“I hate my body.”
Pretty much every woman in America has felt horrible in her body at some point in her life. Sometimes it’s during adolescence when your body is changing so much. Sometimes it’s during times of stress or weight gain. Sometimes it’s during pregnancy and postpartum. Many women have tried to solve this discomfort with dieting or restrictive and obsessive tendencies in hopes that being smaller, more in control of their food and exercise, will make them feel better. Sure, sometimes it works for a week or two, but then the goal post moves, the changes seen aren’t enough anymore, so we keep going down that rabbit hole.
Dieting really does exist on a continuum, as some diets are more intense and take up more brain space than others. And for some people, they find themselves less consumed by the diet “rules” than others do. Many people in the eating disorder field consider diets to be a form of disordered eating because someone on a diet is using food and exercise to cope and follow a strict set of rules in order to manipulate their body, disregarding what their body actually needs. When this becomes obsessive and starts impacting relationships, work, school, or physical health, dieting and disordered eating crosses the line into eating disorder territory.
Recovering from this - whether it’s eating disorders, disordered eating, or years of yo-yo dieting - can be challenging, as it requires you to listen to your body, rethink what “healthy” actually means for you (and yes, let’s make it more difficult because “healthy” is subjective to each person), and look at the underlying issues food and exercise were trying to solve. For some women, these issues are related to self-esteem and self-worth (“If I just lose 10 more pounds, more people will like me and I’ll feel more confident socially.”), while others are coping with the impact of trauma (“I didn’t have control of my body when that happened to me, and I’m never going to let that happen again, so I control what food I eat, how I exercise, and what I look like.”). For many moms, they are itching to “get their bodies back” after it went through the ringer during pregnancy and postpartum (and for women that go through IVF, the TTC process too).
I’m not here to say that you should never eat fruits and vegetables or that you need to give into every little craving you have or that you should only exercise when you feel like it (“but I never feel like it!” you might be thinking). Instead, I’m offering an alternative - intuitive eating. Listening to your body’s cues for hunger, fullness, food preference, rest, and energy. Working out because you know you feel better after but also realizing that going for a walk with your toddler in your stroller absolutely counts as your movement for the day. Eating a parfait for breakfast because it sounds delicious but also getting pizza with your kids for dinner because that sounds delicious too. The answer is in the gray area. No rules. Gentle nutrition. Intuition. Taking into account your schedule and hectic life.
If you’re looking to revamp your relationship with food and exercise, reach out for a 15-minute free consultation to see if I may be able to help!
