As we continue into the summer months, you may be experiencing poor body image days or low self-esteem. You may be thinking if you could lose a little bit of weight that all of a sudden you would have the confidence you need for the summer.
Summer time is the season where you may be faced with increased time spent in a bathing suit, showing more skin because of the warmer temps, etc.. That can definitely be triggering on your journey to make peace with food and your body!
The intention behind this blog is to help you shift your perspective from “hot girl summer” to fed and nourished girl summer. Fed girl summer lacks the pressures that come with “hot girl summer.”
It is important to anticipate triggers you may have and what you have struggled with in the past. Think of how the diet cycle plays out throughout the course of the year. First, January always kicks off this new year new you b*llshit. Marketing focuses on spreading the message that this is going to be the year that you get healthy, the year you lose weight, the year you become the best version of you. This language is very loud. It drops off and starts to pick back up around April or May, when you see the messages about “hot girl summer” and being “bikini body ready”.
These messages prey on people’s insecurities and these thoughts persist throughout the summer. This is an abbreviated overview. There are different messages mixed in all throughout the year but let’s redirect our attention back to summer time. It’s the time of year where you go to Target and see bathing suits, you turn on the TV and see diet commercials, bathing suit commercials, and the sexy summer alcohol commercials. Seeing these can start to trick your thinking and if you have any struggles with your relationship with food and body, this can be a very triggering time. It is also a time to approach reframing your way of thinking when it comes to food and body!
Think about how your relationship with your body has evolved over the past five to ten years of your life. As we approach the end of July and August, reflect on:
- how you feed yourself
- what your food rules look like
- do you go on diets
- are you trying to “be good,” whatever that means for you
- what happens to your behaviors around food
The thoughts and beliefs you have affect your feelings and your feelings in turn affect your behaviors. If you have thoughts surrounding shrinking your body, you may feel guilt because of your body being a certain size. Those feelings affect your behaviors. Behaviors rooted in poor body image may be self-harming, like eating a very low amount of calories or overcompensating in the gym.
The behaviors may also be more in tune with eating disorder behaviors, such as binging and purging. There is an array of behaviors that can be taking place as a result of your thoughts rooted in negative, “hot girl summer” messaging. Your thoughts and beliefs dictate your feelings, which dictates your behavior. Recognize your previous feelings and beliefs about food and your body that arose throughout the summer.
At Find Food Freedom®, one of the main points of conversation that we see going on with our community throughout the summer is thoughts about restricting foods with the motivation of being in a smaller body for summer or “hot girl summer.” This motivation to shrink your body is usually a result of the self-talk that “I would look better if I were smaller.” Or “My friends/family would like me more if I was smaller.”
Think about a loved one, it could be a sibling, best friend, or partner. Imagine over the course of the next 2 months you told them, “I would genuinely love you more if you were a smaller pant size this summer.” How would your loved one feel hearing that? They would experience feelings of sadness, hurt, and shame. Now, change the scenario and imagine speaking to yourself like that. If you would not speak that way to loved ones, what makes it okay to speak that way to yourself?
The relationship you hold with yourself is fostered through your self-talk. You cannot hate your way to happiness. Write a note card reminder if the message resonates, you cannot hate your way to happiness. When you speak to yourself negatively, you are disrespecting yourself. You cannot speak that way to yourself and then look in the mirror one day and say “I love myself” and truly believe it, right?!
You can not hate your way to happiness. Body neutrality requires being aware of your negative self-talk. Anytime you are aware of that negative self-talk, use that opportunity to reframe your thinking. Imagine talking to the loved one that you pictured before and reframe your thinking to encourage a fed, nourished girl summer. No matter the time of year, your body needs to be fed and hydrated consistently.
Inconsistent eating and drinking, and intentional restriction fuels binging. Restriction is the number one indicator of binging. For example, say you were trying to “be good” and cut out carbohydrates (your personal scenario could involve different diets). Imagine a bow and arrow. Restricting carbohydrates pulls the string of the bow tight until the urgency to eat carbohydrates arises. When this happens, the arrow flies way in the opposite direction and you consume alll the carbohydrates because your brain does not know when you will get them again, you eat more. Then, you might feel guilt and shame because you could not “abide by the rules” of the diet or “be good.”
If you are thinking about restricting, please know sharing this is not meant to invoke feelings of shame or make you feel as though you cannot have full body autonomy, this is to remind you how restriction impacts your eating. Two-thirds of dieters gain back more weight than they originally lost on a diet. This research is a model of the restriction-binge bow and arrow pendulum at its finest.
Diets are the number one indicator of weight gain. People go on diets to lose weight but end up gaining weight. If you were partaking in “hot girl summer,” whatever the hell that means because it means different things for everyone and is not inclusive—an issue in itself, I want to encourage you to switch your perspective to fed, nourished, self-care girl summer.
You can do that by recognizing that your body needs to be consistently fed and consistently hydrated. Every. Single. Day. Speak kindly to yourself and start to build awareness around your negative self-talk. You cannot hate your way to happiness.
If this blog post really resonated with you, you would also enjoy our podcast episode titled: “Why Hot Girl Summer is BS” Click here to check it out!
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