I should watch this video daily to remind me of these things I know to be true, but find difficult to embrace. For me, it put some things into perspective. It put “skinny” into perspective. In my logical brain, I know that skinny isn’t going to get me anywhere. I know that starving to be skinny isn’t going to win my family’s approval. I know that skinny isn’t going to make me a better student. I know that skinny isn’t going to make me happy. I know skinny ultimately won’t make me love myself any more. I know that hitting a goal weight will never be enough because the desired number will only drop lower. I don’t always believe any of this though.

Ana has perfected the arts of debate, deception, and control. She really does make skinny appealing. With Ana talking, skinny promises a lot of things, a lot of lies: perfection, happiness, finally being enough, beauty, love, the ability to do anything. Starving also makes a few promises when Ana is doing its bidding: control and skinny. It’s crazy how real all of this feels when in the midst of an eating disorder. I can remember back to my worst when starving and skinny were the end all be all. My weight determined my mood for the entire day. My life was completely consumed by numbers. My grades needed to be perfect. My net calories needed to be low. The scale needed to show improvement. I didn’t care about anything else. Skinny meant perfection, and I was doing everything to get it.

Now though, I can see how much of a lie skinny is. I know that skinny isn’t much more than that. Skinny can’t make me happy, but God can. Skinny can’t make me perfect, there’s no such thing to be found in earthly treasures. Skinny can’t magically make me a better student, only hard work will do that. Skinny can’t win the approval of my family, they’ll just have to learn to accept me as I am, flaws included.

That’s not to say skinny doesn’t still have appeal. I’m currently in this middle neutral zone where I can see both sides. I know healthy is the better place to be, but there are still days where I miss the endless pursuit of perfection. It sounds crazy, I know. Why would I miss such misery? The best answer I have is that it does make promises, however empty they are. It does provide a sense of comfort and purpose. From my current vantage point though, I can see that it’s all a lie in the end. Learning to fully accept my body at its natural weight won’t be easy, but it will be so rewarding in the end. It’ll mean so much more than skinny ever could. Instead of constantly feeling like I need to do better, to be more extreme, in the cycle of trying to obtain skinny, I’ll finally be able to fully believe that I’m enough. Enough without the bondage of skinny attached.

Elijah, the maker of this video, hit the nail on the head yet again with this. The message he portrays is one girls across the country, and the rest of the world, need to hear. Skinny won’t give us anything. Thigh gaps won’t give us anything. Bones won’t give us anything. Numbers won’t give us anything. In the end, these things can only destroy us.

We are enough just as we are.

We are enough, without skinny.

We. Are. Enough.

And we need to learn to believe it.