From Body Shame to Body Love

Today my dear friend Marissa shares her powerful and moving journey toward loving her body. Marissa was a participant in the very first Love Your Body workshop back in 2009, and in addition to pursuing her degree in counseling at CIIS, is training with me to assist in upcoming LYB workshops. Read on to hear about her love of dance that finally burst free of blame and shame, and more…

Kimber: What brought you to the realization that you needed/wanted to change your relationship with your body?

Marissa: I’ve blamed my body for as long as I can remember. In my mind, the fact that my body wasn’t thin and beautiful was the reason why good things didn’t happen to me. Those cool girls don’t want to be my friend because I’m not pretty enough. That boy would like me if I looked like her. That part would have gone to me if I were thinner/shorter/prettier. It’s easy to fall into that trap.

On top of the blame, I felt intense shame that I disliked my body. I shouldn’t have negative feelings towards my body. I should love myself as I am. Only silly, insecure girls have body image issues. I couldn’t open up to the possibility of change until I acknowledged I had a problem.

When I was seven years old my mom signed me up for ballet. I was so excited; I couldn’t wait to try it. From the first moment of class, I fell in love with dance. But I couldn’t enjoy it. I was the tallest, chubbiest kid in the class. Everyone is looking at me and thinking I’m fat and stupid and that I don’t belong there. And part of me thought they were right. After class I told my mom I hated it. She asked me if anything was wrong, and I lied, incapable of forming the words to admit I was already one of those insecure girls with body image issues. I told my mom I didn’t want to go back to ballet and spent the next 11-12 years of my life wishing I hadn’t.

I didn’t take another formal dance class until I was in college. I realized my hangup over my body was keeping me from doing something I really wanted to do. So I signed up and did it. And it was hard. I felt intensely judgmental toward myself while dancing. I felt clumsy. But I had so much fun. I think that was the first clear moment when I realized I had a lot of work to do: there were so many wonderful things I was missing out on because of shame around my body.

Now, I dance every chance I get. I have a whole group of friends who support me in dancing. They tell me how much fun it is to dance with me and that I’m beautiful when I dance. I’m in a place now where that feels really good to hear. And my head doesn’t argue with them. I can still recognize the old judgments though. Sometimes strangers ask if I used to be a dancer, or tell me I move like a dancer. I notice that my inner critic wants to jump in and say, “Oh no…I don’t have the body of a dancer.” But I don’t say that out loud. I usually just say, “I took dance classes in college and I love to dance.” The last time this happened, as I walked away I heard the girl who had asked me say to her friend “See, I knew it. Once you’ve been a dancer, your body never forgets.” I had a clear thought then that she was right. My body never forgot. It just took me a really long time before I could listen and let myself have a dancing body…no matter what it looks like on the outside.

Kimber: What practice or concept from the Love Your Body Workshop has most helped you change your relationship with your body?

Marissa: Sitting down and examining my judgments about my body: the “shoulds” and the rules [the unconscious rules we carry around about how we’re supposed to feel about our bodies]. I spent a long time with a big “should” about the fact that I really didn’t love my body. I felt like I should and so I wore a mask to hide the truth that I really wasn’t comfortable in my skin. You know in programs for addicts, they say the first step in conquering addiction is admitting you have a problem. By taking a good hard look at all the judgments I held around my body, I could finally say, “Whoa, this is a problem. I don’t want to feel or think these things about myself. And I DO.”

I had to admit that I feel all these negative things. It’s so easy to be blind and sweep everything under the big carpet of denial, “Oh, yeah I’m fine with my body.” Or to clump everything together into one non-specific lump, “I hate my body.” Taking a look at the rules I believed about my body helped me sift through what hating my body really meant. And after the rules we looked at wishes, hopes for the way we want to feel about our bodies. Articulating a specific wish for my relationship with my body helped me focus on where I was and where I wanted to be and how I might get there.

Kimber: Aside from what you learned in the Love Your Body Workshop, what helps you love your body?

Marissa: One thing that I really became aware of as I started to examine my relationship with my body was that I never listened to it, to its likes and longings. I deprived my body of things that made it happy, like dance, for a really long time. I think anything that puts you in touch with the way your body likes to move is helpful: yoga, dance, massage. When I lived in Japan I used to roll around on the cool tatami straw mats just like a kid, rolling around on the ground, feeling the way my body wanted to move. Playing in water…the cool water of a river is another thing my body loves. It was a really long time before I ever went skinny dipping, but the feeling of cool water all over your body is the most incredible feeling…it connects you to you. Those are the experiences that have helped me most.

I remember the first time I heard the opening lines from Mary Oliver’s poem “Wild Geese.” It seemed to articulate my experience… that maybe we can stop trying to be what we think we need to be and start tuning in to what we are already.

You do not have to be good

You do not have to walk on your knees

for a hundred miles through the desert repenting

You only have to let the soft animal of your body

love what it loves.

Kimber: Mmm. I love those lines, too. So, to finish up, imagine women who are just starting out on the path of learning to love their bodies. Do you have any words of wisdom for them?

Marissa: Try new things. I used to say no a lot when people asked me if I wanted to go to a salsa class or kayaking or rock climbing. My first response was always, “Oh, I can’t do that. I’m not strong enough/fit enough to do that. Or I’m too tall/heavy, blah blah blah. There won’t be a harness to fit me, there won’t be a person who can lift me.” Six million reasons why not. I’m proud to say that now I’m pretty much an “I’ll try anything twice” kind of girl. Give it at least two tries before you decide you don’t like it. I learned to snowboard in Japan. I even tried wakeboarding… not terribly successfully, but it was fun. I’ve been rafting and flying on the trapeze. And all of those experiences were amazing and taught me something new I could do with my body. I’m not always good at it…which is challenging; it’s hard to do things I can’t do well already. But I’ve gained confidence along the way because I’ve discovered amazing things my body can do that I never imagined possible. It’s like being a kid again. Just do it and see what happens. Either way, it will be fun.

Kimber: Thank you for sharing your story and wisdom, Marissa! The September Love Your Body workshop is full, but two are open in October... a four Tuesday series at 7th Heaven starting Oct 18 (go to 7th Heaven's website/events to sign up), and a six-hour Love Your Body workshop on Sunday Oct 23 at Cosmic Dog yoga in Livermore (call 925-456-YOGA). Don't wait to sign up... they sell out quick.

Sick Body, Good Body

I'm not sure how to explain this: I’m sick. You probably wouldn’t notice from my appearance.

In fact, if you look at all my health indicators, cholesterol, thyroid, glucose, red blood cell count, B12, blah, blah, I appear to be wildly healthy. On my yoga mat I can still rock an awesome eka pada kundinyasana two (imagine sticking your leg over your arm and then lifting both legs and balancing on your hands… oh yeah.). But I’m sick. I’ve been sick for months.

One of the goals of the Health At Every Size movement is to get people to think about health as their primary goal, not weight. You eat your tasty greens and veggies, you give your body enjoyable movement, and you focus on being healthy and happy, not on losing weight.

Health is a worthy goal, and one I wholeheartedly believe in. I’ll take the equation “health = good” over the equation “thin = good” anytime.

But what happens when you’ve been doing everything “right”, and you get sick anyway? Does it naturally follow that if “health = good” then “sick = bad”? Am I only a good person if I’m healthy? Is it my fault that I’m sick?

We do ourselves a disservice if we turn health into a magical mantra to ward off evil sickness, as if we could somehow hold illness and death at bay by building a fortress of carrots mortared with flaxseed oil, kale chips, and sweat.

I hate to be the one to say it, but no matter how healthy we are, no matter how good our “numbers” are… we are all going to get sick. We are all going to die. Yup. No matter how well we take care of ourselves.

And guess what? It’s not your fault.

Our bodies are fragile and strong, vulnerable and vibrant, aging and youthful, all at the same time. If you get sick, it’s not because of your weight, or because you eat doughnuts, or because you skipped your workout, or because you don’t do enough pranayama (that’s breathing exercises for you non-yogis out there). You get sick because you have a body that is perfect and imperfect, a body that wants to heal and find balance, but sometimes gets overwhelmed by it all.

Your beautiful body doesn’t suddenly become bad when you get sick. Your sick body is worthy of love, too.

When your best friend gets sick, do you stop calling them? Do you bully and shame them because they can’t get out of bed? Nah. When your best friend gets sick, you send them flowers, bring them a casserole, make them tea, and even listen to them complain a bit. You encourage them and help them heal. Just like your best friend, your best friend body needs extra love when it’s sick. ‘Cause hate doesn’t heal. We know that.

I’m giving my body lots of extra love right now, taking care of it, feeding it and treating it right. And yet, part of me feels embarrassed about being sick. Much of my persona as a yoga instructor is tied up in having a healthy, vibrant body. Acknowledging that my body isn’t always healthy feels vulnerable and scary. It feel weird to call myself "sick." Sometimes I feel great, other times I feel terrible. Mostly I’m coping pretty well; aside from the illness, my body feels strong and capable.

Perhaps you’re hoping that at some point I’m going to reveal what’s “wrong” with me. (See, it’s even in the language… I’m sick, there’s something wrong with me, I’m bad.) I would love to tell you. If I knew.

I have Illnessa Mysteriousum. What, you’ve never heard of it? Apparently neither has anyone else! Here are (some of) my symptoms over the past year: loss of sense of smell, chronic sinus congestion, headache, asthma, coughing, hoarseness, fatigue. I’ve tried some eastern medicine and some western medicine. We’ve mostly ruled out allergies and are exploring the possibility that I picked up a lung-attacking parasite during my trip to the jungle last summer. That, or an autoimmune thing. I’ll let you know how it goes.

Meanwhile, I’m looking for the answers this amazing body deserves. You and me, body, we’re in this together.

Love You Body Blog part 59

“Did Loving My Body Almost Kill Me?”

Can you imagine my reaction when I read this headline?

As these things magically circulate around the internet, this headline came to my attention via a reader of one of my favorite blogs, “Dances With Fat” (by the luminous Ragen Chastain), as the title of a recent article by Jess Weiner in Glamour magazine. What would cause a plus-size model/self-esteem speaker to decide after a negative medical checkup that she had to lose weight and declare that loving her body had almost killed her? I had to know more. Fortunately, the answer didn’t take long to figure out.

From the article it appears that, to Jess, “loving her body” meant:

· accepting her body at the size it was

· letting go of weight loss as a goal

· not going to the doctor

· eating poorly

· not exercising regularly

· not listening and responding to her body’s cues

· regular public speaking gigs to encourage other people to love their bodies too

Do you think the list above reflects love towards your body? I know for damn sure that’s not how I love my body. Ignoring your body, feeding it poorly, keeping it from enjoyable movement… we know that’s not love. Not for our bodies, not for our pets, geez, even my houseplants get attention and water. (I haven’t figured out what kind of movement they enjoy but when I do, they’ll get plenty of that too.)

Loving your body isn’t some kind of Orwellian excuse for not taking care of your body. In fact, loving your body is the reason to take care of it, just like you take care of your beloved child or sick friend or rare orchid. (Some people are fanatic about their orchids. You know who you are.)

Here’s my list of what it means to love my body:

· accepting my body at the size it is

· letting go of weight loss as a goal

· going to the doctor regularly (and acupuncturist/massage therapist/etc.)

· eating healthy and nourishing food that my body enjoys

· moving in ways that my body enjoys everyday (yoga/hula-hooping/dance)

· listening to my body’s cues and responding to them appropriately

You’ll notice some similarities between the lists… at least in the first two items. Then they diverge dramatically. What’s weird is that Jess concludes the article by saying that going to the doctor and treating her body well demonstrate love toward her body… huh? I thought she said loving her body almost killed her?

I think I see what happened… Jess misunderstood what it meant to love her body. Then instead of acknowledging her mistake, she declared the whole idea of loving your body misguided, even though she herself is currently enjoying the benefits of treating her body with more love.

Ah, what a tangled web we weave.

Jess lopped off the body and weight acceptance aspects of loving your body and decided that going to the doctor, eating well, exercising, and listening to your body are what matter… on her way to losing more weight.

Yay! Another opportunity to clarify an important aspect of loving your body: Jess, you didn’t need to ostensibly give up loving your body in order to lose weight. You can love your body and lose weight. You heard me.

Think about it. If you start listening to your body’s cues, and giving it lots of leafy greens, and fresh air, and realize that your body doesn’t like big gobs of sugar (or carbs or meat or whatever), and you feed your body and your heart what they need, you might indeed lose weight over time. Without thinking about it too much or ever stepping on the scale. Or you might not. Whatever. Losing weight isn’t the point if you truly love your body.

The point is that your body will feel good, whatever size or weight you’re at. And most likely, all the indicators of health (blood sugar, blood pressure, cholesterol, etc.) will look good too. And despite all the fear-mongering to the contrary, more likely than not, you will be healthy too. Whatever size you are.

And you know what’s truly loving toward your body? Not stressing it out by cycling it through rapid weight loss and weight gain. Ouch. Poor body.

I suspect we haven’t heard the last from Jess Weiner. But I hope she arrives at a more nuanced/balanced/thoughtful understanding of her relationship with her body before she again declares that loving your body can endanger your life.

Loving my body saved my life. It saves me everyday. With love, from my body to yours.

Leave Judgment, Enter Joy

Walking down the street, I used to have two different reactions to women’s bodies. The first was disgust tempered with pity… Ew, I would never want to look like that, poor thing. The second was jealousy… OMG how does she do it? I wish I looked like that! Ugh, so unfair!

I was caught between aversion and attraction… rejecting what I didn’t want and resenting what others had that I wanted. You can imagine that by grouping every woman into the category of “I’m sorry for you,” or “I hate you,” you’re not going to make many friends. Casting oneself as the Great Uber Judge of All Bodies is a lonely role to play.

Weirdly, I did not wear my Uber Judge hat when with my own friends… they were wonderful… I loved them… their looks were not the point. I loved Susan’s eyes, and Tab’s hair looked adorable in braids, and Deidre’s light-up dimples could eradicate my worst moods. But the minute I strode out into a group of strangers, I’d pull my safe, lofty, body-judge hat over my ears and eyes and let the judgments fall where they may. Of course, I assumed that everyone else wore their Uber Judge hat as well, throwing their own judgments my way, thereby making every trip to the store a running gauntlet of self-consciousness, resentment, and pity.

Fortunately, at some point I realized that my internal ranking system was a little, shall we say, superficial. All my body judgments served no purpose but to make me exhausted and crazy. If I could appreciate the sparkle in Susan’s eyes and not worry about her dress size, couldn’t I do the same thing with the woman walking down the street toward me? Could I enjoy someone wearing a lovely dress without wishing I was her, and hating being me?

I didn’t know it at the time, but there’s a Buddhist concept that neatly encapsulates the idea of being joyful for someone else’s success. It’s called mudita, or sympathetic joy.

Could I look for beauty everywhere, and be happy for its existence? Imagine the freedom of walking down the street, and instead of feeling frustrated and hateful, feeling light, open, and joyful! Instead of every person increasing the desire to cower in the shadows, every person you see could increase your happiness.

There are three basic steps for this:

1. See something good in each person. (This might take some practice.)

2. Be glad for them. (Think of them as someone you genuinely want to be happy.)

3. At the same time, appreciate what is good about me. (Not seeing myself as better or worse than anyone else, but recognizing my own uniqueness.)

You can practice this at home with a piece of paper and a list of people in your life you want to feel sympathetic joy towards. Go through the first two steps above for each person, and check in periodically with the third step, remembering to see what is good about you. If you still find yourself feeling envious of someone on your list, ask yourself, “What is it about their life that I want for myself? How can I invite that quality or experience into my life?” If you still find yourself feeling pity for someone on the list, ask yourself, “What is it about their life that I avoid or fear? Can I soften around that fear, and acknowledge that I have the resourcefulness and resilience to meet whatever life offers me?” Invite a genuine feeling of well-wishing for each of these people in your heart, seeing their goodness, and feeling joy for them. You may find this practice like taking a bath in love: wonderfully refreshing and transformative.

When I let go of being the Great Uber Judge of All Bodies I finally saw all the beauty I’d been missing… in myself and others.

Love Your Body Blog: Part 57

Who You Calling Beautiful?

Here’s a variation of a conversation I occasionally find myself in:

“Kimber, I just want to tell you that I find it hard to believe that you ever disliked your body. You’re so radiant and beautiful.”

Me: “Aw, thanks.”

“No, seriously, it’s hard to square how you say you hated your body with what you look like.”

[Momentary stunned silence.]

Me: “I suppose you’re right. That’s the whole point. It doesn’t matter how many people tell you you’re beautiful if you don’t believe it yourself.”

Here’s a half-truth: I wasn’t always as beautiful as I am now. Yup, there’s a bunch of you out there who have known me since I was a wee little mite, and you’ll say, “No-no, Kimber, you’ve been beautiful all along.” But beauty is in the eye of the beholder, right? Other people might see it, but if I couldn’t see it… well, it wasn’t there. Perception is everything. Think about it… have you always seen yourself as beautiful?

For comparison’s sake, here’s what I used to think beauty was:

1. Perfect fat-free body

2. Immaculate cleanliness and grooming

3. Fashion model hair

4. Wrinkle and stretch-mark free as if steam-cleaned and ironed smooth by the dry cleaners’ hulking metal machines

5. Hairless (except for number three above, and of course, eyebrows and eyelashes!)

6. When everyone unanimously agrees you’re beautiful

Do you see the problem here? No living person can live up to that standard of beauty. It’s an artificial, two-dimensional, airbrushed, photo-shopped, billboard model standard of beauty. It’s the standard of beauty that prompted Cindy Crawford to say, “I wish I looked like Cindy Crawford.” I had adopted an unattainable standard of beauty that excluded me by definition. Anyone who asserted otherwise (“You look great/pretty/lovely”) obviously had regrettably low standards and therefore could be disregarded completely as not knowing what the hell they were talking about.

An even more pernicious definition was working away behind the scenes of my unconscious. Though my parents always emphasized intelligence and education, my young brain attached itself to the equation: Beauty = Worthiness. Because I wasn’t beautiful (according to my own definition), I also wasn’t worthy. This further undermined my ability to receive the sincerest, most well-meaning of compliments; since I wasn’t worthy of receiving a compliment and (obviously) wasn’t beautiful, anyone who complimented my appearance was a liar, possibly blind, apparently believed I was a complete idiot, and undoubtedly held some sinister ulterior motive.

The problem wasn’t what I looked like. It was how I perceived my own worthiness.

How can you stop believing in your own unworthiness? Question it. I asked myself: Whoever said I was unworthy? Why should I give a crap about what a jerk like that would say anyway? Why should I believe that I’m unworthy? I couldn’t come up with a good answer.

My yoga practice finally perforated and melted the shield of unworthiness. It’s hard to feel unworthy in Warrior Two or a juicy, well-aligned Tadasana. My body learned to balance in crow pose, and even how to kick into handstand. Nothing unworthy there. And savasana… I soaked up the resting pose at the end of class like it was my birthright. I deserved it. I deserved to feel whole, worthy… even loved.

Worthy enough, I decided, to redefine beauty to include myself. Nowadays beauty has different list of criteria:

1. Inner radiance born of self-awareness and compassion

2. Warmth, friendliness

3. Self-confidence co-existing with humility and humor

4. Love for self that extends beyond self and longs to include all others in its embrace

5. Ease and sense of being at home in the physical body, joy in aliveness

6. Capable of seeing beauty in self and others and everywhere

7. And more….

None of these things are based on appearance, yet when we look at someone who embodies these qualities, is it possible to see them as anything but beautiful? Anyone can attain this standard of beauty… though perhaps not perfectly all the time. Just ask my family if you want proof I don’t always embody the above qualities. But there’s a certain beauty in our vulnerability and pissy-ness, too. Real beauty is flexible and gritty and sometimes downright tough.

If your definition of beauty doesn’t include you, redefine it for yourself. Then take the next step… can you see yourself as beautiful and worthy even when you’re not feeling/being beautiful, even by your own definition? Maybe beauty isn’t something we have to define or pin down. It’s like seeing yourself as God, or the Earth, or Mother Nature sees you… whole, perfect, beautiful, even when you’re not. Maybe beautiful is what we’ve been all along.

Yeah, I’m beautiful. And so are you.

Love Your Body Blog: Part 56

To-Do List: Hate, No Wait, Love My Body

I am a list-maker. I love lists.

My weekly to-do list gets crammed into the margins of my calendar, taking over the entire double page spread and spilling into future weeks. My grocery list is typed up on the computer and then each item I need gets checked off before I head to the store. The Four Agreements, the eight limbs of yoga, the ten things you should never say to your mother-in-law… make something into a list and I will read it, memorize it, and do it (or not do it, as the case may be).

When I was anorexic I would make lists of food I could eat and foods I couldn’t eat.

Apples, lettuce, and boiled eggs made it on to the okay list. Pretty much everything else was on the “I will not eat this” list. I made lists of all the exercises I would force my body to do for the day or the week: 300 leg lifts, 100 crunches, 50 push-ups, forty minutes on the mini-tramp, 100 laps in the pool, play tennis. I might as well have been making lists of ways to torture myself:

1. Hair shirt

2. Hung by toenails

3. Iron Maiden

4. Rack

5. Forced to listen without interruption to Boy George sing “Karma Chameleon” until ears bleed

I enjoyed my prescribed exercise to the same degree I would enjoy any of the above tortures, that is… very little. But my inner sadist (or is it masochist?) marched me through every exhausting regime I invented for myself, telling me I was getting exactly the treatment I deserved. The result was quite predictable: I hated myself and I hated my life.

Those hard-nosed lists made by a skinny 15 year old---I’m happy to say---remain in the dustbin of my personal history along with the crumpled ticket stubs from the roller rink and my middle-school year book. Nowadays my lists are more likely to look like this:

How I’ll Love My Body Today:

1. Eat what helps it feel energized and satisfied.

2. Listen to my belly when it says it’s full.

3. Enjoy my yoga practice as I stretch, strengthen, and relax

4. Rest when my body says to rest

5. Play, laugh, sing

6. Breathe deep

7. Appreciate my aliveness

The main difference between this to-do list and my old ones is simple. It's love.

It’s a list of things I want to do for myself, not against myself. It’s a celebration of my body as it is right now, not a strategy for turning my body into something it’s not now and never could be.

What do your lists look like… more like the “Here are the ways I plan to torture myself today” or this last one? Try making a list titled “How I’ll love my body today.” Probably there are things you’re planning to do anyway that could go on it: a dance class, a walk through the forest, a massage, a warm bath. Are there things you’d like to do that are more likely to happen if you connect them to the importance of being a good friend to your body? How different would it feel to check off items on your to-do list if each one were an outpouring of love towards yourself?

There’s only one way to find out.

Love Your Body Blog: Part 55

Extreme Makeover Kimber: Body Edition

Do you think of yourself as an endless improvement project? …Once I lose 10 lbs (or 20 or whatever magical number you dream of), once I disappear this jiggle from my belly, once I tone my thighs, lift my eyelids, and suck the jelly out of my butt, then I’ll be happy. Then my life will really start.

Did you know that losing weight and getting more exercise appear on most people’s New Year’s resolution lists, year after year after year, no matter how much they weigh or what kind of shape they’re in?

And what would happen if they finally lost the weight, got the exercise they thought they needed, and fit into those jeans they’ve hidden in the back of the closet? Chances are they wouldn’t even notice. They’d already be onto the next project… losing more weight, doing more reps at the gym, and continuing to believe that “If I can just reach this next goal, then my life will be really great.” Always chasing the dream that dangles out of reach. Always frustrated that we never get to sink our teeth into that damn carrot.

Why do we get caught up in this endless cycle of dissatisfaction?

Because we’re stuck in the mindset that our body is broken and we have to fix it: my body is flawed, and I have to constantly repair it. Or hide its ugliness when all else fails. Sometimes we even feel like we have to punish ourselves for being flawed, our miles on the treadmill substituted for the self-flagellating whip. No amount of improvement will ever be enough.

Stop trying to improve yourself. Your body is fine. You are not anyone’s improvement project, not even your own.

If you’re always trying to improve yourself, you will never be satisfied with who you are. We expect ourselves to improve in good times and bad. We cannot constantly improve. Life does not always get better. Give yourself a break.

But Kimber, you might say, I want to eat better. I want to do more yoga. I want to finally nail a two minute handstand. I want more out of life…. Believe me, I know. Here’s what I want:

1. Be an awesome parent, yoga teacher, and partner.

2. Get my book(s) published

3. Get both my ankles behind my head and walk around on my hands. (It’s just as cool as it sounds.)

4. Continue to learn how to love my body through all its changes.

5. Learn how to pop some fly breakdance moves on the dance floor.

So, how do we resolve the paradox of not getting caught in the futile cycle of constant improvement but still longing to wow our friends with our fantastic moonwalk? Is it wrong to want more for ourselves?

Nope. It’s not. The problem is where you start from. If you start from the place of believing that you’re broken, a million band-aids (or dollars) won’t fix you. If you start from the place of knowing that you are good, your body is good, your life is good just the way you are, then anything you add to that is good too. Just a different good. I’m not broken. I don’t need to fix my body. Since my body is already good (or fabulous, fun, and frisky), exercising and eating well are simply the whipped cream with a cherry on top. Mmm.

How do we start seeing ourselves as good?

1. Look for the good. Look for what’s good and workable in your body, in your life, and in your relationships. What’s workable? What’s delightful? What about your body makes you smile?

2. Change your definition of “perfect” to mean “good enough.” When a friend asks you how she looks and you say perfect, do you mean, “You look as good as a perfectly straight infinitely long line”? No. You mean, “You look great/lovely/good enough to head off to whatever adventure comes next.” You are perfect. You are good enough as you are.

3. Enjoy the process. Is the point of our lives to improve ourselves endlessly and leave a beautiful corpse? Let your life be about savoring, and relishing being alive, whatever life offers you, be it joy or grief, pleasure or difficulty.

4. Start with love. Love your life. Love your body. Act with love in your relationships and everything you do. Let your love for life guide you.

In the Love Your Body workshop (next one coming up in Sept!), we discuss the difference between self-discipline and self-devotion. Self-discipline is when we say, “I’m going to the gym everyday, I’m going to do tons of yoga, I’m going to eat tons of greens and no sugar. I’m going to make myself do all these things [because I’m broken and the only way to fix myself is by being hard and demanding on myself, by denying myself things I enjoy and forcing myself to do things I hate.]

Self-devotion says, “I’m going to the gym and doing yoga as often as I can because my body enjoys it and it feels good when I exercise. I eat healthy, fresh, delicious food because that’s one of the ways I show my body I love it. I delight in treating my body this way [because I am whole and worthy and my body is amazing. It’s fun to treat my body with love-- like it’s my best friend.]

The to-do list of Miss Self-Discipline and Ms. Self-Devotion might look the same:

· Go for sunrise hike in the hills

· Yoga class

· Write blogpost

· Make vegetarian dinner for friends with lots of greens and mixed berries for dessert

But the impulse behind them is totally different. Miss Self-Discipline is hoping her to-do list will finally make her whole… but it never adds up to lasting happiness. Ms. Self-Devotion knows she’s already whole, and that taking care of herself in a loving way is just another way of enjoying life.

You are enough. Your body is good enough, your life is good enough. Just as you are. When you love yourself, improvement is beside the point.

Love Your Body Blog: Part 54

An Interview with Linda Bacon: Your Body Says, "Diet? What Diet?"

Today I'm delighted to share with you a short interview with nutritionist and researcher Linda Bacon, the author of Health at Every Size: The Surprising Truth About Your Weight. Last year after reading her book for the first time, I realized that her work provided the scientific background for what I'd already discovered was true about my own body: that listening to my body's cues and treating it with respect and love are the basis for good health... not rigidly judging myself according to the numbers on a scale or catching a ride on the latest diet bandwagon. As you read on, she'll give you a glimpse into why the Health At Every Size approach makes so much sense.

1. So Linda, why don't diets work?

When people use the word “diet,” what they usually mean is that they are restricting their calories so that their body is getting less energy (calories) than it is expending. While you can get away with this temporarily, your body has regulatory systems to protect against this in the long run. If it is deprived of the energy that it needs, it can compensate through many different mechanisms. One obvious example is that it can increase your appetite so you want to eat more. But it can also compensate by slowing down processes that you have less conscious control over. Ever notice that some days you have less get up and go than others? That could just be because your body is slowing down your metabolism to counteract your diet.

2. Why do our bodies work so hard to defend their weight?

Eat too little and you eventually die. It’s that straightforward. So you can imagine that over the course of evolution, humans have developed mechanisms to make sure we don’t get into that danger zone. This is particularly true since we frequently experienced famines. People for whom these mechanisms weren’t well developed couldn’t survive as easily and over time, less of them passed on their genes. That’s one reason why more people these days have genes that provide them with strong protection against weight loss – and relatively few people can get away with it easily.

While we all have mechanisms to protect against too much weight gain, on the other hand, these mechanisms are easier to over-ride. So you can eat a lot of food, the “fullness” mechanism kicks in telling you you’ve had enough, but the food still tastes good to you, and you can over-ride that biological safeguard. And that makes sense from an evolutionary perspective too – until recently food was relatively more difficult to come by and required a lot of energy expenditure to get. So there was no reason for our bodies to develop strong protection against weight gain as we didn’t have easy opportunity to gain weight. For these and other reasons, biologically we’re set up so that it’s very difficult to lose weight, but relatively easy to gain weight.

3. What are the health effects of cyclical dieting?

Off the top of my head, I know that there is evidence from large observational studies that weight cycling is linked to shorter lifespan, and that it’s also associated with increased risk for myocardial infarction, stroke, and diabetes, increased blood pressure and inflammation, and even suppressed immune function. I’m sure I could come up with a much longer list if I examined the literature more thoroughly!

4. It's difficult for those of us who are cyclical dieters or are told to lose weight (either by society or by a doctor) to say "no" to dieting. What resources do you recommend to support our decision to end the dieting cycle?

I know that with so much reinforcement from others – including those who are considered to be well-educated authorities - that dieting is the right thing to do, it is hard to challenge it. I certainly have compassion for people who are stuck in the cycle. My best suggestion is to examine your own experience. You’ve tried. Think of how badly you’ve wanted to succeed, yet you're still in the same boat (or worse). Now, consider that it’s not you that’s the failure. You know you really wanted it badly. If it were accessible, with your motivation, I’m sure you would have succeeded. So perhaps you can question the idea? The diet failed, not you! There is tremendous freedom that comes from understanding that. My book, Health at Every Size, provides many other suggestions on how to break the cycle.

5. How can you learn to love your body after being a life-long cyclical dieter?

There are many ways to go about this. Here’s one example. Start by appreciating the functionality of your body. Consider your legs. If you are able-bodied, you can get from one place to another, allowing you to do so much. I’m in awe of how my legs allow me to participate in my world. It’s not too hard to appreciate them from this standpoint. So look at the different parts of your body, and then how it works holistically, and consider how amazing you are.

For more information, check out Linda's book, Health at Every Size (www.haesbook.com). She's also teaching a workshop called "Find Your Voice: How to Challenge Resistance and Talk Persuasively about Size Acceptance" on Monday August 12 from 9-4:30 pm. I'll be there! You can find information about this workshop and more at Linda's website (www.lindabacon.org), and through following her on social media. (Links can be found on website.)

Love Your Body Blog Part 53