Body Acceptance
Intuitive Eating gets accused of “glorifying obesity”. In reality, IE is simply trying to help people realize that they deserve to eat, they deserve to take up space and size does not equal health. I’m a registered dietitian who lives in a larger body, so the body acceptance part of IE hits especially close to home.
Our bodies are not designed to look the same our entire lives. There are so many different seasons of life and our body is simply the vessel taking us on the wild ride. We want to honor our body by being good to it, not by bullying it into looking like what it did when we were teenagers.
I know when I first discovered IE and was on my own personal journey body acceptance was hard. I had given birth to two children in two years, I was a stay at home mom and my husbands parents who lived down the street were both simultaneously going through cancer treatment. My body had changed significantly and loving it in its current state didn’t seem like something I’d ever accomplish. It took some time, but I did get there, and you can too. Here’s some of my top recommendations for getting to the body acceptance finish line.
Body acceptance doesn’t mean body love - Body acceptance doens’t mean that you have to look in the mirror and love everything about your appearance. I like to tell people to start with what you do like and repeat it to yourself. Example: “I like my hair/eyes/smile/etc”. Body neutrality is a great place to start. Maybe you don’t love your body - ok, but we can still be kind to our body.
What does your body do for you - If you’re having a hard time looking at your legs and finding anything positive about them, try looking at it from the angle of what can they do for you? Example: “I can appreciate that my legs allow me to take my dog on walks”
Clean up your social media - I think this was probably the absolute best thing that I ever did for myself. I went through all my social media accounts and unfollowed anyone who wasn’t in line with health at every size. I unfollowed anyone who regularly talked bad about themselves or others, anyone who only posted “lowest calorie” meals, anyone who made me feel less than for not living my life the way they were living theirs. Then I went back in to seek out body positive accounts. There are so so many. Seeing other people in large bodies doing normal activities - wearing a bathing suit, wearing clothes for the weather (not just clothes to cover their body), eating good food - it just did wonders for my perspective.
I highly recommend the book Health at Every Size by Linda Bacon as a good starting point on your body acceptance journey!
