What's in a name?

I thought you might be interesting in knowing where the name “Just Full Enough” came from. I’d been thinking about starting a blog for quite some time – but the exact content that I wanted to include kept evolving. First I wanted to write about my journey towards self-acceptance and recovering from compulsive overeating and binging.  I’d also been doing a lot of reading about the health at every size movement, and I wanted one of the focuses of the blog and my Facebook site to be how you can learn to love yourself, treat yourself well and be fit and healthy even if you are “fat”. Part of the journey for me has been about reclaiming that word and taking some of the emotion out of it – yes, I am fat – but no, that doesn’t mean that I’m lazy, stupid, unhealthy, unfit or unattractive – it’s just a way of describing the body that I am in. I started tossing around names like “fat, fit and fabulous” – but a bit of googling told me that there are already a number of sites and blogs around with similar sorts of names. Also, although I am becoming more comfortable with the use of that word in describing myself, I think it’s important that we don’t define ourselves or others simply by the way that we look – there are lot more important and relevant things to consider when we define what sort of person someone is.

I am also at the very beginning of a journey for which I have no idea of the outcome yet  - who knows how fat, fit or fabulous I will be through the various stages of the process. I wanted a blog name that would leave itself open for the content to change and adapt as I change and adapt.  The very first step I had to take in getting well was to take the focus off my size and weight and so I didn’t want the blog to have a name that was primarily about my body.

I started thinking about names that would reflect holistically the journey that I am on, and that really has much more to do with the internal than the external.

The first step in my recovery process was to get into the habit of eating regular meals, and then to start really tuning into my bodies hunger and satiety signals as a guide to how much and how often I should eat. The aim was to start eating when I was hungry – but not ravenously so, and to stop when I was just full enough.

I think this probably sounds simple to people who are “normal” eaters, but when you are stuck in the diet/binge cycle, you spend a lot of time actively ignoring and even overriding your bodies hunger signals – either trying to convince yourself that you are “just thirsty” when your stomach is grumbling, or continuing to eat well past the point of painful fullness. Getting back in touch with and learning to work with the body’s signals is actually quite a delicate and involved process.

In the end, it’s all about a gradual shift from an all or nothing approach to one that strives for balance and moderation – not very sexy topics -  but I believe more effective for achieving lasting change in our lives. The all or nothing approach stems from perfectionism and sets us up for failure. A more balanced approach comes from a place of self-compassion. The more I thought about trying to implement moderation around food, the more I saw that this really applies to all areas in life – the balance between work and play, between exercise and recovery, between self-acceptance and self-improvement, between vegetables and chocolate, between saying no to a piece of cake because you don’t feel like it one day and eating more than you need on another because it’s delicious!

With this in mind, I’ve set myself a goal to be just full enough in all areas of my life, and my progress towards that is ultimately what I want this blog to be about.