Event focuses on self image, acceptance
WAGE recognizes Love Your Body Day with event about celebrating all appearances
Ashley Hofer
Issue date: 10/22/09 Section: Campus News
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About 30 people gathered Wednesday afternoon in the Hibbard Penthouse to listen to the "I Exist as I Am, That Is Enough: Lessons on Body Acceptance" presentation featuring Adrienne Storm, a clinical psychologist for UW-Eau Claire's Counseling Services.
"The one thing I want you to get out of this is to live now," Storm said. "Don't wait for the ideal body, the ideal number."
Storm drew on her experience as not only an eating disorders specialist, but also as someone who has battled with bulimia and anorexia. She said people shouldn't focus on what others hold as perfect, but try to be themselves.
"You are enough as you are," Storm said, "and trying to fix yourself, to be someone you aren't, it's not going to work."
In her presentation, Storm said dieting doesn't work because the body has a certain mass it is supposed to maintain. Therefore, cutting calories isn't an effective weight loss tool, she said.
The media was another emphasis of Storm's speech. Advertisements and images portray too-thin models who give a false representation of what a person should look like, Storm said.
Mary Belknap, a woman who struggled with bulimia and anorexia for much of her life, discussed the dangers as well as the process of recovering from an eating disorder.
"Eating disorders are medically dangerous," Belknap said. "Even maybe more so, (they're) psychologically corrosive."
Belknap, who is now an intern with UW-Stout's Mental Health Counseling program, said she first developed an eating disorder at age 11. When she began treatment later on in her 20s, she said she thought it would be a quick recovery.
"I remember thinking … 'OK, so I go to treatment'," Belknap said. "It should take about a year. Actually, it took over 10 years. And that is the norm, not the exception."
During recovery, people tend to focus on symptom management, Belknap said. However, it doesn't always get to the core of the problem, she said.
"Somehow, you have come to realize that your heart of hearts' measuring stick is how thin you are," Belknap said. "And that's stuff that symptom management can't always get to."
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