I regularly feature Q&As with individuals who’ve recovered from eating disorders, binge eating, negative body image and any kind of disordered eating. If you’d like to share your story of recovery, I’d love to hear from you! You can email me at mtartakovsky@gmail.com.

Andrea Roe is an eating disorder survivor, advocate and author. I’m so thrilled to present my interview with Andrea below. Her story is one that many of us can relate to, a story of insecurity, self-doubt, of feeling alone and embarrassed, of denial, secrecy and suffering. But, ultimately, it’s a story of hope, healing, support and strong recovery.

It’s Time to Talk About It!

Yesterday, National Eating Disorders Awareness Week began. The theme for this year is: it’s time to talk about eating disorders and do one thing to raise awareness. Here are the details, according to NEDA:

We live in a culture saturated with unrealistic body-image messages and almost all of us know somebody struggling with an eating disorder. Because this is true, we urge you to talk about it……and do just one thing during NEDAwareness Week to 1) raise awareness that eating disorders are serious illnesses, not lifestyle choices; 2) provide accurate information to medical, educational and/or business communities, and 3) direct people to information and resources about eating disorders.

Today, I’m super excited to present my interview with Golda Poretsky, HHC, who operates Body Love Wellness, a health and wellness company that counsels women and men on body acceptance and healthy and intuitive eating from a health at every size approach.

I truly admire Golda’s work and love her blog, which I turn to daily. In addition to her blog, Golda also has great podcasts, which you can listen to here, and a wonderful newsletter, which you can sign up for on her homepage.

Yesterday, I dished out five lessons that I’ve learned in the last few years, particularly in the last several months since becoming a body image blogger. Here are five additional lessons:

In the last few years, I’ve been working on improving my body image and learning just how many of us hate our bodies. I started reading a variety of books, checking out blogs regularly and interviewing experts.

Combined with these years, the time I spent in undergrad and grad school doing research, and the last few months of starting Weightless, I’ve received an invaluable crash course in body image, disordered eating, eating disorders, healthful eating and living and more. Below are some of the lessons that I’ve learned thus far:

Every Monday features a tip, exercise, inspiring quote or other tid-bit to help boost your body image. For many of us, Mondays are tough. We may feel anxious and stressed out, anticipating an arduous week, especially if we didn’t get much rest and relaxation during the weekend. These kinds of feelings don’t create the best environment for improving one’s body image. In fact, you might be harder on yourself and easily frustrated. You might even feel like you’re walking on egg shells – with yourself! With these posts, I hope you’ll have a healthier and happier body image day, that’ll last throughout the week.

Got a tip for improving body image? Email me at mtartakovsky@gmail.com, and I’ll be happy to feature it. It can be anything you do that’s healthy and helps boost your body image. I’d love to hear from you!

Every time I’d start on yet another diet, I’d experience a sort of high, ecstatic at the prospect of losing weight, because whatever diet it was, it held the promise of pure, unadulterated happiness. Dieting was my pathway to attractiveness, popularity and everything else that’s supposed to be wonderful in life.

On Monday, I talked all about “Madly In Love with ME,” an empowering movement that inspires and helps women and girls to start loving themselves. Christine Arylo is the trailblazer behind this movement. In addition to founding Madly In Love with ME, she’s also author of Choosing ME Before WE, The Everywoman’s Guide to Life and Love.

I’m thrilled that she took the time to answer a couple of my questions about how to develop “unwavering, unconditional love” and how to find the real, authentic you.