A Word from Our Founder
Constance Rhodes
Welcome to FINDINGbalance! If you're here, it's probably because you or someone you care about has become distracted, frustrated, even consumed by unhealthy eating patterns and weight obsession. If so, that's just fine - it's exactly why we're here too.
I'd like to tell you a little of my story. When I was a young girl, my mother began what became a twenty-year struggle with bulimia. At the time, few people understood bulimia, and she had a very hard time finding the help and resources she desperately needed. When I was a teenager, I remember reading of her desperation in her personal journals, and thinking to myself, "Wow! How could anyone go through this?" I also had a very naive idea about her disorder, in that I assumed she could simply stop if and when she chose to. Little did I know I would soon have firsthand understanding of just how hard breaking free from disordered eating could be.
When I headed to college in 1988, I was pretty comfortable in my own skin. I'd always eaten fairly normally, was active, and had a good metabolism. So I was shocked to discover just a couple months into my college experience that I had gained fifteen pounds. My fear and confusion about this unexpected weight gain led me to jump into all kinds of crazy diets, which only led to more frustrated eating, followed by more weight gain. After three and a half years of chaos including bingeing, starving, occasional purging and laxative abuse, I finally clicked into something less chaotic: chronic dieting. As the weight came off, my determination to control my body size only grew stronger. Eventually I wasn't happy unless I was wearing sizes that were really too small for someone of my height and frame.
During those years of chronic dieting, I was not experiencing what many would call "extreme" disordered eating - at least not by today's American standards. Oh sure, I was very conscious of everything I ate, right down to how much fat was in one little coffee creamer, or even how many calories were in a breath mint, but all of this obsessing seemed a small price to pay to achieve the thin standard so prominently displayed in our media driven culture.
What I didn't realize at the time, was that there was actually a "name" for my type of disordered eating: EDNOS. This nebulous category (which stands for Eating Disorders Not Otherwise Specified) includes chronic dieting, obsessive exercise, chewing and spitting, and other behaviors that lots of people engage in but few know are technically forms of disordered eating.
When I first started seeking help for my EDNOS, however, I was disheartened to discover that few professionals seemed concerned about my "type" of eating disorder. I wasn't grossly underweight. I wasn't missing periods. I wasn't eating a lettuce leaf and a few raisins for dinner, or bingeing and then throwing up. I had a happy marriage and a successful marketing career, and wore a size that was socially acceptable in our ultra-thin-is-in culture. Their puzzled looks seemed to communicate, "So you think about food and eating all the time - doesn't everyone???"
The truth is, yes, the majority of our population is very concerned with weight. But that doesn't mean you have to live your life enslaved to strict diets and exercise regimes. No matter where you fit on the "continuum" of eating, being a disordered eater requires much of you - your time, money, joy, ability to have relationships, your health... and the list goes on. It's time to recognize that no matter how you address eating and weight in your own life, if it is something that requires more than 10% of your brain power and energy, you are truly sacrificing more important things.
And so I must ask you: what are the sacrifices you've been willing to make to achieve a particular weight? Are you skipping social events because you feel fat? Are you so exhausted from your workout regimen that you don't have time for relationships? Are you worried about your own weight to the point that you're inadvertently (or even purposely) influencing your children, your husband, or your friends to be weight obsessed too?
How about this question... Are you ever truly happy?
When I wrote my first book to help bring more attention to the problem of EDNOS, I called it Life Inside the "Thin" Cage because after all those years of disordered eating and weight obsession, I finally began to see that my obsessive pursuit of thinness had become a cage around me. This cage stood between me and relationships. It prevented me from enjoying a normal meal without guilt. It kept me from being able to embrace the flaws and imperfections that come with being human. And it kept me distracted from fully experiencing God's fullest for my life.
For those of you who share in this struggle, it's time to admit you're captive, and to find the keys to unlocking your cages, that you might experience a life of freedom on the other side.
As you peruse the information and resources we've provided here, I hope you'll find hope for beginning your own journey toward freedom from this so-called "cage." Please feel free to let us know if we can help along the way.
Kindest regards,
Constance Rhodes
Founder & President, FINDINGbalance, Inc.
Author, Life Inside the Thin Cage
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