Aretha Franklin sang about it.  Today I’m going to write about it.  We’re calling a truce with our bodies.  After all, it’s the only one we’ve got, and we’re stuck with it during this lifetime.  I’m talking about body image, and respecting our body as it is designed.  

 

This is Principle #8 of Intuitive Eating.  To review, Principles 1-8 are as follows:

 

1. Reject the diet mentality
2. Honor your hunger
3. Make peace with food
4. Challenge the food police
5. Respect your fullness
6. Discover the satisfaction factor
7. Honor your feelings without using food
8. Today’s topic: Respect your body

 

Your body is AMAZING.  Let’s celebrate it.  As a baby you grew inside of another human.  Now it carries you through each and every day, even when you don’t treat it well.  

 

Most of us can accept your height.  We understand it’s genetically predetermined, and we might wish at times that we were taller/shorter, but most of us don’t hyperfocus on trying to change it.  

 

Your weight is also genetically predetermined. Sure, there are many other factors that influence it, but for the most part it will gravitate towards it’s set point weight range.  Normal set point weight ranges occur just like anything else in nature, a statistical bell curve.  This means that some people will naturally be thin, others will be large, and most will fall somewhere in between.  Don’t like the straw you drew?  Too bad.  You can’t change it, so embrace it. 

 

Our industrialist society has brainwashed us to believe that we all must follow the same set of rules and strive to fit in at all costs.  And then the beauty industry came in and capitalized on this, telling us to follow the rules of dieting and that fitting in means being thin.  The tide is changing.  It’s time to celebrate diversity of body sizes and shapes. 

 

Normal (i.e. intuitive) eating will lead to normal weight. Normal weight for your body (which may or may not match society’s definition of normal).  You can re-train your brain to have different thoughts towards your body.  It’s called cognitive restructuring.  We weren’t born with negative body image thoughts, we learned them.  And just like we learned those thoughts, we can learn positive thoughts about our body.  It takes repetition though.  The neural pathways that produce the negative thoughts are well-greased and automatic (subconscious).  To counteract this it will take a lot of conscious positive thoughts, and eventually these will become the automatic thoughts.  Start now. 

 

Tomorrow we’ll discuss intuitive exercise.