PSA: just because you decide you want to follow a diet, doesn’t mean you’re a terrible person. It doesn’t mean I won’t be your friend. And it doesn’t mean you should feel ashamed.
Hear me out:
- look into intuitive eating and the #healthyateverysize approach. Intuitive eating methods have been published since the 1980’s but why haven’t most of us heard of it? Because the goal of IE isn’t to profit off of women who believe being in a smaller body will make them healthier.
- it’s all about your WHY. It’s okay to want to change things about your body. Society has taught us not to trust our bodies, it’s completely normal to desire weight loss. The tricky part is that it can be a slippery slope to orthorexia, excessive exercise, chronic weight cycling, disordered binge eating, and other disordered eating behaviors. So if you’ve had these struggles in the past (like me), before you can really tap into what will fuel your body and how to exercise for joy... you have to work through that damage and begin healing.
- 95% of the time diets fail. And what’s worse, it places a huge amount of shame and guilt on us when as soon as we stop restricting, we gain it all back. Which leads to more weight gain, depression, anxiety, weight cycling.
- if you’re searching for a healthy balance... restrictive dieting has taught us this impossible all or nothing mentality. Balance can come after really digging deep below those layers of what’s beyond the food (@stephdodier talks about this a lot).
- Still want to go on a diet? Go for it. But at least be educated about the choices you’re making for yourself. Do the research on weight stigma. And in case you’re wondering, I’ve done all of these diets: whole30, Tone It Up, clean eating, weight watchers, slim fast, advocare, beach body, low carb, paleo, some diet clinic I went to in PA, and frankly... just not eating. You know what they left me with? Zero self worth, no trust for my self or body, and 15+ years of shame based on every lb and ever inch gained and lost and then gained again.
It’s a wicked cycle and I know some of you aren’t here for this yet, and that’s ok🖤