Megan Jayne Crabbe - Sept.7,

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Epub ISBN: 9781473551312

Version 1.0

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Vermilion, an imprint of Ebury Publishing,

20 Vauxhall Bridge Road,

London SW1V 2SA

Vermilion is part of the Penguin Random House group of companies whose addresses can be found at global.penguinrandomhouse.com

Copyright Megan Jayne Crabbe 2017
Cover photography Becky Long
@beckylongphotography
With illustrations by Kelly Bastow @moosekleenex
Cover design by Two Associates

Megan Jayne Crabbe has asserted her right to be identified as the author of this work in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988

Definition of normal eating reproduced with kind permission from Ellyn Satter from Secrets of Feeding a Healthy Family: How to Eat, How to Raise Good Eaters, How to Cook Ellyn Satter

Illustrations Kelly Bastow aka Moosekleenex; Kellys work is available to purchase on Etsy.

First published in the United Kingdom by Vermilion in 2017

www.eburypublishing.co.uk

A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

ISBN 9781785041327

The information in this book has been compiled by way of general guidance in relation to the specific subjects addressed, but it is not a substitute and not to be relied on for medical, healthcare, pharmaceutical or other professional advice on specific circumstances and in specific locations. Please consult your GP before changing, stopping or starting any medical treatment. So far as the author is aware the information given is correct and up to date as of September 2017. Practice, laws and regulations all change, and the reader should obtain up to date professional advice on any such issue. The author and the publishers disclaim, as far as the law allows, any liability arising directly or indirectly from the use, misuse, of the information contained in this book.

THREE YEARS AGO , I sat across from my dad, tracing patterns in the dark wood table between us. Wed come out for some lunch and a chance to catch up on each others lives, and I had something big that I was anxiously waiting to tell him about. I braced myself, looked up from the table, and began.

Hey, Dad

Yes, Megan?

You know those body-image issues that Ive always had?

In that moment, my dad could have been remembering any number of things. He could have thought back to when I was five years old and came home from school one day in my little blue check dress, clutching my stomach and asking him to tell me why it was so much bigger than the other girls. He might have remembered a time 10 years later, standing beside my hospital bed, hoping for that day to be the one when Id finally start my recovery. He could have pictured me at any point in the years that had passed since then, at any of the nine different dress sizes and hundreds of pounds up and down that my body had spanned since then.

Of course, he didnt mention any of those times. Instead, he replied with an ever so cautious yes

Ive fixed them now, I said, waiting to see the disbelief spread across his face. Im sure he was expecting me to launch into the details of the new diet plan Id found and how it was the one that was finally going to make everything better (nothing like all the ones before). Im sure by now he knew not to get his hopes up.

I started to explain that Id found something, something that in just a few short months had changed my life. Something called body positivity.

One day in the summer of 2014 I was having a perfectly ordinary Thursday. Id woken up in the morning, taken my two diet pills, washed them down with a smoothie of apple, berries and kale, and forced myself to start the usual full body workout. Two hours later, I was slumped on the living-room floor getting my breath back, and beginning my daily routine of searching through Instagram for pictures of washboard abs and toned thighs to remind myself why all the pain, sweat and ignored hunger pangs were worth it.

Except that day, by some social-media miracle, I stumbled across something different. A woman wearing a bright red bikini and writing about loving her body as it was. In her own words, she was fat, she was body positive, and she was daring to be visibly happy in a body that I never thought people were allowed to be happy in. There she was embracing all the parts of herself that Id spent my whole life hating myself for her soft stomach that rolled when she sat, the cellulite that covered the thickness of her thighs, the jiggle and sway of her arms as she moved.

Seeing her happiness felt as if a sudden crack had been placed in the very foundation of how I believed that the world worked. Here, for the first time in my life, was someone saying that you dont have to spend your days starving, sweating, and hating yourself. That its possible to accept, and even love, your body just as it is.

I had never even realised that was an option. Nobody had ever told me that shrinking my body didnt have to be my ultimate goal in life. Id only ever been taught that self-love would come once the hand hit the right number on the scale.

I clicked away from her page and went back to my usual fitspo images to try and erase the thought of that red bikini, and everything that it might mean. But something in my mind had shifted.

As the days went by I started to question my daily routine more and more. Could I really do this for ever? Could I really keep dieting and exercising until I passed out every day for the rest of my life? Because thats what it was going to take to get the perfect body that Id been striving for since I could remember.

The idea of body positivity kept chipping away at me until a few weeks later that crack in my foundations had turned into a canyon. And there I was precariously balanced with a leg on each side, desperately trying to decide which way to jump.

I remember standing in the garden with my brother and asking for his advice. Did he think that I could do it? Could I really give up everything that Id ever believed about weight and worth and beauty and learn a whole new way of seeing myself? I cant remember exactly what he said in response, but it was something along the lines of supporting whatever was going to make me truly happy.

At that point I knew, deep down, that if I hadnt found happiness hiding in my bathroom scales after all this time, I was never going to.

So I decided to take a leap. I let myself dive into the online body positive community. I searched out all the information that I could find. A couple of weeks later I borrowed a copy of