Are you afraid of gaining weight on your intuitive eating journey?
Are you scared of how your body will change as a result of finding food freedom?
This blog is all about how to overcome the fear of weight gain so you can progress on your food freedom journey.
The first principle of intuitive eating is to reject the diet mentality. Evelyn Tribole, one of the authors and creators of Intuitive Eating (IE), marks the first principle as the key to moving through the rest of the principles of your IE journey. Not truly committing to the first principle, and rejecting the diet mentality, hinders your journey from progressing. Diet culture does a great job of trying to convince us that weight loss is your life’s purpose..
Changing your mindset to overcome negative self-talk with positive self-talk will assist you in navigating your fear of gaining weight. Anna Sweeney, an anti-diet dietitian who specializes in treating eating disorders, was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis as a teenager and has lived with MS for 22 years. In an episode on What The Actual Fork, Anna talked about her transition from being able-bodied to disabled. In this transition, she recognized how important changing from negative self-talk to positive self-talk would be on her happiness and experiences. Although it was not going to take away her disability or change her disability, improving her self-talk made her experience of being a human and living on this Earth a lot more enjoyable.
This is an analogy. The same thing happens when we think of our self-talk surrounding our weight or our size. Negative self-talk does not change anything but shifting to positive self-talk will make our experience here on this Earth a lot more pleasurable. To hear more from Anna listen to the What The Actual Fork podcast episode with her here!
Common fears on your intuitive eating journey are the fear of losing control and the fear of being a failure. But, by far the most common fear is fear of gaining weight. If you hold a fear of gaining weight, think of the roots of the fear. A fear of gaining weight roots itself in the idea that gaining weight or being in a larger body is a “bad” thing and inherently “bad.”
You may immediately believe this is not true or think of friends in larger bodies who you would not label as “bad.” But, you may hold a different belief when thinking about your own body size.
Making peace with your body is a lot like making peace with food. If you think that any foods are “bad,” you cannot truly make peace with the food because morality is still tied with it. Navigating your fear of gaining weight means removing morality around different body sizes. Removing morality around body size does not necessarily mean loving your body, but being at peace with your body because of an understanding that your body does not define you but serves as a vessel for you to experience life.
If this blog resonated with you, watch our video “How to Overcome the Fear of Weight Gain” to hear more about letting go of fear about gaining weight. Click here to listen!
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