You Want to Make Peace with Your Body?
Are you ashamed of what your body looks like? Are you aware that you want to improve your body image but have literally no idea what that means and where to start? That is okay, you are not alone! We at Find Food FreedomⓇ are here to support and guide you through your journey to making peace with food and your body!
Before reading on, we want to ask you a few questions. So take some time and think about your answers, maybe even jot them down.
How long have you been dieting?
Has dieting made you happier with your body?
How has diet culture impacted the way you see your body?
There is no shame in your answers to these questions, just curiosity.
F*ck Diet Culture
We ask these questions because they are super important as the groundwork for the body image conversation. You may have been dieting for 10 years, 20 years, 50 years and during that amount of time your intention was to shrink your body, change your body, chase a smaller body. This is usually the goal of dieting. Diet culture tells us if you get a smaller body you will love yourself more, you will be easier to love, you will be accepted, you will be happy. You just have to diet “perfect” enough and have enough self control and all of your problems will go away!
Right? WRONG.
Yes, dieting may have been a “quick fix” to some of these issues. Maybe you lost some weight and felt better about yourself for a while and got the external validation you were seaking. BUT I am willing to bet that dieting didn’t end up making you love yourself the way you thought it would, and maybe you gained the weight back. I want you to know that you are not alone and NOTHING is wrong with you!
To look at the research, there are actually 0 randomized control trials (the gold standard in research) that show sustained weight loss for greater than 2 years. Along with the continued negative self talk that people experience when dieting, the evidence just solidifies that diets don’t work!
With all that being said…think about if dieting has really got you all that it promised you? And if it hasn’t… that is not your fault, it’s diet culture’s fault for making promises that are IMPOSSIBLE to keep.
Body Hatred is Learned
It is also important to set the groundwork for why we have body image issues before we continue the body image conversation because we want you to see that you were not born hating your body. Let me say that again. You were not born hating your body! You have been taught to hate your body through dieting, trauma, social media, commercials, and watching your parents and role models’ relationships with food and body. We were not born thinking that bigger bodies were bad, or that changing your body was even something you needed to do. This was all learned! Just as we have learned these things… it is possible to unlearn them.
THE Body Image Conversation
So what is body image work?
Body image work is the relationship that you have with your body. Maybe now you’re asking, how am I supposed to know what my relationship to my body is? To that, we would suggest thinking about this question. If you could give one word to describe your body, what would it be? Again, don’t judge, just be curious.
Maybe you thought: tired, disconnected, uncomfortable. Whatever word is coming to you right now is okay, this is progress, not perfection. I also want to acknowledge that you are not alone.
Now I want you to think of a word that describes how you want your relationship with your body to be. Maybe that is content, comfortable, safe. Now, hold space for all of this.
This is body image work, recognizing where you are right now with your relationship with your body and noticing where you want to be in the future. Picture this, I am on a trip and I’m using a GPS. I know where I am starting and I know where I want to end up, but I don’t know exactly how to get there. Now instead of a trip, we are on our journey to making peace with our bodies. We know where we are starting and where we want to end, but now how to get there. It is a journey.
Sometimes social media likes to tell us that making some changes to our bodies will speed up our journey to create a peaceful relationship with our bodies. BUT let’s just remember that diet culture has NEVER given us what it promised it would.
Body Acceptance, Neutrality, and Respect
Finding peace, freedom, love, acceptance, and confidence in your body is recognizing that the goal of body image work is not to wake up every single day, look in the mirror, and say “I love my body!” The goal is to reach a place of acceptance, then a place of neutrality, then to a place of respect for our bodies.
Body image work is about first trying to accept your body exactly how it is, then learning how to think about it with neutrality. After learning to accept and be neutral with your body you will get to a place of body respect… having a deep admiration for it. You will realize that you hold the same sense of admiration for yourself as you do for the people you love.
Think about it. Do you love and respect your friends because of what their body looks like? Hell no! Maybe you love them because they are fucking funny, they have stellar energy, or they are loyal and trusting. Just as you do not love your friends because of their bodies, your friends don’t love YOU because of YOUR body. People want you in their lives because of who you ARE.
It’s a Journey
The biggest takeaway is truly just remembering that body image work isn’t about changing what your body looks like, it’s about learning how to accept it first, then learn how to practice body neutrality, and then come to respect it. It is a journey. You are not going to wake up tomorrow and every day following fucking loving your body. That isn’t realistic. BUT at some point in your journey you will be able to accept and respect it.
Remember your body is the least important thing about you. It is the vessel that holds your soul. So, if we continue to diet, restrict, and work to shrink our bodies it will only lead to poor body image and more self hatred. And with that, “You cannot hate your way to happiness.”
If this post really hit home for you, we think you would also enjoy our podcast episode “What is Body Image Work & Making Peace With Your Body.” Click here to check it out!
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