YOUR FEAR OF FOOD OR WEIGHT GAIN IS NOT IRRATIONAL...IT'S A SIDE EFFECT OF DIET CULTURE

Something that I routinely hear from my clients is how they "know their thoughts and beliefs about food and their weight are irrational".

Their fear of weight gain is irrational. Their fear of carbs is irrational. Their hatred of their body is irrational.

And that's the problem with leaving out education on the oppressive nature of Diet Culture, and dominant narratives like Fatphobia.

When the focus is on you, your behaviors, and your beliefs without understanding the larger cultural subtext in which they arise and form, you are left thinking you are the problem to be fixed. You are the irrational one worrying about weight gain.

The truth is there is nothing inherently irrational about any of our thoughts and beliefs around food & weight when you consider the culture we grew up in.

A culture that trains women to believe their weight dictates their worth, social life, career...where fatphobia is so real that parents willingly put their kids on diets at the age of 3. This all puts a ton of pressure on our relationship with food.

When you can look outside of yourself and see that our culture really does judge and discriminate against people on the basis of size and appearance...when your access to jobs, quality health care or clothing that fits is limited...when you grow up watching media riddled with fat jokes or listening to your peers make fun of people for their size... OF COURSE, YOU ARE GOING TO BE WORRIED ABOUT FOOD AND YOUR WEIGHT.

It's a natural side effect of growing up with Diet Culture & Fatphobia.

There is nothing irrational about wanting to avoid judgment & discrimination. There is nothing irrational about wanting to feel loved and accepted.

When we understand that these thoughts and beliefs about food & our weight originated from our culture, not ourselves, then not only are we able to be more compassionate with ourselves, but also, we can see that the culture is the problem, not us.

xo, C

Binge Eating Recovery Resources

To learn more about the non-diet approach to healing your relationship with food, check out my free video training series HERE.

You can also check out my podcast, Love Your Bod Pod, on Apple, Spotify or wherever you listen to podcasts.

Lastly, you can also check out my books, or online course.

Society's Sedative - a poem about dieting

I love to write poetry. Here is one about dieting.

The fastest way to strip a woman of her power is to put her at odds with her body.

Tell her lies about her softness being weakness, Her intuition being untrustworthy, Her appetite - dangerous.

Tell her she needs to follow an external authority over her internal knowing. To question her needs and deny her wantings. How she feels is not as important as how she looks.

Tell her starving herself is strength, Taking up less space is power, Being looked at is more important than being heard.

So society gave women dieting.

Binge Eating Recovery Resources

To learn more about the non-diet approach to healing your relationship with food, check out my free video training series HERE.

You can also check out my podcast, Love Your Bod Pod, on Apple, Spotify or wherever you listen to podcasts.

Lastly, you can also check out my books, or online course.

It's not *really* about the food

It’s never really about the food.

Or what your body looks like, either.

You’ve probably heard that before but have you truly given thought to what that means?

Fundamentally, at its core, destructive behaviors with food and body hatred are coping mechanisms.

They’re attempts to deal with the pain caused by living in a fatphobic society and the pain of unhealed wounds/trauma.

Essentially, we develop disordered eating & eating disorders in an attempt to feel better.

Unfortunately, though, they’re ineffective attempts at a solution to our pain and they’re maladaptive by nature, creating new problems in their wake (diet-binge cycling, emotional turmoil, mental agony, chronic yo-yo-ing, and so on).

True healing does not come from food & weight control - it comes from undressing the pain we are trying to avoid through food & weight control.

When you address the deeper needs and core wounds, the disordered behaviors become less appealing.

That’s how you stop feeling crazy around food and hating your body.

Liked this post? Sign up for my free Video Training Series "Stop Feeling Out of Control Around Food" HERE.