F*ck Yourself First: Why Women with Eating Disorders Tend to Restrict their Pleasure in All Areas of Their Lives

You deserve mind-blowing, earth shattering, shaking from head to toe, profound and out-of-this-world pleasure. No doubt. No questions asked. Point blank. But… Do you feel like you deserve it?  Does it make you squirm to think about that level of pleasure? Are you uncomfortable with the idea of being able to have it, almost like it isn’t yours to have?

I’m here to tell you that you do deserve pleasure. And feeling like you don’t is normal. We are all in human bodies, having human experiences, so that we can break out of the boxes we have put ourselves in. Time and time again.

It’s no secret that disordered eating and women’s pleasure have been hushed, taboo, and seen as a by-products of men’s pleasure for far too long. It’s not just societal conditioning. In fact, cisgender women who live with disordered eating behaviours experience far less pleasurable sexual encounters than the average cisgender woman.

The Intersection between Restriction and Pleasure

Restriction in women with eating disorders is often another form of controlling their innate urges in every area of their lives. Pleasure is just one facet of the multitude of ways this can show up. The belief behind restriction is always the same:

“I don’t deserve this.”

If you pair low self-esteem and a high dissatisfaction with body image, it’s no surprise that many women do not feel they deserve pleasure in the bedroom or in the dining room.

In some cases, the restriction can be severe enough to disrupt the production of sex hormones and ultimately lead to a low libido. The body needs fat to produce hormones that give us our sex drive, like testosterone – so when body fat is low, there is a natural decrease in libido.

How Can Self Pleasure Help?

Not only does pleasuring yourself help to increase dopamine, making you generally happier pretty instantly—duh, but it’s a way to get back in touch with your body and start showing yourself much needed self love.

Pleasuring yourself is a key to being able to release control completely and just allow things to unfold organically. It requires a radical level of patience, effort, and lot’s of fun!

Developing this intimate relationship with yourself not only allows your brain to recognize that pleasure is safe and okay, it also allows you to better communicate your needs to a partner and feel less shame around your body while having a deeper understanding of how it truly ticks.

Put f*cking yourself down on your to-do-list every day this week— I promise you won’t regret it.