As the two different but related notions of Body Positivity and Body Liberation gain traction in our culture, people living in bigger bodies are feeling more empowered and emboldened to speak out than ever before. Along with this empowerment, I have noticed that those folks who are still actively attempting to lose weight have begun to feel singled out and attacked. As a self-proclaimed “Body Liberation Trainer,” with a Health Fitness Specialist degree, a national certification in personal training, a 200-hr yoga instructor credential, and certification as a lay facilitator in Intuitive Eating, I feel the need to set the record straight about WHO Body Positivity and Body Liberation is FOR.
If I had encountered the notion of Body Liberation during my third and final major weight loss period in my adult life, I would have been very frustrated and disheartened. After all, I was losing a lot of weight. I was extremely “fit.” I was the epitome of what the vast majority of doctors and fitness specialists call “health.” I know this in a clinical sense because I was also in the middle of completing my health fitness specialist degree for which I was engaging in fitness testing regularly. My VO2 Max was off the charts for someone my age. The number of push-ups and sit-ups I could do in 1 minute were consistently in the “Excellent” or “Athletic” range. I even tested above average in strength and flexibility. I was literally doing everything I had ever been told I had to do in order to “be healthy.” And, physically, I really was. At that time in my life, I would’ve told you that I felt wonderful. I felt strong and confident and fit – like my body could do anything I wanted it to. And, if I had heard people talking (yelling, even) about how all bodies have value and how it’s okay to be fat, I would’ve felt betrayed and deeply bothered by that sentiment. After all, I was doing everything – literally, EVERYTHING – I could do NOT to have a fat body. My life revolved around doing all the things I had to do to not have a fat body. To hear that I was wasting my time or that I was obsessively chasing after something I shouldn’t be would have been maddening. I have weight cycled three times in my adult life. Weight cycling is when a person loses a relatively large amount of weight only to gain all of that weight back with interest. The first time I lost a lot of weight through restrictive dieting and excessive exercise, I was a junior in college. I lost 50 pounds. At my bottom-most weight, one of my friends at the time pulled me aside and asked me if I was terminally ill. They were worried about how thin I had become. Not because I was SO thin, in general, but because I was SO thin for ME, for MY BODY. My parents visited me at school and took me out to eat once during that time as well. They broached the subject of my recent weight loss and rightly guessed that I had developed an eating disorder. I scoffed. “I’m just eating healthy and exercising consistently,” I assured them. And that was true. By all of the “health” standards around me, that’s exactly what I was doing. And it “worked” until it didn’t. Then after my first child, I lost 35 pounds. It was harder this time. The weight didn’t come off quite as quickly. I had to eat less than before, which didn’t seem possible. I had to exercise more than before, which didn’t seem possible. It “worked” and then it didn’t. The final time, I lost 27 pounds. This time, I had to become completely obsessed. Every waking moment, I was thinking about food and my body. Even when I would’ve told you I wasn’t, I was subconsciously thinking about food and my body. And when the weight started to come back on this final time, I lost my mind. I had worked as hard as I possibly could. I was continuing to work as hard as I possibly could. My body didn’t want to stay thin. My body would no longer respond to the partial starvation I had put it through. I had to go with full starvation. My body would no longer respond to the consistently excessive exercise I put it through. I had to workout harder. I had to move even more. I had to become terrified of food. I had to become repulsed by sitting still and resting. I had to hate my body even more. And, because, thank goodness, I have also worked very hard to build a great deal of self awareness throughout my life, at some point I realized I was truly off the deep end and needed help. The therapist I was seeing at this time gently suggested that I see “someone who specializes in body image and food issues.” And because I was so deep in my disorder, I could not hear what she was saying through her only-slightly coded words. I genuinely, with all my heart, believed she was sending me to a weight-loss specialist. I thought I would see this new counselor for “weight loss.” My goal was still to achieve long-term weight loss. I thought once this therapist “fixed” me, I would be able to effortlessly keep off all of the weight I had lost. What I got was far different from what I expected. Slowly, over about two months, my new therapist (who, as it turned out, specialized in Eating Disorders and NOT weight loss) helped me realize that it wasn’t sustained weight loss that I needed, it was healing. She diagnosed me with Atypical Anorexia and Orthorexia. Atypical Anorexia is a common disorder among chronic dieters – ALL of the mental symptoms of Anorexia without the one physical symptom of being clinically “underweight.” Orthorexia is not an official eating disorder listed in the DSM yet but it is the word mental health professionals, proficient in treating eating disorders, use to refer to a debilitating obsession with the healthiness of one’s food. Diet Culture causes eating disorders. Chronic restriction of calories often leads to eating disorders. Dieting for weight loss often leads to eating disorders. Eating disorders are not – in ANY sense of the word or by ANY sane standards -- “healthy.” I sacrificed my mental health for my physical health. Most of us entrenched in Diet Culture, restrictive eating and excessive exercise end up doing this at some point or another. THIS is the nature of that particular beast. And, thanks to research-scientists like Linda Bacon as well as registered dieticians like Evelyn Tribole and Elyse Resch, there is a great deal of science and research behind this fact. Our culture is fatphobic down to its very core. We have been told since birth from almost every source around us – school, doctors, parents, friends, media – that being fat is unequivocally “unhealthy.” We are terrified of being fat. Fat is, in many ways, one of the very worst things you can be in our culture. Diet Culture tells us that being fat means you are lazy, stupid, careless, a drain on our society and moments away from death. No one in THIS culture WANTS to be fat. So, if you are currently losing weight or have recently lost weight, you are absolutely doing exactly what you “should” be doing by our culture’s standards. And, OF COURSE, there is nothing wrong with this! Intentionally losing weight is just about the most normal and natural activity any American can engage in. Listen in on any conversation, in any setting, in which a group of friends, family or colleagues are talking. Almost everyone is engaged, at some level, in intentionally losing weight. The conversation – especially if there is food present – will almost inevitably turn to this subject. The potentially intoxicating result of winning the weight loss game is the seemingly endless validation that comes from the world around us. Those of us actively engaged in attempting to lose weight think that our lives will be all better once we do. And, in at least one way, they are! People come out of the woodwork to tell us how great we look. Friends and family members express their admiration and relief that we are “finally healthy.” We get attention from strangers because of our attractiveness. We are treated as though we are somehow more competent or more valuable at our jobs. Medical and health professionals approve of us on a level we had only ever dreamed of before. Our bodies are suddenly treated as though they are worthy and valuable. We also get to feel this completely normal sense of superiority over people who are still struggling with their weight. This sense of superiority is a very important aspect of Diet Culture. We don’t feel it because we are mean or horrible people. It’s just a normal/ natural way to feel when you have been told your entire life that there are “winners” and there are “losers” in this game and because of your shrinking (or shrunken) body, you have won. All of this is to say that people who lose weight in our culture receive PLENTY of validation for their weight loss almost every single place they go. Enter “Body Liberation” and “Body Positivity.” This will be the one tiny area of our culture that you will not receive validation for losing weight. And that is probably a bitter pill to swallow. As I said, had I encountered Body Liberation Activists, Fat Activists or Body Positive Professionals during the time of my life when I was entrenched in weight loss as a “lifestyle,” I would have been disgusted, disheartened, saddened, disturbed. It would’ve been very hard for me to reconcile my lifestyle with the tenets of these movements. But that’s because, in that moment in my life, these movements were not what I needed, wanted or was looking for. Let me gently suggest that Body Liberation and Body Positivity isn’t for everyone all the time. That is, it is the one teeny tiny area of our culture where those of us who suffer from diagnosed (or diagnosable) eating disorders and dysfunctional relationships with food, exercise and our bodies are free to find genuine healing. Please – please please please please please – let those of us who need this teeny tiny area of our culture have it without worrying that is some slight against people who seek weight loss. Nobody is mad at you for losing weight or wanting to lose weight. No one. What you have heard the Body Positive and Body Liberation sphere say, perhaps, is that 95% of weight loss attempts eventually fail and lead to the gaining of MORE weight. If you read what I write regularly (bless you – who are you?!?), you will note that I try to be very careful in saying that it is restrictive dieting for weight loss and excessive exercise that fails people. Because I am a “health” professional, I can also say that engaging in intuitive eating and joyful movement (the opposite of restrictive dieting and excessive exercise) can also lead to weight loss FOR SOME PEOPLE – and leads to overall better health for ALL people. Listen, no one can tell how healthy or unhealthy a body is by looking at it. And I can’t tell how healthy or unhealthy your weight loss is just by knowing you’ve lost weight. Maybe you “lost the weight” in a way that is sustainable and that will not lead to further weight gain or an eating disorder and maybe you didn’t. The only person who knows this, or who will eventually figure this out, is you. Trained professionals can help you decipher your relationship with food, exercise and body image but, ultimately, you are the only one who knows how much or how little goes into your belly every day and how many minutes or hours you spend punishing or happily moving your body every day. In fact, you could tell me – or any other health professional – exactly what you are eating and doing every day and we could still have no idea how “healthy” or “unhealthy” that behavior is because what is happening in your mind is the key to that question. And, sometimes, what is happening in our minds around food and exercise is not even clear to us until after the fact. As I said earlier, if you asked me how I was “feeling” during the last big bout I had with my eating disorder, I would’ve told you, “amazing! I feel great!” There were secrets I wasn’t telling even myself. There were ways I was “feeling” I refused to own until they started to have a profound impact on my daily life. So let me say it again: It is impossible for anyone to know – by looking at you -- whether your weight loss is the long-lasting sustainable and “healthy” kind or the collateral damage of Diet Culture that usually leads to disordered eating and eating disorders. That said, there are some red flags that MIGHT tell you whether the weight loss you have achieved is sustainable or not. Losing a lot of weight very quickly, for example, is usually not sustainable. Losing weight eating foods that you won’t be able to eat for the rest of your life is usually not sustainable. Losing weight NOT eating foods that you won’t be able to avoid eating for the rest of your life is usually not sustainable. Losing weight by taking drugs that cause damage to other areas of your health is usually not sustainable. Losing weight by obsessively tracking every calorie you eat AND waking up at 4am to workout for two hours before you go to work is not generally sustainable. When I say that these methods of losing weight are not “sustainable,” what I’m referring to is the research that tells us two things. First, 95% of dieters who lose weight by restricting calories end up gaining more weight than they originally lost within 5 years. Second, those 5% who lose weight by restricting calories and who keep their weight off after 5 years end up chronically engaging in behaviors that, ultimately, could be diagnosed as disordered eating or eating disorders. This brings me back to those of us who have found ourselves diagnosed. Those of us who have been caught up in the back-and-forth/ up-and-down body hatred and self-loathing in our “fat” phase then total adoration and validation from the world around us when we have allowed the eating disorder to consume our lives again. We know the pain of being “fat” in this world inundated with Diet Culture. We know the false pride and fear-inducing state of being “skinny” in this world inundated with Diet Culture. All WE want is to be left alone to re-learn how to eat in a way that isn’t clinically sick. All WE want is to be left alone to re-learn how to move in a way that doesn’t feel punishing or self-hating. All WE want is to be left alone to re-learn how to be/ accept/ maybe even “love” our bodies the way we did when we were babies and small children who didn’t feel required by our culture to constantly obsess about what our bodies look like. All WE want is to be left alone to discover what authentic “health” is for our unique bodies and our unique lives. Even though I have recently heard a fellow fitness professional claim that Fat Activists “want everyone to be fat,” I have yet to encounter – personally or via media – a Fat Activist who believes that every person should actively seek weight gain. What Fat Activists want is for people in fat bodies to be treated with dignity, respect and equality. That’s not the same as saying all people should be fat. It’s not even close. Body Positivity, similarly, is NOT about all people loving their bodies all of the time. Body Positivity is learning about, accepting and respecting the notion of Body Diversity – that all bodies are inherently unique in a myriad number of ways and size is one of those ways. I call my fitness and yoga studio a “body positive” studio because all bodies are welcome; because I believe that all bodies are valuable and worthy; because I believe that all bodies should have access to fitness and yoga. Body Positivity is inherently Fat Positive in that “all bodies” includes fat bodies. And, I will say again, just because fat bodies are respected does not mean that thin bodies are not. It’s just that thin bodies are respected and valued EVERYWHERE in our culture. When we designate a space “Body Positive,” we are making it clear that thin (young and able) bodies are not the ONLY respectable or valuable bodies that exist in this world. Body Liberation, for me, is the process of learning to live by our own unique, internal needs rather than the external pressure and requirements of Diet Culture. I would urge anyone who is interested in a deeper understanding of Body Liberation to seek the work of Sonya Renee Taylor, Jes Baker, Dawn Serra, and Emily Nagoski – all phenomenal thinkers and writers doing radical and paradigm-shifting work in the area of “Body Liberation.” No one (I’ve ever read or heard speak) working in Body Positivity or Body Liberation is attempting to directly attack people who are actively attempting to lose weight. Actively attempting to lose weight does not make you a bad feminist or a sheep of Diet Culture. What Body Positivity and Body Liberation is attempting to offer is the space for people to figure out what their unique bodies want – and need -- outside of the dysfunctional framework of Diet Culture. Many of us are deeply in need of the healing that we can find in this space. If you are actively attempting to lose weight or you have recently lost a great deal of weight, it’s entirely possible that you are not currently in need of the space that Body Liberation and Body Positivity offer the rest of us. This doesn’t mean that these movements aren’t “for” you. It just means they might not be the most useful concepts for you at this point in your life. And that is completely okay. This does not mean they are not valid concepts for those of us who need them. This does not mean that there is anything AT ALL wrong with the way you are choosing to do your life at this moment. Because, it is YOUR life, it is YOUR body and YOU are the only one who should get to CHOOSE what is best for it. If you have recently lost weight or are currently engaged in intentionally losing weight, it is my genuine hope that you feel amazing in body, mind and spirit. I hope you continue to feel amazing in body, mind and spirit. For me, PERSONALLY, it has taken Body Liberation – which includes Intuitive Eating, re-learning Joyful Movement, and healing from my eating disorder -- to begin to feel amazing in my body, mind AND spirit. And those of us working professionally in these areas are here for those people who currently find themselves in need of the healing space that Body Liberation offers.
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People living in bigger bodies are at the forefront of Body Liberation because they live in a system and a culture that has negated their worth and even treated them as a mortal enemy for decades. However, people in smaller bodies are harmed by Diet Culture too, in at least a couple of ways.
Because Diet Culture and its indoctrinated health professionals tell us that thinness is synonymous with health, people who are living in smaller bodies are often assumed to be the epitome of health when they are far from it. A person living in a small body can get away with consistently making nutritionally poor food choices and never moving their body at all because health professionals assume, simply upon looking at them, that they must make nutritious food choices and exercise regularly. I know people in very small bodies that everyone – including their doctors – assume to be “very healthy” simply because of their weight that are raging alcoholics, illicit drug users and two-pack-per-day smokers. These behaviors go unchecked and unchallenged because, since their bodies are small, there’s obviously nothing to worry about, right? Another way that some people – particularly women -- in smaller bodies suffer in Diet Culture is because of how their body’s naturally comply with Diet Culture’s beauty norms. Don’t get me wrong, people in smaller bodies benefit from this compliance as well – this is called “thin privilege” and will be the subject of its own, in another post. But, the way in which a woman in a smaller body might suffer from their compliance with Diet Culture’s beauty norms is that they are expected to enjoy and absorb all of the attention they get from men even from a very young age. Because their bodies are so much like the female bodies we see objectified in everything from Disney movies to pornography, the general assumption is that these bodies are objects meant to be admired and consumed. We do not have to acknowledge that there is anything else worthy or important about this person. They won the genetic beauty lottery and thus, that is their major worth in this world. And people living inside this beauty standard are raised to believe that when they are objectified, they should be flattered; they should see this objectification as validation for their worth as a human being. Because this whole scenario is seen as “enviable” and what any woman would/should want, it often goes unnoticed or unquestioned. Girls grow up to believe that they should be flattered by every advance that comes their way or guard themselves fiercely so they will not be taken advantage of and usually end up doing an endless dance between these two ways of being. Diet Culture harms everyone. Children. Girls. Boys. Adults. Men. Women. Of all races and ethnicities. Of all abilities. People in smaller bodies. People in bigger bodies. Every. One. The antidote to Diet Culture -- and ALL of the disorder that it creates -- is Body Liberation. Body Liberation is for Every. Body. If you read my last blog post and still faithfully follow Diet Culture, you may have been left with the question: If Dieting for weight loss is “not, ultimately, ‘healthy’ in any way, at all” why do I FEEL so healthy and good when my weight has gone down? This is fair. Most people can justify holding on to the restricting and binging lifestyle that Diet Culture demands because when they “lose the weight” they do FEEL better. Luckily, this question is very easy to answer.
Because of Diet Culture, you are wrongly associating your lower weight with a healthier feeling. In actuality, your healthier feeling can easily be attributed to the exercise, sleep, water and nutritious food choices you likely had to make to lower your weight. If you think this is “6 in one/ half a dozen the other” you are incorrect. Focusing on the weight loss rather than the behavior changes is detrimental to your long-term health in a number of ways. First, believing that you “feel healthier” just because you are thinner, perpetuates the Diet Culture lie that health and thinness are synonymous. They are not. Decades of research demonstrate that thinness, in itself, does not equate to health in any body. If you want to read that research for yourself, I strongly encourage you to read Health At Every Size by by Dr. Linda Bacon. Second, you will eventually come to a plateau in your weight loss – a place where your body will refuse to give up any more of its mass because it is desperately trying to keep you alive. If you have focused on weight loss throughout your journey and believe the weight loss itself to be “the thing” that is making you healthy, this will be devastating. You will have a difficult time accepting the fact that your body simply refuses to be any smaller. This will lead to a decline in your mental and emotional health. This COULD (and frequently does) lead you to engage in disordered eating (if you weren’t already) and to developing an actual diagnosable eating disorder. This weight plateau could also (and frequently does) lead you to simply give up – give up all of those healthy behaviors that were making you feel so great. “Giving up” will lead to binging and choosing all of those foods that you were restricting yourself from while you were dieting for weight loss. “Giving up” will lead you to stop exercising, stop getting enough sleep, stop drinking so much water. And what’s next? You won’t feel so great anymore. And you’ll tell yourself it’s because you gained weight – but if you could see that this entire journey had absolutely nothing to do with weight and EVERYTHING to do with the behavior you engage in, there would be no need to “give up,” there would be no frustration with your body when it decides to keep you alive by maintaining a weight that makes sense for YOUR unique body. Third, IF your goal is better health, it is healthy behaviors that are going to give you that better health, NOT weight loss. Sometimes engaging in healthy behaviors and weight loss go hand in hand and sometimes they do not. Engaging in healthy behaviors – regardless of what happens to your weight – will give you better health. One more time for the people in the back: ENGAGING IN HEALTHY BEHAVIORS – REGARDLESS OF WHAT HAPPENS TO YOUR WEIGHT – WILL GIVE YOU BETTER HEALTH. Know what that means? You can be healthy no matter what your size. You can choose healthy behaviors no matter what your body looks like. Healthy bodies come in all shapes and sizes. And if you can accept this truth and let your journey to better health be about the BEHAVIORS you are engaging in RATHER than your weight, you are 100% more likely to engage in those healthy behaviors for the rest of your life and not just when you can white-knuckle yourself down to the size that Diet Culture tells you is acceptable. Why, you ask? Why is it easier to engage in these healthy behaviors for the rest of your life rather than dieting for weight loss for the rest of your life? If you accurately attribute your good feelings to your healthy behaviors, you are more likely to WANT to engage in these behaviors. You do not see engaging in these behaviors as a chore or a job or something you HAVE to do in order to be accepted or loved by society. You are doing these things because they feel good, right now, in the moment, in YOUR body. This creates a sense of autonomy, self-respect, and self-love which leads to excellent mental and emotional health. Correctly attributing the healthy behaviors you are engaging in as the source of your “healthy feelings” means that you are learning to respect your body, trust it, and know how it responds to different stimuli and behaviors. THIS is one of the major steps to Body Liberation. Body Liberation is a much more comfortable place to live in for the rest of our lives than the home of body-shame and self-hatred that life-long dieting for weight loss builds for us. Finally, I just want to challenge the notion that dieting for weight loss makes you “feel good.” Listen, I’ve been there – I know what you mean when you say that – first hand. And if you really mean it – if you TRULY “feel good” in your body, the answer I’ve given above for why that is, fits. But, because I’ve been there, I will also say, sometimes that “good” feeling comes from a place of emotional and mental disorder. Sometimes that “good” feeling is the alleviation of the body-shame and self-hatred, imposed upon you by Diet Culture. Sometimes that “good” feeling comes from the actual punishment you put yourself through – the excessive exercising, the extreme restriction, the muscling your way past a craving or a desire to eat a food that Diet Culture has told you, you are not “allowed” to eat. Sometimes that “good” feeling comes from going to bed starving and waking up starving and obsessively zombie-ing your way through every day only thinking about food and the size of your body because FINALLY you are living in the exact space that Diet Culture has told you that you will live if you want to be a good girl or a worthy, lovable human being. IF these are the ways in which your weight loss is making you “feel good,” it is time to question your own definition of “good” and “healthy.” Dieting for weight loss, while it CAN lead to feeling good – again, for the reasons I’ve outlined above – can also lead people to feeling lousy. Restricting food intake and excessively exercising when one’s body is not properly fueled can lead to fatigue, irritability, restless sleep, unexplained rage, panic, anxiety, depression and overall, LESS health. These are not “good” feelings. In my personal experience I can tell you that most periods of the truly healthy feelings brought on by the healthy behaviors one engages in to lose weight will be followed by THIS period of a rapid decline in mental, emotional and social health. And, again, this happens because we are focused on the scale rather than the behaviors that are making us feel good. We want to see that number go down so badly, we restrict our eating and increase our minutes and hours of exercise. We know – because Diet Culture has beaten it into us – that weight loss is about calories in and calories out. We take in less calories. We burn more. But our bodies are not machines so eventually, that extraordinarily simplistic equation is no longer working. Our bodies are organic systems designed to keep us alive. Fewer calories in and more calories out means that the system has to reset itself in a number of ways to make sure we stay alive. This leads to all the not so great feeling mentioned earlier. Learning to accept, respect, nourish and move your body will lead to feeling great and to potentially better health. Dieting for weight loss will not. Body Liberation Training can give you the tools you need to learn to accept, respect, nourish and move your body in ways that make sense for you. If you want to “feel great” for the long run and not just while you can white knuckle your weight down to what Diet Culture has told you is acceptable, STOP dieting for weight loss and seek Body Liberation instead. As the concept of Body Liberation gains traction in popular culture, the notion that dieting for weight loss is unnecessary and unhealthy is becoming more and more accepted as truth. But, what does that mean for people who still “want” to lose weight and actively diet in order to lose weight? Certainly, we should not be replacing body shaming or fat shaming with diet shaming. The entire point of Body Liberation is that every person is free to choose for themselves what is best for their unique body. So, shaming people for wanting to lose weight would work against the ultimate goals of Body Liberation.
First, it’s important to understand that those of us involved in Body Liberation are not necessarily saying that everyone should immediately stop dieting for weight loss and if you don’t do so, you are bad. The primary objective of Body Liberation is to get people to wake up to and understand the effect of Diet Culture on our lives. Diet Culture has got it into everyone’s heads that we MUST always be seeking to make our bodies smaller. Diet Culture has told us that this is the ONLY way anyone can be healthy. Both of these are lies. Both of these lies are beaten into us by a Diet Industry that is very successfully selling 72 billion dollars in product every year in the United States alone. My first goal as a Body Liberation Trainer is not to tell someone they MUST stop dieting for weight loss IMMEDIATELY but to help them understand that they have been brainwashed by Diet Culture to believe dieting for weight loss is the only way they achieve significance as “healthy” human beings in this world. You do not HAVE TO choose weight loss. You can CHOOSE a healthier, more sustainable path for your life. Second, there is absolutely no sense in beating anyone up for continuing to want to lose weight. The messages of Diet Culture are so deeply ingrained in all of us that they feel like “common sense” or just the basic laws of nature. Diet Culture has told all of us our entire lives that in order to be lovable, worthy, or respected we should be dieting for weight loss. Who the hell doesn’t want to be lovable, worthy and respected? We all do, of course! No one pursues weight loss because they want to be less healthy, less popular, less accepted by society, less successful or less respected by their peers. Within Diet Culture, the intense urge to lose weight is 100% understandable and normal. Once we understand that dieting for weight loss or NOT dieting for weight loss is a CHOICE that has actually been sold to us as a necessity our whole lives, we can go ahead and start to decide whether we want to make that choice or not. This leads many seekers of Body Liberation to these eventual questions: 1) is it “wrong” to continue to diet for weight loss? And 2) is it possible to achieve Body Liberation AND diet for weight loss at the same time? Answering these two questions brings me to my third point about dieting for weight loss and its relationship to body liberation: Dieting for weight loss is NOT an act of “HEALTH,” it is more properly understood as a form of Body Modification. Body Modification is piercing one’s ears, nose, or any other body part. Body Modification is getting a tattoo or tattoos all over one’s body. Body Modification is dying one’s hair blonde, pink, green or any other color. Body Modification is plastic surgery. Anything you do to your body that is not a natural part of your body --that does not happen naturally without you making it happen -- is Body Modification. Weight loss is Body Modification. I believe it is extraordinarily helpful to think of weight loss this way for many reasons but the primary reason is that it separates weight loss from morality. It’s possible that certain individuals disapprove of certain types of body modification. You may not think it’s cool when other people get tattoos or piercings. Maybe you look down on people who have plastic surgery. BUT, as a general rule these types of body modification are acceptable enough in our society that they are widespread and, for the most part, people are left alone to pursue them if they wish. As a society, we do not judge body modification as being morally bankrupt OR morally superior. Dieting for weight loss does not make you a morally inferior person. Dieting for weight loss does not make you a morally superior person. It’s neutral. It’s a choice. Some people may disagree with your choice and others may support your choice but it’s still your choice. It is important to reiterate here that Diet Culture has told you your entire life that dieting for weight loss is NOT a CHOICE but rather a prerequisite to achieve your full humanity. THIS is why Body Liberation activists can come off as judgmental or shaming of people who pursue dieting for weight loss. It is IMPERATIVE that we understand we have this choice. Most people – women especially – will continue to tell themselves that they are “choosing” to diet for weight loss when, in reality, their subconscious (or even conscious) voice is telling them that finally getting to that “perfect weight” will make them healthy, loveable, worthy and morally superior. As long as this voice still controls your behavior, Body Liberation is not possible. So, is it “wrong” to continue to diet for weight loss? No, I wouldn’t say it is “wrong.” I would say, all of the available research shows that dieting for weight loss leads to a restricting and binging cycle that ultimately leads to a higher weight from where you originally started and worse health outcomes overall. I would say that all of the available research shows that dieting for weight loss often leads to disordered eating and eating disorders and wreaks havoc on other aspects of your mental health as well. I would say that all of the available research shows that dieting for weight loss has negative effects on your social, emotional and mental health overall. I would say that weight cycling (or yo-yo dieting) has been associated with heart disease and heart attacks. I would say that dieting for weight loss is ultimately, as detrimental to your overall health as habitually smoking or sitting all day long every day (both of which are major health concerns) I would say that continuing to diet for weight loss is not, ultimately, “healthy” in any way, at all. Dieting for weight loss is not wrong but it is NOT a health choice. Dieting for weight loss is a form of body modification. If you know – and truly believe and understand – that dieting for weight loss is a form of body modification that carries health risks and that dieting for weight loss does not make you a better or more worthy human being and STILL choose it then I would say it is POSSIBLE to achieve Body Liberation AND still diet for weight loss. I would say the most likely place you are going to see this behavior is among athletes who need to meet a certain weight class – wrestlers, fighters, body builders – in order to compete in their sport. You may also see this behavior in endurance or speed athletes who want to shave time off of their events. I suppose we could also see this behavior in celebrities who push themselves to portray a certain image in the media (I’m thinking of Beyonce’s admission of extreme dieting in Homecoming). In each of these cases, the body modification of dieting for weight loss is not about being a “healthier” or more “worthy” individual – it’s about competing, it’s about showing up in your chosen field as the “best” you can be, AS DEFINED by that field’s own traditions and expectations. I seriously doubt that an individual who is not a serious athlete or otherwise (like Beyonce) has a body that is at the center of one’s work or vocation, can engage in dieting for weight loss AND achieve Body Liberation at the same time. I can’t imagine a scenario in which any “regular” person who has truly achieved Body Liberation would WANT to diet for weight loss. I can’t imagine a scenario in which any “regular” person who is dieting for weight loss is not doing so because they somehow still believe that Diet Culture lie that finally achieving that perfect weight will make them happier, healthier, more successful and more worthy of love and attention. In fact, even among those athletes and celebrities who engage in the body modification of dieting for weight loss, there is a great deal of mental and emotional dysfunction around food and body image. So, even though I’m willing to concede that it might be POSSIBLE for someone to engage in the body modification of dieting for weight loss and still be working within the framework of Body Liberation for the reasons outlined above, I know – because of the research – that this behavior is still fraught – for anyone who engages in it – with disordered and detrimental thinking. Still, it is useful to the eventual goal of Body Liberation to begin to understand dieting for weight loss as a form of body modification. This allows you to separate this behavior from its supposed morality and helps you understand it as a choice rather than a requirement. Accepting that dieting for weight loss is a form of body modification and not a health choice also helps you to unlearn all of the lies Diet Culture has taught you about the connection between dieting for weight loss and health. Dieting for weight loss is not a behavior that leads to better health outcomes. If, after learning this and truly believing it, you continue to pursue weight loss itself as an ultimate goal, it’s time to start taking a harder look at the emotional and mental issues that are driving you in this unhealthy direction – not because it makes you “bad” or “wrong” but because you deserve Body Liberation, you deserve freedom. No. There is no magic bullet.
No. There is no shake or cream or pill or special meal plan that will keep “the weight” off forever. No. There is nothing – no plan, no program, no personal trainer, no diet, and no miracle – that will help you “get your body back.” You have heard the phrase “Body Diversity” and you think that it’s for “other” people. You think it’s fine for “other” people to be who they are in THEIR body but that your body SHOULD comply with Diet Culture’s narrow, contemporary idealized beauty norms. But you are wrong. Body Diversity means that every single body is different. Let that sink in. Body Diversity means that every single body is born to be, meant to be, bound to be DIFFERENT. It also means that as you go through your life things happen to your body that change it. If nothing else, it ages. When you throw in accidents, illnesses, disabilities, pregnancies, traumas, motherhood, manual labor, and all the other things that a body amazingly sees us through in our lifetime, your body changes – BECOMES DIFFERENT FROM HOW IT USED TO BE – exponentially, in order to survive! Let’s talk for a minute about why you even have that thought in your mind that you should work toward “getting your body back.” Do men routinely, and generally speaking, obsess about trying to make their body look like it did when they were in high school or before they had kids? Do men – again, GENERALLY speaking -- become depressed or develop eating disorders because they don’t have the same body they did at 16? No? Oh right, that’s because (I know you’re saying), “men age better than women.” But that is absolutely not objectively true. As Carey Fisher said, “Men don’t age better than women. They’re just allowed to age.” Men don’t pine for their high school bod because Diet Culture’s contemporary idealized beauty norm for men doesn’t look like a 16 year old boy. But who’s expected to stay very young and lithe and small and easy to control? Women. So “getting your body back” makes diet and beauty products very easy to sell to women. Obsession and depression and eating disorders and anxiety springing from the manufactured desire to “get your body back” makes diet and beauty products very easy to sell to women. Let me suggest an alternative. Allow your body to be what it is right now because it changed to save your life and keep you alive and get your through every damn thing your body has been through up to now. And now you’ll say, “so you want me to just give up?” WHAT??? Give up on WHAT??? No! Suggesting that you allow your body to be what it is right now is in no way suggesting that you just lay down somewhere and never get back up. No. I would NEVER suggest that you “give up” on anything that is meaningful to you. Do not give up on your passions. Do not give up on your life. Do not give up on your love. Do not give up on your ambition. Do not EVER EVER EVER give up on your BODY OR YOUR SELF! But… yes, give up on Diet Culture. Stop believing Diet Culture’s lie that you are only valuable if you look like a skinny, 16 year old little girl. Or, hell, if you naturally look like a skinny, 16 year old little girl, stop believing that THAT is what makes you valuable! STOP believing that your body has betrayed you or hates you or has something against you because it won’t “go back” to what it was before. You never lost your body! Your body has been with you all this time – keeping you alive and strong and vital and it had to change to do that. Stop believing Diet Culture’s lie that the changes your body has gone through are bad or unnecessary or undesirable. Diet Culture doesn’t know your life! Nor does Diet Culture give a shit about your life – or your survival for that matter. Diet Culture wants one thing from you – your clear submission through your purchasing of its products. So, yes, yes, yes, GIVE UP BUYING WHAT DIET CULTURE IS SELLING. BUT – you say, because you are so entrenched in Diet Culture that you will continue to argue with me – MY BODY IS “UNHEALTHY!” Okay. I need another entire blog post – or maybe a whole book – to explain to you how untrue that probably is. In fact, if you want to know how untrue that probably is (YES, even if a medical doctor told you so!) go read Health At Every Size by Linda Bacon immediately. She’ll set you straight. But, okay, let’s say for the sake of argument that you ARE unhealthy, that your current body is, in fact, “unhealthy.” Even though it has changed to help you survive the things you have already survived, it is “unhealthy.” Say, for example you are currently battling cancer or living with ALS or in active congestive heart failure, yes, most humans would agree that you are currently “unhealthy.” So, let me ask you this: if any of these things are true for you, do you think it is going to help you to concentrate on how “bad” and “wrong” your body is and how much you hate it and wish it could just be like it was before the illness? Do you honestly think it will help to follow a diet scheme or a diet shake regimen or a weight loss focused meal plan in any of these cases? Because it won’t and neither will a negative attitude towards your unacceptable body. Only an attitude of being proud and amazed at how your body is continuing to survive every day despite this illness is going to help. Only “giving up” on Diet Culture’s bullshit beauty standards is going to help you focus on SURVIVAL. Now, let’s say you are generally “unhealthy” because of your weight. Maybe you feel heavy, you feel slow, you feel less energy, you get winded easily, you feel lethargic, you feel less capable of just engaging in the regular activities of daily living than you used to. Okay. Again, I ask you: how is a purely weight loss centered focus going to help you through that? How is focusing on how bad your body is and how unacceptable it is and how you wish it LOOKED like it did when it was younger or healthier going to help you through that? IT ISN’T. ONLY embracing your body’s amazing capacity for change and being proud of your survival to date will put you in a frame of mind to make the REAL life changes you want to make to get “healthier” – NOT skinnier, healthier. These are not the same thing. If, in this state of feeling unhealthy, you “lose the weight” by going Keto, or going Vegan or going Paleo, or drinking a Beachbody shake for every other meal instead of eating real food or intermittently fasting or taking the latest diet pill, you MAY get thinner, you may lose weight and you may temporarily feel “healthier.” But if you are weight loss focused, I have bad news for you, THAT weight will not stay off. You will most likely NOT be one of the very small (under 5%) percentage of people who actually keep the weight off. And if you are among that tiny percentage of people, you will most likely have developed a very UNhealthy eating disorder in order to be. So, when the weight does come back on, your body will be in starvation mode and you will gain MORE weight than before and that weight will be mostly fat weight because your body is trying to SURVIVE. Getting thin/ thinner DOES NOT mean getting healthier. In fact, MOST of the ways that we become thinner (many of which I have already mentioned) actually decrease physical and mental health. But Diet Culture has told you that around the next corner there is a magic bullet waiting with your name on it and it will make everything okay so you keep using these methods anyway. You keep thinking that thinness and health are exactly the same thing anyway. If you are generally unhealthy or feel unhealthy because of your weight, I recommend embarking on the journey toward becoming an intuitive eater because Intuitive Eating is the only therapy that has been proven to give people LONG-TERM relief from food and body image issues. I also recommend becoming very familiar with the types of movement your body enjoys and then engaging in that movement as often as you want to. Diet Culture has told you the lie that only certain bodies should do certain movements or only certain bodies are acceptable to be seen doing certain movements in public. Diet Culture has told you that certain movements are better than others or more real or more “effective” than others. None of this is true. So, maybe in order to discover what type of movement your body enjoys and then in order to engage in that movement, you’ll need to get over some shit. The journey toward Intuitive Eating and Joyful Movement – the journey toward Body Liberation – is not a program or a diet or a scheme or a plan, nor is it the kind of bullshit “lifestyle change” that Diet Culture is selling these days. The Journey toward Body Liberation is a deeply personal, emotional, life-changing paradigm shift that requires you to “give up” on Diet Culture and its many products and invest instead in yourself and YOUR survival and YOUR life and YOUR needs. It’s not easy and it’s not fast. It’s no magic bullet. It’s no promise that your body will never change and it sure as hell is not a journey back to the body you had when you were 16 years old – because you are so much stronger and wiser and more resilient than that 16 year old ever could’ve been. BUT the journey toward Body Liberation IS the last road you’ll need to travel on and it is the ONLY road to that leads to freedom. Ten years ago today, my mother died.
It turns out the time after a parent dies takes on the same pace as the time from when a child is born. That is, as a parent, I am always saying, “how did my daughter get to be 11 already?” or “how did my kid get to be 16 already?” And now I’m thinking: How is it possible that I’ve lived for ten years without my mother? How is it possible that it has been THAT long? When my mother died, I was 35 years old and I resolved to stop hating my body. I resolved to stop dieting and tracking every food I put into my mouth, as she did more often than not. I resolved to stop wasting time worrying about my body and instead I resolved to live my life. I did not keep any of these resolutions for long. Just as it had during my mother’s life, Diet Culture stepped in hard on those plans and forced me back into body hatred, back into the incessant tracking, back into being so obsessed about my body that life went on without me – because I was somewhere, always in the back, counting calories or macros or fat grams. A couple of years ago, my obsession with thinness and my old belief that thinness is synonymous with health became intolerable. In the pursuit of thinness and “health,” I had become mentally ill, mired in disordered eating and I could eventually no longer keep going down that road. And so, gratefully, I tell you that I have found a certain freedom from all of that bullshit; a freedom that, to my knowledge, my mother was never able to find. And on this tenth anniversary of her death, I am ready to reestablish my commitment to self acceptance and body liberation. In our culture, all people are herded as soon as possible after birth, into the prison of Diet Culture (which is now sneakily masquerading as “Health Culture”). There are at least two tiers to this prison and the lower, more punishing, tier is reserved for those of us who identify as female. This is the place my mother lived in all of her life. It is the place I have lived in for most of my life. This is not the place I want my daughters to live. In this prison of Diet Culture, my mother and I learned that the only thing that makes a woman valuable, worthy of love, or acceptable in this world is how much her physical appearance complies with contemporary ideals of beauty. We learned that my mother’s body was unacceptable and disgusting. We learned that my body was unacceptable and disgusting. And these lessons forced both of us into a lifelong pursuit of trying to make ourselves acceptable and lovable to the world. But here are some of the things I’ve heard people say about my mother in the last 10 years: “She was so kind.” “She always had room in her home, in her life, at her table for another person in need.” “She was always volunteering to help in the community.” “She was always so good with kids.” “She could always make me smile!” “She loved children.” “She was so creative.” “Her gardens were so gorgeous. She had such a green thumb.” “Oh my god! Her cooking! I loved her cooking!” “Her beautiful smile! I miss her beautiful smile!” “She loved being a part of the choir at church!” “She was such a beautiful person.” “She had such a beautiful soul.” “She was so beautiful.” People who knew my mother – family members, friends, and acquaintances alike – have said these things about her. Only ONE time, in TEN years, has any person expressed any sentiment about my mother’s weight and that was a family member that was extremely close to her who said, “Yep, she struggled with that a lot. It’s too bad that she struggled so much with that.” It IS. It is really TOO BAD that she struggled so much with her weight and her body and the vast difference between what Diet Culture told her her body SHOULD be and what it actually was BECAUSE… her body was a gift given to her by the universe, the vessel through which she touched all these lives that remember her as “beautiful” and the lies that Diet Culture told her, it told her just to make a buck. Diet Culture isn’t even REAL! My mother’s life, my mother’s beautiful smile, my mother’s ability to grow thriving gorgeous plants from seed, my mother’s kindness to children and elders and everyone, my mother’s compassion, my mother’s cooking, my mother’s soul was REAL. And she wasted (we all waste every day) PRECIOUS TIME in the bullshit prison of Diet Culture worrying about how our bodies refuse to comply with invented (for profit) contemporary beauty ideals. And that is really TOO. BAD. It’s bad. In the ten years since my mother’s death, I have realized that so much of who I have always been come from the lessons that she was always teaching me by example.Be kind. Have compassion. Help out. Help things grow. Do those things that make your heart sing. Keep your heart open. But I have also learned that really living in these lessons with all of my heart requires escaping the prison of Diet Culture, requires believing that these lessons and these attributes of human existence are far more important and worth paying attention to than whether my – or anyone else’s – bodies comply with contemporary beauty ideals. I have learned to value what is REAL in this life and to question and ultimately, defy, those things (like Diet Culture and its capitalist, ableist, racist, misogynist, fatphobic, transphobic beauty norms) that are not real. After ten years, my mother is still REAL and here with me and with every person her life touched. I believe the impact she made on my life and everyone else’s will still be REAL even 1,000 years from now because that’s how the world really works – one person touching a life that touches a life that touches a life that touches a life and so on. And I WILL honor my mother and the life she gave me, by continuing on this journey of Body Liberation for myself and for every person that MY life touches. When most people think about hiring a personal trainer, they think about being in the gym with that trainer and working their ass off on a level they simply can’t achieve while they’re working out alone. This is ONE possibility for what a personal trainer is for.
But what most people don’t really think too much about is how much MORE a personal trainer can do. Any decent personal trainer SHOULD possess the skills to create an overall plan for a client’s fitness goals. This plan should include all the different aspects of fitness that a client will need to engage in to reach their goals. This plan should be long-term and should take into consideration many different aspects of the client’s lifestyle, history and personality. Ultimately, a personal trainer is most useful as a long-term guide for your body’s movement needs. In this way, personal trainers are part of a smart, long-term healthcare plan, like having a therapist and a primary care physician. When they’re doing their jobs well, all of these professionals work to help you prevent health problems and maintain homeostasis both in your mind and your body -- which means you generally feel good, most of the time.. Not everyone has a therapist but everyone should. "Mental health" is not something only people with mental disorders or mental illnesses have -- everyone has "mental health." There are days, weeks, months and even whole years when everyone needs just a little extra mental health help, a sounding board, a validating voice to say, “everything is going to be alright.” I’m not suggesting everyone needs to see a therapist every single week, or even month, of their lives but establishing a relationship with a therapist so that you can call on them as needed or check in with them periodically is a very good idea for your long-term mental health. The same is true for personal trainers. Once you’ve established a relationship with a personal trainer, you have someone to turn to as your goals change, your body changes, your needs change, your lifestyle changes. To establish that relationship, you may work with your trainer every week for several months or even a year then perhaps you step away to continue the work on your own until such time as you need them again, or just want to check in/ check-up. Culturally, we have assumed that we should see a medical doctor like this for at least 100 years. The biggest differences are that most medical doctors 1) don’t take a holistic approach to your health and 2) are primarily trained in the treatment of existing health problems rather than prevention of health problems. Prevention happens in traditional medicine in the form of a yearly check-up and standard tests at specific ages. If MOST people engaged the services of a personal trainer even as rarely as they seek preventative care from medical professionals, we would see our culture’s overall health and happiness improve dramatically. NOT because you got some good workouts in but because a personal trainer can test your physical health, talk with you about your current physical goals AND prescribe a long-term plan for those goals. If you invested a bit more time with a trainer, you would even get ongoing support with adhering to that plan and achieving those goals and recommendations for other areas of health you might need support in. I dream of a future where our health clinics are small complexes that bring together the expertise of a medical doctor, a physical therapist, a mental health specialist, and a personal trainer. It would also be wonderful to include massage therapists, chiropractors, and naturopaths in that list. One place with all of these Heath professionals who would have the opportunity to conference about your well-being with one another so that everyone is on the same page and you are truly receiving the best, smartest, most holistic care possible. I know it’s only a dream but it’s a good one. For now, finding yourself your own scattered team of health professionals that include some, if not all, of those you’d have available to you in my dream health complex is your best chance of truly preventative health care. This includes finding a personal trainer who can do WAY more for you that simply kill your quads in the gym one morning. Personal trainers are for helping you establish long-term, consistent physical health habits. Personal trainers are for helping you understand how physical activity can fit into everyone’s lifestyle. Personal trainers are for helping you understand how your physical goals can be achieved, one day at a time, over the long haul. Can a personal trainer kick your ass in a workout? For sure. But that’s not all a personal trainer is for. Not by a long shot. It took me 43 years to Hit Diet Bottom and finally realize that there had never been anything wrong with my body. I have wished many times that it didn’t take me that long. Through social media, I follow many women and men in their 20s and 30s who found out a lot earlier than I did and I envy the time they have given themselves to live fully in their power. When I see teenagers embracing their bodies and saying “Fuck You” to Diet Culture, I feel hopeful and excited for their futures.
The older a person is when they Hit Diet Bottom, the harder it might be to leave Diet Culture and Dieting behind. The older we are, the longer we have been living in Diet Culture’s lies as if they are the truth. Leaving Diet Culture is very much like leaving a cult – EXCEPT the cult lives all the way around you so you never actually escape. You have to learn to live physically inside the cult while refusing to believe their lies anymore. But if we’ve already bought into that cult’s bullshit for 20, 30, 40, 50, 60 or 70+ years, the more difficult it will be to see it for what it is. Many older people will NEVER be free of Diet Culture for this reason. They have been too inundated for too long. On the other hand, the older a person is the more likely it is that they have experienced weight cycling and the lie of weight loss first hand maybe many times. They have gone on restrictive diet after restrictive diet, lost the weight only to regain it back again and again and again – oftentimes, with more and more interest. The first several times, they believed the lie that THEY had failed but the more the pattern repeated itself, the more they had to admit that perhaps this was a failure of the system itself and NOT them. So, with this experience and the willingness to learn something new, an older person might have even more motivation to seek Body Liberation and to stop Dieting. Similarly, a young person might not have been living with Diet Culture’s bullshit long enough to be fed up with it. They might be young enough to still be susceptible to the peer pressure of Diet Culture and the hope that when they just get that perfect body, all their dreams will come true and all of their problems will go away. That is the promise that Diet Culture gives young people. It’s a promise that is easier to see for the lie that it is the older and more experienced you are. Whatever your age, it is never too early or too late to seek Body Liberation. Everyone deserves freedom from the prison of Diet Culture. The sooner you get that freedom, the more life you have left to enjoy it! You’ve probably heard of “hitting rock bottom.” This is a common phrase used in 12-step programs to signify the crisis-moment when someone is finally ready to admit and deal with their addiction. In the Body Liberation community, we refer to “hitting Diet bottom” in a similar way. Hitting Diet Bottom is when you finally get to the point where you can’t force yourself to go on one more Diet, when you realize it is pointless and actually harmful for you to engage in the bullshit of Diet Culture anymore but you have no idea where else to turn.
Registered dieticians and the author’s of Intuitive Eating – and really, the creators of the entire concept of Intuitive Eating – Evelyn Tribole and Elyse Resch dedicate the first chapter of their groundbreaking book to this concept: “Hitting Diet Bottom.” This is the first chapter in the book because until you’ve reached this place, you won’t quite be ready to truly engage in learning how to eat intuitively or to move joyfully; you won’t yet be ready to accept that Diet Culture has failed you and harmed you. So, how do you know if you’ve hit Diet Bottom? Here are some questions, written from the information provided in Tribole & Resch’s “Hitting Diet Bottom” chapter, that might help you figure it out? Do you distrust yourself around food? Do you feel out of control around food? Do you feel panicky or hungry at the mere consideration of going on another restrictive diet? Do you feel you don’t deserve to eat or feel guilty about eating? Do you stay away from social situations because of complicated feelings regarding food and/or your body? Do you seem to have a harder time losing weight with each new diet that you try? Do you seem to be able to stick to diets for shorter and shorter periods? Do you feel guilty about binging after being on a restrictive diet? Do you suffer from an eating disorder or disordered eating? Do you use exercise as punishment? Do you exercise solely for weight loss? Do you find yourself preoccupied with thoughts about food, weight loss, and your body? If you answered yes to some of these questions, you MIGHT be at Diet Bottom. Usually, when someone has hit Diet Bottom, they are tormented with constant thoughts about food, weight loss and how problematic their body is. They feel there is no hope for their body. They feel they will never lose weight again and they feel DESPERATE to lose weight. But simultaneously they also feel fed up with Dieting. They have lost and regained the same number of pounds over and over throughout their lives and they know Dieting is, ultimately a losing battle. They can’t Diet again. But they are terrified of what will happen to their body if they stop Dieting. Hitting Diet Bottom – just like Hitting Rock Bottom – is a blessing in the disguise of misery. Here’s why: Once you’ve hit Diet Bottom, you have the chance to free yourself forever from Dieting and Diet Culture. You FINALLY have a chance to take the blinders off and see that your body was actually NEVER the problem. You FINALLY have the chance to be FREE from restriction and deprivation and punishing exercise and the completely ridiculous expectations Diet Culture has forced upon you. Have you ever wondered what was on the other side of Dieting? Have you ever wondered what your life would be like if you didn’t spend all of those minutes, hours, days counting calories or macros or grams of carbs? If you didn’t spend all weekend food prepping? If you didn’t waste all that time fat-talking with your friends and family? If you put your mind and body to some other use than obsessing about physical appearance? If you didn’t waste all of that time hating yourself and hating the precious body you were born into? Once you’ve hit Diet Bottom, you might as well spend some time figuring it out. Because, on the other side of Diet Bottom is life. On the other side of Diet Bottom is the chance to FINALLY learn to accept your body for exactly what it is and what it has always been: YOURS. On the other side of Diet Bottom is the freedom to learn to care for yourself from your own internal cues. On the other side of Diet Bottom, no one else gets to be in charge of what you eat or how you move or what you think about your body ever again. On the other side of Diet Bottom, you can learn to use your time to live the life you always wanted to live – instead of waiting for the day when you would finally be thin enough to live it. If you’ve hit Diet Bottom, welcome, and feel free to give me a call.
In April, I'll begin offering my first round of Body Liberation Basics classes FREE OF CHARGE to anyone curious about what this whole Body Positive/ Health at Every Size/ Intuitive Eating/ Anti-Diet Movement is all about.
With almost 25 years of experience teaching adults in a college setting, I am creating a course for you that will pull together many of the essential elements of the entire Body Liberation Movement. Through engaging lectures and active discussions, we will answer questions like: Why don't Diets work? What is Diet Culture and Feast Culture? How do we find Authentic Health? What is Fat Phobia? What is Body Diversity? Is Intuitive Eating really just about eating donuts 24/7, 365 days a year? How can we learn to trust our bodies? What is "gentle nutrition" and "joyful movement"? And, what are the long-term emotional, mental and physical benefits of being a bonafide, badass health rebel? It IS possible to find a lot of these answers online. You could waste many endless days scrolling through facebook and instagram feeds. But at the end of all of that scrolling, you might feel more confused than ever. As a long-time college professor, what I know for sure is that face-to-face instruction, discussion and opportunity to ask questions of a knowledgable facilitator is SACRED and simply cannot be replaced by memes, click-bait and the comments of internet trolls. Small groups of people gathering together around a well-researched topic about which they are all curious creates TRANSFORMATIONAL learning. This kind of learning does not take place in most online formats. I've been told many times that when you offer something for free, people think it must not be worth a dime. Well, I can assure you that the information provided and the life-changing education you will receive in these classes will be priceless. I've seen many classes like this online for a pretty penny. For me, this series is a pilot in which I can launch the framework for my Body Liberation Training program. I don't think I will offer the entire series, in this wide of a scope, for free again. So, if you're worried you're getting a free golden ring that isn't worth a dime, rest assured this opportunity is much more like a golden ticket to a priceless experience that will have long-lasting transformational consequences on how you live your life. Since these classes are designed to be an entire 6-week course, they will build on one another. But, registration is open for individual sessions if you find that some of the dates conflict with your schedule. Just know that to receive the full education and experience, attending all 6 sessions is highly recommended. If you're interested in registering for all (or some) of the series, go to our schedulicity site (by clicking on the green box below) and looking under "workshops."
Space is limited to just 10 people so if you think you're interested, reserve your spot today! This is going to be an amazing experience. I can't wait to get started with you!
Namaste, JodiAnn |
JodiAnn Stevensonis an NSCA-Certified Personal Trainer; an ACE-Certified Group Fitness Instructor; a certified Yoga Teacher; a Certified Intuitive Eating Professional; and a degree-holding Health, Fitness Specialist. She lives in Frankfort, Michigan and owns Every. Body. Fitness and Yoga Studio. Archives
August 2022
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