TAKE WHAT YOU NEED, AND LEAVE THE REST
Written by Grace Izzo
Take what you need, and leave the rest.
As a body-positive yoga instructor, it’s a saying that I find myself continually reminding my students during the classes I teach, but its application is valuable far beyond the mat.
When you ask people what they miss most about anorexia, some people say that they miss the comfort and familiarity of having rigid set of rules to live by; the high of seeing the number on the scale drop; how it was easier to get dressed in the morning; or the illusion of being in control.
Me? I miss the silence. For me, the comments started early — getting catcalled when I was eleven in my Justice tankini on a family vacation before I was even old enough to know what catcalling was.
And the older I got, the worse it became. For me, fourteen was no longer carefree adolescence. Fourteen was when I started wearing oversized sweatshirts and stopped going up to board in freshman year French class to answer questions because a boy would openly stare at my ass and make comments that made me feel ashamed.
My first taste of sweet, sweet silence was when I was fifteen and my flirtation with disordered eating spiraled into a full blown battle with anorexia, stemming from a variety of factors, most notably medical trauma from my chronic illness, fibromyalgia, and toxic ballet culture. My emaciated body served well as a deterrent from the unwanted comments about my body.
Sure, my hair was falling out, but for the first time since I was 10, I was invisible to disrespectful men. Ironically, during the time when my body was in the most danger, when I was deeply imprisoned by the eating disorder and lived the smallest, saddest life, I felt the safest.
When I was 18 and freshly weight restored from my time at a residential treatment center, the comments started again, this time from male coworkers at the restaurant I was working at to pay for my yoga teacher training. The comments only got worse after I decided to pursue yoga (a tool that not only transformed my quality of life by helping manage the pain and joint stiffness I live with from my fibromyalgia, but also helped me recover from my eating disorder) as a career.
I’m so tired of hearing “oh, so you must be REALLY flexible” as the first reaction when I tell men that I do yoga. I’m so tired of receiving explicit comments on the donation-based yoga livestreams that I do to raise money for the charities I support, including Project HEAL. I’m so tired of pouring my heart, soul, and three years of teaching experience into creating videos because I want to help individuals in eating disorder recovery facing financial barriers to body-positive yoga classes find the same healing that I have through yoga, and then waking up to comments on my YouTube videos that make me feel sick to stomach when I realize that people are subscribing for the wrong reasons.
I’m so tired of telling the creepy men who linger after my classes and ask me what the most flexible thing I can do is that I have a boyfriend, even though I am happily single, so they’ll leave me alone. I’m so tired of feeling like I cannot exist safely and without constant harassment in my healthy body. I don’t miss my eating disorder — recovering has been the single hardest yet most rewarding thing that I’ve ever done.
But I wish so much that women, especially women in the yoga industry, could exist and heal from their eating disorders in peace, without the lewd comments of men.
I’m tired. So tired that I’ve seriously considered deleting my platform many, many times. But for every gross comment that sexualizes my recovered body during my live streams, there are many more comments from watchers who are genuinely interested in healing through yoga. So I take what I need — remembering the comments from my followers who tell me that my classes and content have helped them on their recovery path and letting go of the rest.
Our brains are primed to seek out the negative. In our primitive days, that was our innate biological response to protect ourselves from danger. But now, in the absence of many of the dangers that our ancestors faced, our brain’s propensity to focus on the negative most often serves to hurt our mental health.
Take what you need, and leave the rest.
For every negative comment that someone makes about your appearance, remind yourself that there aren’t words that can convey the intrinsic body value of your body.
For every negative thought that you have about your body, remember all of the incredible things that your body allows you to experience — hugging the people you love, pursuing your passions, and making a meaningful change in the world.
For every time that you fail, remind yourself of all of the times that you’ve overcome challenges.
Our brains are a muscle, and with consistency, time, and patience, new pathways can be rewired. By intentionally reminding ourselves of the positive, our propensity to focus on the negative can be shifted to a more neutral balance. I am living proof – every day without fail for over a year, I’ve posted at least three things that I’m grateful for on my Instagram story to be publicly accountable to find gratitude even on the days where my comment section is particularly gross, my fibromyalgia pain is severe, or my eating disorder thoughts are loud.
Sometimes I almost can’t recognize the version of myself that this daily gratitude practice helped me to shift to – my life has expanded in ways I never could have imagined. Before committing to reminding myself of the positive and leaving the rest on a daily basis, full recovery only existed in my imagination. Now, there are days that I feel fully recovered. Sometimes I don’t love how I look, but I love the life that I’ve built for myself, and that’s enough for me.
This practice is a challenging journey, made more difficult than I can imagine for those in marginalized bodies who experience much more hateful comments than sexual harassment for simply existing. This piece is not about choosing happiness despite facing discrimination due to body size.
We need to dismantle the social structures that uphold the beauty ideals built on white supremacy and cannot place the burden of healing on individuals facing workplace discrimination and barriers to healthcare or receiving threats to their safety due to their appearance.
I don’t pretend to know all of the answers about how this massive but highly necessary shift can happen, but I do believe that we can make a difference by committing to educating ourselves about fatphobia and the white supremacy that is still very much present in our country.
While my hardest days will never compare to the injustices that marginalized individuals face, I know what it’s like to be in physical agony, from my chronic pain, and mental anguish, from my eating disorder. I know that even on the hardest days, there are still always things to appreciate, even if they’re seemingly small – a comforting cup of tea, a hug from a loved one, or cuddling with my rescue pug Carl. Even on the hardest days, you can still:
Take what you need, and leave the rest.
Grace Izzo (she/her/hers) is a registered yoga teacher from Raleigh, NC. She is a sophomore at NCSU pursuing a business degree with concentrations in marketing and entrepreneurship. She works as a social media manager for a content creator, as well as for NCSU as a yoga team leader, peer mentor, small group instructor, and yoga instructor. She is a Project HEAL Ambassador and passionate advocate for eating disorder recovery and chronic illness awareness, and regularly shares the lessons and wisdom that she has learned throughout her recovery journey on her social media platforms and podcast, Recovering With Grace, which is available on Spotify. When she isn’t studying, working, or practicing or teaching yoga, she enjoys volunteering for Pawsitively Pugs Rescue, a pug rescue organization based out of Raleigh dedicated to the rescue, care, and placement of abandoned, neglected and abused pugs, spending time in nature, and snuggling with her precious rescue pug Carl. You can connect with her here: https://linktr.ee/graceizzo