Katy here, and welcome back to Rebuilding Trust With Your Body!! 

If your body image still sucks pretty much on a daily basis – if you look in the mirror after you shower and hate what you see (or you won’t even let yourself look in the mirror because you hate your body so much), or if you see yourself in photos and you are triggered into utter disgust because you look so much bigger than you thought you did, or you are thinking about summer and the idea of wearing shorts or a tank top and someone seeing your underarm flab our your cellulite gives you heart palpitations…THIS EPISODE IS FOR YOU.

I want you to listen to this and take it very seriously, because a lot of the advice that you’re getting right now about how to feel better about your body, how to get healthier, how to be more confident about yourself and your appearance – it’s absolute BS and it’s actually making you feel worse about yourself because it’s further entrenching the exact same thought patterns and behaviors that have created this suffering and kept it going all this time.

I want you to feel comfortable in your body, and to have moments where you feel confident about your body – but I don’t want your self-worth and your self-esteem to hinge upon how you feel about your body because that’s a house of cards that will crumble the second that you find something else you don’t like about yourself. 

I want you to wake up feeling grateful for your body, excited to get dressed in clothes that feel good on you and that you like wearing, and for you to walk right past the scale collecting dust in the corner of your bathroom (or maybe it’s hidden in the closet now because you don’t need it). I want your body image to be mostly neutral, and for you to ultimately feel grateful and accepting of your God-given body the way it’s meant to be and to stop comparing yourself to other people or telling yourself the story that you have to be a certain size or weight in order to be healthy or to feel good about yourself. Because that’s not true. 

I want you to accept your body, to take care of your body, and to treat your body with kindness and respect every single day. And when you do this you are going to feel drastically different about yourself. You’re going to walk with your head held higher. You’re going to unapologetically allow yourself to take up space in this world. If you need a different chair, or an accommodation such as a seat belt extender on an airplane you can ask for it without feeling shame because you’re taking care of yourself and your body. That’s what I want for you. I want you to be able to stand up for yourself at the doctor to get your health needs met without it being a constant circular conversation about weight loss being the end-all-be-all for your health, and you to get out of your own tunnel vision that tells you that weight loss is the only way to get healthier or feel better about yourself.

I want you to feel empowered that you are taking care of your body and your health, and that you are worthy of love, acceptance, belonging, and respect no matter what your body looks like. And I 100% believe that’s possible for you. And that’s what we’re going to talk about today. 

Before we go any further, you know what time it is…We’ve got some Wellness Woo to talk about. 

Wellness Woo is the stuff that diet and wellness culture tells us we should do in the name of health, but it’s really based on pseudoscience, exaggerated claims, or just nonsense. 

Today’s Wellness Woo is: The Meatstock Convention

One of my clients sent this to me and before I even clicked on the link I was cracking up because I saw the URL. 

Now I love a pun, so the fact they call it Meatstock makes me giggle.

But then I quickly shift into being upset and disturbed by what’s happening here…

So Meatstock is a convention that happened just this past weekend in TN – thank goodness, so that you now can’t go because you need to stay as far away from this event as humanly possible. 

It’s a weekend long event that they refer to as a “transformative health experience” on their website.

the most groundbreaking health event of the year! Join us for an unforgettable experience where ancestral health merges with modern living

They’ve got a ton of speakers pictured on the website, but interestingly it tells you nothing about any of their background or credentials to be giving presentations like:

• Mastering Biohacking and Unlocking True Metabolic Freedom
• Overcoming Carb Addiction
• Toxic Superfoods: Plants are Trying to Kill You
• Modern Ancestral Cultures Unlock the Secret to Perfect Health
• The Dangers of Glyphosate and Common Chemicals in Your House
• How to Achieve Optimal Health Through a Raw Meat Diet

Oh and interestingly there’s also a talk about wealth building…so you get the vibe here. It’s very gym bro biohacking culture. 

Some dude is also going to tell you about: The Biophysics of Heart Disease and How it Has Nothing to do With Cholesterol and LDL

This whole event is not only Wellness Woo, but it’s straight up harmful and dangerous messaging. 

If you have an example of Wellness Woo that you want to share, send it to me at rebuildingtrustwithyourbody@gmail.com. 

Ok, that’s enough of that. Moving on to today’s main topic…What to do if your Body Image Still Sucks.

If you’ve been listening to my podcast, I already know that you get that dieting doesn’t work and you want to feel better about your body. But I just want to be transparent about what I keep seeing, and what you need to do in order to make that happen. 

And here’s the #1 thing I want you to hear me loud and clear about right now: You need to stop getting dopamine from the number on the scale and smaller clothes. Full stop.

You need to find another way to get your dopamine hit in life – go hug some puppies or something – and stop letting the number on the scale and whether it’s up or down control your mood and how you feel about yourself. Stop acting like you just conquered Satan when you fit into a smaller size of jeans. 

I want you to do this instead:

• Notice WHEN your negative thoughts about your weight and your body are getting stirred up.
  • Getting dressed
  • Looking in mirror when getting ready
  • Getting out of shower
  • Photos
  • Scale
  • Scrolling social media
  • Watching TV
  • Around certain people
  • At gym
• Notice WHAT the thoughts are – get curious about the actual thoughts you’re having
• How do those thoughts impact your BEHAVIORS?
  • Do you tell yourself you need to stop eating so much crap, and to eat healthier today?
  • Do you say screw it and eat whatever you want that day?
  • Do you start plotting the new workout routine you’re going to start, or promising yourself you’re going to go to the gym a certain number of times this week?
  • Do you think about the food you need to get rid of from your pantry or fridge? 
  • These are remnants of dieting behaviors – even though you’re not on a diet anymore
  • This further entrenches the belief system about your body

And next I want you to do this…

Thought Reframing

Start reframing the thoughts. I’m not talking about gaslighting yourself. I’m talking about challenging and rewording the thoughts you have so that they are more kind, compassionate and helpful to you. I’m not talking about lying to yourself. I’m asking you to choose new patterns of thinking that better support the journey you’re on. Because if you don’t, then you’re going to get sucked back into diet culture because you’re never going to make peace with your body and eventually you’ll give up on IE before you’ve mastered it. You cannot and will not fully master IE if you don’t actively do this body image work. Period. I’ve been doing body image breakthrough sessions with my clients in NDC and this is exactly what we’re focusing on. This is the work. I’m not gatekeeping anything here. If you take this seriously and do it, you are going to see more progress, more quickly on your IE journey. And it’s going to help you get healthier too. I’m not kidding. It’s going to help you get healthier because (explain…)

So let me give you some examples of reframing the thoughts:

• “I hate my body.” >> I don’t have to love the way my body looks to respect my body.
• “My thighs are so disgusting.” >> My thighs are strong and powerful. 
• “People would be so grossed out if they saw my flabby arms.” >> These arms allow me to hug the people I love.
• “I wish my belly was smaller or flatter.” >> This is my belly. (neutrality, it is what it is, you can’t control it, so we accept it without negative judgment)

You have to ACTIVELY practice doing this. These thoughts won’t magically change on their own. They’ve been hard wired into your brain for 10, 20, 30, 40+ years. It’s on autopilot at this point. Just like learning a new language, you have to train your brain with new thoughts about your body. 

Daily Body Image Rewiring

You need to focus on consistency, not perfection with these daily actions. And I can tell you with full certainty that the more consistently you do them, the faster you will have fewer negative body image days.

• Compassionate body scan – checking in with body, asking “What does my body need from me today?” (grab my body kindness guide that walks you though this!!) 
• Wear clothes that fit your here-and-now body. Full stop. And when something is too tight or uncomfortable, or you just don’t like it, put it in a giveaway pile. Don’t hold onto it in hopes that it’s going to fit again…
• Body neutrality – in the shower, while putting on lotion, in the mirror, or at your desk while working. You can pair it with compassionate touch or stretching.
• Mindful movement – being present in your body, connected with your body. So many of you are walking around like a head that has no body you’re so disconnected because you’ve hated your body so much for so long. You need to learn how to inhabit your body and to tolerate the discomfort this brings up. 
• Call a truce.

Getting Your Dopamine or Sense of Accomplishment Somewhere Else

I mentioned earlier how you’ve got to start getting your dopamine and your feelings of achievement, accomplishment and empowerment from somewhere besides chasing a lower number on the scale, tracking your calories, hitting your macros, or fitting into the clothes you wore 10 years ago. 

Diet culture has brainwashed us to think that this is what success looks like. That this is how you know you’re being a good person. That this is what’s healthy. 

Let’s be so for real – a lot of the things that you’ve done in order to lose weight weren’t actually healthy. Ignoring your hunger, skipping meals or snacks, choking down protein bars that you hated, only eating chicken and broccoli, torturing yourself with intense workouts you didn’t enjoy…none of that was healthy. Even if the number on the scale was temporarily lower, or your BP or labs looked better for a hot minute. These are not sustainable health-promoting behaviors. It was punishment. 

Sometimes clients will tell me that they feel aimless and unfulfilled if they aren’t working towards a goal with their eating or their exercise. And sure, we can talk about concrete goals and taking action, and how to choose the right goals and actions to take – I love that type of strategizing because that’s very much how my brain works. 

But we also have to step back and ask ourselves the deeper question – why do you need a food, exercise or body-based goal in order to feel good enough about yourself? Why do your goals have to be centered around this? What if you had a goal in your life to be a better friend, or to learn a new instrument, or to crochet a blanket for your new niece or the children’s hospital, or you set a goal to do 100 acts of kindness or in your community this year, or to volunteer at the local homeless shelter? I can promise you that there are other goals that would actually be more fulfilling than treating your body like it’s a home renovation project for the rest of your life. 

And do this thought experiment with me….If you were totally content with your body, and it wasn’t a source of stress for you, and you were just eating normally, exercising routinely, and you felt like your body is fine the way it is, and there’s nothing that needs changing or fixing…What would you spend your time thinking about? What other things in your life would get your attention? This can sometimes be hard…and it can be exciting.

What I can tell you from over 15 years of doing this work, is that when you get to that place of body acceptance (I’m not asking you to be body positive) – that what you look like won’t be all that interesting anymore. Sure, you’ll take care of yourself. But you won’t feel the need to constantly be changing something about your appearance…and when this happens your LIFE gets so much bigger. You start to lean into other interests, projects, relationships and endeavors that you might not even know that you want to do yet. You start to realize that your worth as a human being isn’t about the number on the scale or the size of your jeans. 

And you might realize some hard stuff…you might find that your constant body and food goals were a distraction from the fact that your marriage isn’t in a good place, or that you hate your job, or that you’re lonely and have no friends, or that your mom died and you haven’t fully grieved that complicated relationship, or that you don’t know what you want to do with the rest of your life. And as hard as all of this is, this is where the real healing happens. You start addressing the underlying reasons that you were distracting yourself with dieting, binging, and obsessing over your body in the first place. No macro target, calorie goal, or workout plan is going to fix these issues for you. Because your body was never the problem. 

Some of you are hearing this and it’s smacking you in the face. You’ve never heard it like this before, or it’s never hit you like this before. 

Some of you are having an aha moment about what you’ve been avoiding. And you might be terrified. Or excited. Or both.

Some of you are still in the bargaining phase of body grief, and that’s ok, it’s a normal part of the process, and what you’re thinking is:

• My body IS the problem, Katy. I’m morbidly obese and I need to lose weight.
• My joints hurt and when I was thinner they didn’t hurt, so I need to lose weight.
• I don’t fit in airplane seats and I can’t afford to buy 2 tickets so I need to lose weight.
• I get out of breath going up the stairs so I need to lose weight.
• I can’t bend over to tie my shoes because my belly is in the way so I need to lose weight.

Any and all of these things might be true. But do you see how your brain is looking for justification for a “valid” reason to need to lose weight? Your brain isn’t even entertaining other ideas for how to solve your problems. And that’s not because you’re not smart, resourceful or creative. It’s because deep down you still feel like weight loss is the only solution to your problems. And I can promise you it’s not. There are other ways to address joint pain, there are other ways to get your needs met flying on an airplane, you can get the slip on type of shoes that don’t require tying, you can train your body to go up the stairs and you’ll get less out of breath (I know this because I literally have a client who did that within the last 6 months and her weight hasn’t changed). I LOVE YOU AND I WANT YOU TO BE HAPPY AND HEALTHY – and here’s what you need to sit with and really reflect on. I highly recommend you journal about it. Telling yourself “I need to lose weight” is not helping you. If that was going to fix your problems it would have already. How about a different approach? How about you give yourself the next 12 months to focus on a new way of approaching your health and body image, and see where it gets you? If you still hate your body, then sure, go back to dieting (statistically that’s still not going to do anything positive for you) – but I want you to give yourself the time, space, and breathing room to do this work and to really sink down deep into it. 

This didn’t make you feel warm and fuzzy today, I know that. It’s because healing your body image isn’t a warm and fuzzy process. It’s hard work, and it requires you to get brutally honest with yourself about the lies and unhelpful thought and behavior patterns that are keeping you stuck. 

Just because you want to lose weight or you feel that you need to lose weight, or you’re terrified of gaining weight doesn’t mean that you’re going to be able to intentionally pursue weight loss and magically keep it off. That is like playing the lottery and assuming that just because you’re broke it increases your odds of winning just because you really need the money. That’s not how it works. 

Your body image can’t be contingent upon your weight. Your body image needs to be something you are working on and rewiring REGARDLESS of your weight. What’s happening with your weight and your metabolism is a whole other discussion. You need to work on your body image and challenging your thoughts, wiring new thought patterns and reframing your relationship with the scale – regardless of where your weight is at or what it’s doing. And you’ve got to stop getting your self-esteem from the scale. Choose a better goal in your life to focus on, and choose a different way of gauging whether you are a good person who is living their life according to their values. The number on the scale doesn’t determine that. 

I know this was a lot, and I’m going to leave this here for you to sit with. Again, I recommend you journal about it. And definitely grab my body kindness guide if you don’t already have it. It’s called The Daily 3 and it shows you how to choose 3 simple body kindness actions each day that will help you with this rewiring we’re talking about. It’s totally free at nondietacademy.com/bodykindness.

If you are craving more than that and you want an entire set of tools from journal prompts, to a guided meditation, to a morning routine checklist for better body image to start each day, as well as mantras, grab my Body Image Bundle. I’ll link it in my show notes or you can DM me for it. Having these various tools in your back pocket is going to help you to do what we talked about here in this episode. It’s active work. You can’t just sit back and cross your fingers and hope it happens. Not in this thin obsessed world we live in. 

You’ve got this. I’m cheering you on always!! And in case nobody has told you today – you are worthy just as you are. We’ll talk again soon.

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