You Know What This Is

Hi there love :) thank you for messaging us for advice, my name is Shelby and I’m going to help you out today. :)

I’m sorry that you had to go though hard times with neglectful parents, I have a very close friend that is in a similar situation like this. The advice I have for you is the following:

Self Care

Love Yourself

Stop Worrying

Stop Biting Nails

Stop Procrastinating

Stop Skipping Breakfast

Stop Cracking Knuckles

Stop Bad Table Manners

Stop Falling Asleep Late

Boost Your Confidence

Nutrition

This app tracks your nutrition, not just your calories

Figure out how much of each nutrient you need

100 of the worlds healthiest foods

The importance of proper nutrition

Quick and healthy recipes

Cheap and nutritious recipes under $3

100 nutrition tips

meal planner

Hydration

Importance of hydration

How to tell you are dehydrated

non-water ways of hydrating

This app helps track your water intake

Calculate how much water you need a day

trick yourself into drinking more water

Skin Care

The importance of hygiene

How to wash your face

Homemade natural cleanser

Homemade natural exfoliants

Natural acne remedies

Habits for better skin

Homemade moisturizer

DIY facial toner

Cleansing the body

How to wash your body

DIY body scrub

DIY body wash

Hair care

How to wash your hair

DIY shampoo

The no-poo method

DIY conditioner

DIY leave in conditioner

Hand care

Give yourself a manicure

DIY hand soak

DIY hand cream

DIY cuticle cream

How to take care of your nails

How to paint your fingernails

Foot care

Basic foot care

How to remove warts

DIY foot soak

DIY moisturizer

How to take care of toenails

How to fix discoloration

Oral Care

How to brush your teeth

DIY toothpaste

How to get rid of bad breath

How to get whiter teeth

foods to eat for better teeth

Tongue cleansing

SPA DAY!

DIY bath bombs

DIY Bath salts

DIY facial mask

DIY hair mask

DIY bubble bath

How to make the towel hat

Relaxing music

Once you’ve looked over those links the next set of advice I have for you is some advice on how you can get back on track with not only your self care but life in general.

For starters, I’m not sure how old you are, but I would highly suggest getting into some therapy to help vent and get more help/support about this whole situation.

Then, I’d suggest possibly looking to those around you for some extra help. If you have siblings, look to them and ask them for some help. If you don’t have siblings, then look to your community and see if anyone is willing to help you out with supplying you with basic needs.

Next, I would suggest looking deep in yourself. Often times when children are neglected my their parents, they sort of have to learn things on their own for example what is a healthy meal to eat. & that’s not always easy. I think that you should think about things you did when you were younger and see if any of those decisions made an impact on your life (positive or negative.) & look to changes :)

Keep me updated?

Lots of love,

I ate so much food today and all I want to do is count. That’s it.

If I didn’t have a lunch meeting tomorrow I’d skip or at least do light. But no. Maybe I can get out of dinner.

@thurielangel thank you. I wouldn’t be doing this for someone else, not really — I know he doesn’t like me and I know the disorder is just using this to try and trigger a relapse and he probably doesn’t like me for reasons unrelated to my weight, but you’re right. No person is worth me self-destructing; yet I find myself standing on the edge and having to fight with all my willpower not to fall off anyway.

Also, it’s so easy to say “don’t compare yourself to other people”, but the reality is... we all do it. I’m certainly not rivaling with them — he is an agent of free will and can love whenever he loves and we are not competing for his love; we’re all just trying to grow and love each other as people. And, yeah, I know they’re probably not as skinny as they seem, but at least one of them really is super skinny because I thought that about her before I had an eating disorder. I don’t know.

I work for a corsetier at a Renaissance Faire. We sell corsets. Not flimsy bullshit costume corsets; like real, durable, waist-training corsets. Today a woman came in with her boyfriend, so I helped her pick out a corset and try it on. While her boyfriend—who was decidedly enthused about the whole corset thing—sat watching me lace her in, he told me, grinning, “Of all the good jobs at the Renaissance Faire, I think you have the best.”

I shrugged in agreement. “I touch butts and reach down cleavage all day; I mean…” Because we like to be a bit rakish at the Faire, and, y’know, it’s true. Tying people into corsets pretty much invariably requires getting handsy.

The couple laughed at that, and the boyfriend said, “That’s the job I would want!” But then he chuckled again and said, offhand, “Or maybe not; while we were looking at the racks, there were some pretty big sizes on there!”

Our sizes are all done in inches, and the biggest we make is a 46. And you’d better believe our large sizes sell. For a second I wasn’t sure what to say to the guy’s comment, but I answered him casually. “We get a lot of beautiful big ladies in here.” Because we do. “We make corsets for real women, not Barbie dolls,” I added. Wasn’t trying to be smart, just kind of tossed it out there because that’s the line we like to use when people ask about larger sizes, and because, again, we do.

The boyfriend went quiet at that; I didn’t think anything of it, I just kept on lacing. A moment later, he said, a little awkwardly (but sincerely enough), “Didn’t mean to be offensive.”

I quickly smiled and brushed it off, said he wasn’t, said I was just saying. (Don’t want to make the customers uncomfortable, you know?) And that was the end of it. His comment had rubbed me the wrong way, but it wasn’t a big deal. Now, I wear a 20-inch corset. I’m a few cup sizes short of being one of the Barbie dolls. Like his girlfriend, I’m one of the “hot chicks”; he doesn’t have to worry about offending me by implying that I wouldn’t be fun to poke and pull at.

Honestly though, of all the people I fit sexy technically-undergarments to in a day, fat girls are maybe my favorite people to lace up. Because they are just so damn happy that we have stuff that fits them. They are so damn happy that the corsets we make in their sizes are all the same pretty, shiny colors and cool flower/dragon/skull/etc. prints that the smaller corsets are, not ugly beige and boring “granny” colors. They are so goddamn happy that at least one (of several on the grounds) corset shop carries things that they can wear, that they actually want to wear, and that they look fucking awesome in. This is only my second season working, and we’ve fit 60+ inch waists and double-K busts. The only people we’ve ever had to tell sorry, we don’t have anything that fits them, are twelve-year-old kids.

It’s half-wonderful, half-heartbreaking how excited those women get. Women who say with sad smiles, when we ask if they want to get fitted, “Oh, no, you don’t have anything that fits me,” and then are stunned when we’re 300% confident that yes we do, and we have options. Women who can’t stop smiling and looking at themselves in the mirror after we’ve got them laced in.

I had a lady last week whose waist I measured (cinching the tape tight, as per procedure) at 41 inches—honestly not all that big. So she picked out a 41-inch corset to try on. I could tell halfway through getting her laced that it was going to be a bit big for her, so I mentioned it and said she might do better to try a smaller size. She started crying on the spot. She was so overwhelmed; she couldn’t believe someone had just told her that a 41 was too big. She told me about how hard clothes shopping was for her, how her mother would tell her she needed an XXXL instead of an XXL, how she had recently lost weight but still couldn’t wear certain colors because they didn’t fit or she wasn’t confident enough.

She did end up getting her corset, and after I checked her out she asked if she could give me a hug, so we ended up standing there hugging each other for a minute. While we did, I told her, “Do not ever let anyone tell you any bullshit. You are gorgeous.” She said, “I have a new boyfriend and he keeps telling me that.” I told her he was right, and to just keep telling herself she’s gorgeous; it was okay if she didn’t always believe it, but to keep telling herself anyway. (That’s how I talked myself through shit when I had bad anxiety.)

We all know fat-shaming is bad. The stupidity, fatphobia, and misogyny of it has pissed me off since I first became aware of it. But working with clothing, especially as figure-hugging and precise as corsets, has given me a new perspective on it—how much it affects people and just how shitty it is. Like, what does it say that I had a grown, only average-big woman crying into my shoulder because she was so overjoyed not to be the uppermost extremity of what a manufacturer can clothe?

My job rocks and it’s really rewarding, but sometimes it highlights some of the ugliest shit about society. I’m so glad I work at a shop that’s not bullshit about body types and operates with more people in mind than just scrawny white chicks like me. The fat women I work with are a ton of fun to lace up, and they’re so much more than their size—they’re cool, they’re smart, they’re funny, they’re sweet, they’re great to talk to, and yes, they’re hot. I’m so damn done with them getting short-changed and shamed by petty fucks who refuse to make them nice clothes, who refuse to even try to work for them, who refuse to consider them pretty. This whole rant was useless and won’t get read, but I had to vent because it’s been driving me nuts.

I know open water swimming isn’t really glamorous, but Lynne Cox is arguably one of the greatest overlooked athletes of the 20th century. 

And quite possibly a mutant. 

She can withstand water temperatures that you or I would die from because of her training and her body’s unique reaction to cold (you know how the blood will leave your fingers and toes when it’s cold, to preserve heat? her whole body does that, pooling her blood in her core and insuring her body temperature stays toasty where it counts).

She funded the Bering Strait swim herself, clearing out her bank account when she couldn’t get corporate sponsors. After she succeeded (to almost everyone’s surprise: if you get in the Bering Sea without serious gear you generally just die) Gorbachev mentioned her during treaty talks with Nixon: “Last summer it took one brave American by the name of Lynne Cox just two hours to swim from one of our countries to the other. We saw on television how sincere and friendly the meeting was between our people and the Americans when she stepped onto the Soviet shore. She proved by her courage how close to each other our peoples live.“

She wasn’t just the first woman to swim the Strait of Magellan. She was the first person to make it across. 

On top of setting multiple world records, she swam a mile+ to the coast of Antarctica, in just a bathing suit, and did not die. 

She’s swum over 50,000 miles. 

Her body type is optimized for her sport. The shape of her body and the presence of fat both provide insulation to keep her core warm while she swims.

A lot of open water swimmers aren’t this chunky, but that’s because most of them are actually triathletes, and their body type is a compromise between the ideals for the different sports.