach out for help when I feel like I don’t have it in me to keep going or I falter in believing in myself. I promise to stay awake and present during this process. I promise to discover who I am and start to accept that I have more in me than I knew. I will not settle for less in food, life, or love.”
—CR
“I begin with choosing to own and take responsibility for the eating disorder that I have lived with and now, after twenty years, I choose to let go. I choose to live my life that has been blessedly given specifically to me and only me with the feelings, the emotions, the pathways, and the choices that are uniquely mine yet universally understood. I choose to no longer merely survive, but to awaken to the moment, to evolve and to live in the grace of life itself. I choose to live my life with self acceptance and compassion, committed to truth without judgment, without deprivation and without egoistic control. I will take my seat at my family’s table forgiving those who have hurt me. I choose to take refuge in the present moment, freeing my soul from the bondage of the past and the anxiety of the future.
I choose to let go of the desired sought-after skinny girl, and all that comes with her. I choose to let go of the skinny jeans, skinny lattes and the skinny mentality, for I choose a life that is full and fat. I choose the body that I am in and I am excited to live in that space. Therefore, I will eat when I am hungry and stop when I am full. I not only deserve this nourishment, but to do anything else would be to deprive, restrict or abuse my body, spirit, and soul. I will let food satiate my physical hunger and love fulfill my emotional hunger. I choose to not only fuel my earth vehicle, so that she may carry my soul in this world, but also to allow her adequate rest. I let go of compulsive and manipulative exercise regimes that once served me. I choose to let go of all that does not serve me anymore. I will reach out for help when I am confused, lost, and scared. Lastly and yet perhaps most importantly, I choose to dance wildly with others who enter into my life and to trust and engage not their egos, but their souls. I choose to surround myself in a circle of women who are brave enough to bare the truths of their own souls and to hold a space so sacred that mine can do the same. And I promise to hold such space for others to walk the path that leads to wisdom just as others have and will continue to do for me. I will not be in this body forever, so, for the time that I am in it, I choose to celebrate and fully live.”
—JS
“It’s time, time to start thriving rather than surviving. Time to value friendships over food, emotions over apathy, and future over the past. Eat food. Not too much. Don’t throw up. That’s the eating philosophy I followed after birth, and the one that served me best. I ate when hungry, ceased when full, and followed the physiological cues of my ancestors. I will no longer abuse my body. I will no longer use food and exercise as punishment or reward. I will no longer degrade myself for the shape of my thighs, the size of my hips, the roundness of my stomach, the swell of my chest, because I don’t need to anymore. I’m no longer searching for something perfect, so I don’t have to make my body conform to my will. Instead I will use love to comfort my feelings of doubt, friends to soothe my sadness, and mentors to alleviate my confusion. As I’ve learned to respect the child I once was, I’ve learned to feed the woman that I am. I may have been damaged and lost as a girl, but I have all the power to change. I know where I’m headed is where I’ve always belonged. It’s time.”
—AS
“Today I agree to choose relationships over compulsion, happiness over thinness and love over guilt… I choose independence, freedom, and control. I agree to love and appreciate my body for all that it does for me, rather than resenting it for areas in which it fails, criticizing it, judging it, or trying to change it. I was given this body for a reason—not to run fast, to get A’s or to look beautiful—but to feel pleasure, to experience life, and to bring happiness to myself and others. I recognize that my opportunity to live is a blessing, and will no longer take it for granted.
I acknowledge that love and respect for my body will come with love and respect for my inner being. I am proud of my body as the vehicle and protector of my soul. I will use it to bring comfort and love, to heal, to touch, to feel, to hug, jump, and dance. I agree to treasure my body rather than destroy or deprive it in order to numb my emotions and pain. I refuse to push it to its limits just to see what it can accomplish, in a perpetual search for perfection and success. I refuse to depend on exercise and eating for self-definition and mood stabilization. I am not loved for the number of push-ups I can do or the miles that I can run, those are just things that I do, yet they are vastly inadequate to describe the multi-faceted person who I am. I refuse to live as a ghost in the shadow of my eating disorder. Darkness will no longer obscure my being. I myself light up a room, and not even the greatest darkness can obscure the energy and vitality that shine from within. I no longer need to look for something better, something more, I am whole—it was the eating disorder that was taking away a part of me, eating away at my soul.
I give myself permission to ask for guidance and support, to hold a friend’s hand in times of struggle. I agree to celebrate life, not diminish it. I will not wither it down into a compulsion, an addiction, a disorder. This is the beginning of a new life, a new outlook on the world, where the possibilities can be endless if I do not let the eating disorder hold me back; recognize what I am capable of when I am freed from its chains that deprived me for so long. I am a strong, independent, competent, intelligent, beautiful woman. I deserve to take a breath, to look up at the stars, to live in the moment, to be loved, to be free. I deserve and I choose to live a full life.”
—CF
“I became bulimic because I had something to hide, because I was dying from the pain of being numb, because I didn’t know the difference between eating my feelings and feeling them. It didn’t work, though. The difficulty is: when I numb pain, I numb joy; when I try to make the uncertain certain I wind up with nothing; when I hide in my attempts at perfection no one can see me. It is in loving relationships, truth without judgment, and living a soul-led life that I learned to be seen. I know now that that’s the only way to live and it’s the only way to love. And I am grateful. I am also grateful for me and my illness which forced me to pause, to examine, and to give myself the space to realize that I love myself fully and deeply. I agree to keep traveling into myself and into the world. I will tell the truth. I will trust myself. I will laugh when I want to, not when I need to. I will remember that pain ends and so does everything else. I will feel and I will crumble. I agree to remind myself every day that what makes me vulnerable makes me beautiful, that I am imperfect and because of that I am worthy of love. Seven weeks ago I gave myself away daily; there was nothing sacred or gentle or present. I ran around town in red dresses with a car full of parking tickets, not giving a damn. Yesterday I sat outside watching the bunnies and breathing. I felt a sharp gust of wind hit my right cheek, I am alive.”
—LS
“By the time I got to Monte Nido, I was a fatalist in the true sense of the word, resigned to my fate as a career anorexic, destined to be just another eating disorder statistic. I didn’t much understand the point of trying to get well if it simply was never going to happen for me. I believed fervently that I was a passive victim of the eating disorder, a force stronger than myself, with bigger weapons and tricks up its sleeve. I was lonely and sad and sick of watching life pass me by. Still, I did not understand, would not accept, that it was an active choice I had made all these years to have given my life to the eating disorder rather than some kind of passive surrender. I was resigned to the fact that I was nothing more than an eating disorder, that it was the only thing that made me interesting, that if I tried to fight it I would lose. I remember feeling that it would be easier and far more congruent to just occupy that identity. I was a walking, talking eating disorder. I felt that, since I had not willfully chosen my eating disorder I was therefore a prisoner to it. What I learned, through others who had been there before me, was that even though I had not chosen an eating disorder I could chose to recover. Victor Frankl, in his book, Man’s Search for Meaning, says about men in concentration camps that, “Even though conditions such as lack of sleep, insufficient food, and various mental stresses may suggest that the inmates were bound to react in certain ways, in the final analysis it becomes clear that the sort of person the prisoner became was the result of an inner-decision, and not the result of camp influences alone. Fundamentally, therefore, any man can, even under such circumstances, decide what shall become of him—mentally and spiritually” (Frankl pg. 65–66)…“Our answer must consist, not in talk and meditation, but in right action and in right conduct. Life ultimately means taking responsibility to find the right answer to its problems and to fulfill the tasks which it constantly sets for each individual” (Frankl, pg. 77). And so I choose to decide what will become of me. No more games, no more hiding food or using eating disorder behaviors or acting like an eating disorder instead of a human being—an interesting human being, with things to say and places to get to and interests to pursue and a family to build. No more wasting time or wasting my life. I have simply had enough. It doesn’t matter that the eating disorder chose me, that it has clung onto me without mercy for over half my life and tricked me into believing there was nothing I could do about it. I am taking my power back. I am choosing life. And I am ready for the challenge.”
• I agree to move forward, not backward.
• I agree to never be a slave to the scale or the tyranny of numbers again.
• I agree to maintain the pride I feel for myself at this very moment.
• I agree to remember that the instant I realized it was possible for free will to usurp fatalism, my life became infinitely simpler and more manageable.
• I agree to choose the right thing.
• I agree to choose the harder thing.
• I agree to choose life.
• I agree to celebrate my liberation.”
—JA