Welcome back to Rebuilding Trust With Your Body, it’s Katy here, back for another incredible episode. 

Here’s what I want you to understand – weight loss doesn’t fix your body image. YOU do. 

If your body image and self-esteem is contingent upon the number on the scale you’ve already lost. Because that is a house of cards that will crumble so fast it will make your head spin.

You’ve GOT TO STOP giving your power away, and letting diet culture and society’s ridiculous appearance standards tell you what to do. You are an incredible human, no matter what the number on the scale or your BMI is. And if your fear is that you’re going to gain a ton of weight and feel terrible about yourself, then your self-worth is far too wrapped up in your appearance. 

And I want us to recognize that this isn’t your fault. Society has done this to you. This is why diet culture sucks so much. It has taught you to think and feel this way and to chase weight loss as the solution to all your problems. Our society has taught you over and over again from the time you were a small child watching Disney movies where the princess and the prince were both thin, and we were told that’s what is good and worthy and attractive. 

Even though this isn’t your fault you think this way and you’ve been made to feel this way, it unfortunately now is your responsibility to take back your power. Diet culture wants you to keep buying into the idea that there’s some magical diet out there that if you just try hard enough to stick to it this time it will work. They make a lot of money off you that way. It’s time to take back your power and learn how to eat in a way that keeps your weight stable where it is genetically meant to be when you are taking care of yourself. That’s what IE will do for you when you do it correctly.

Now I get that besides how you feel about yourself you don’t want to keep gaining weight because you worry about your health. That’s valid. Totally valid. And I care about your health too. But let’s look at the bigger picture here…

It’s time to figure out how to make peace with food and get healthier without hating yourself. 

Before we dive into our main topic for today, 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: Sunscreen.

I can’t believe that we even have to have this conversation. But thanks to wellness culture, here we are. People online are making claims like “the chemicals in sunscreen are worse for you than the sun.” 

I saw a clip on TT from Kristen Cavalari talking about how she never wears sunscreen and the dude she was talking to claimed that our ancestors didn’t use sunscreen and they were in the sun all day and didn’t get skin cancer….Yeah, because they died of other things before they had a chance to develop it. This is such a dumb argument. 

He also claimed “When you’re internally inflammed you don’t have the antioxidants to combat the sun” and then of course pitched a bunch of supplements. And then he goes “It’s like an internal sunscreen.” Sure, nutrients are good for our bodies and our skin…but they don’t act as sunscreen or protect your skin from UV ray damage. 

I saw Andrew Humberman (a huge grifter) guy saying “You need as much sunlight as possible” but then he went on to talk about the “endocrine disruptors” and that it can “go into your brain.” These are scary claims, right? 

Then I saw a video from a girl who said “IDK where we got the myth that the sun causes cancer” – um we got it from science and research. But then she goes on to talk about how if you spend too much time in the sun you’re going to “roast” – so clearly she does see a problem with being in the sun….she doesn’t even see the hypocrisy in what she’s saying.

Next as I was trying to understand wellness cultures POV here pops up a video from Paul Saladino…a friend of the show…we covered him in wellness woo already – he’s the carnivore diet guy…and he sells beef organ supplements now. His suggestion is that you just smother yourself in beef tallow. The next talking point that kept coming up was how seed oils are causing skin cancer. Which doesn’t even make sense.  He started then talking about how if you use regular sunscreen some of them have linoleic acid in them, which is true, and it’s in a lot of lotions because it’s good for your skin, but he starts talking about how he’s worried it’s going to accumulate in your skin. You  guys – linoleic acid is an essential fatty acid…that means that it’s required for your body and that your body can’t make it on its own so you have to ingest it. It’s exhausting to try and keep up with the WILD claims that wellness culture wants to make about this stuff. 

Here’s what the science actually says and the science on this is pretty cut and dry, it’s not wishy washy – 

Dr. Elizabeth Buzney, a dermatologist, was quoted in an article on skincancer.org saying: What we do know is that the sun causes most skin cancers. That is absolutely proven. Tanning beds significantly increase risk, too. We also know that skin cancer can be disruptive, disfiguring and even deadly.

It is scientifically proven that sunscreen helps to prevent skin cancer. Two important Australian studies showed that melanoma was reduced by 50 percent and squamous cell carcinoma by 40 percent in those who used sunscreen daily. 

Studies show that 1 blistering sunburn can increase your risk of skin cancer by 50%. 

Let me be crystal clear: THERE IS NO EVIDENCE THAT WEARING SUNSCREEN INCREASES YOUR RISK OF CANCER.

If you have an example of Wellness Woo that you want to share, email or DM it to me!

Ok, that’s enough of that. Moving on to today’s main topic…What to do if you’re worried That With Intuitive Eating You’re Going to Keep Gaining Weight and Feel Terrible About Yourself?.

• If you’re measuring the success or effectiveness of IE via your weight, and you are telling yourself that IE is only working if the number on the scale is going down, then you’re expecting IE to something it was never intended for
  • Thyroid medication analogy
  • IE isn’t for the purpose of weight loss, so it doesn’t mean it’s not working if you don’t lose weight or if you gain weight. IE is about making peace with food and honoring your health without dieting. 
  • Some people lose, some gain, some stay the same.
• Let’s talk about what dwelling on weight loss has actually done for you
  • How many years have you been trying to control your weight?
  • Has it worked long term?
  • Has it made you trust yourself more?
  • Has it reduced food obsession?
  • Has it improved your body image?
• I’m going to hold your hand when I say this…you are catastrophising weight gain
  • “I’ll gain forever.”
  • “I’ll completely lose control.”
  • “I’ll never feel attractive again.”
  • “My life will be over.”
• Meanwhile you’re already:

• avoiding photos
• avoiding vacations
• avoiding dating
• avoiding intimacy
• avoiding buying clothes
• avoiding living
• Let me ask you this…Exactly what are you protecting by staying stuck in weight fear? Because the fear itself is already costing you so much.
• What if you gaining 10, 20 or even 30# is the difference between you staying stuck right here vs you being free and happy?

The Brutal Truth About Feeling Terrible About Yourself

“If I gain weight, I’ll feel terrible about myself.”

YOU ALREADY FEEL TERRIBLE ABOUT YOURSELF. 

You’re criticizing your body NOW.

You’re avoiding mirrors NOW.

You’re feeling guilty over food NOW.

You’re obsessing over weight NOW.

A smaller body didn’t solve self-worth in the past. And chasing an even smaller body won’t either.

I know that some of you are listening to this thinking “She doesn’t get it because she’s already in a straight sized body.” I get it. But I will tell you, as a kid I was a lot bigger than my peers. And when I lost weight in high school and in college when I was deep in the diet mentality, I never felt worse about myself. I hated my body. And I kept telling myself the lie that getting smaller was the only thing that would help me feel better. I did get smaller and it didn’t work. But at the time I couldn’t see that. I had this tunnel vision that so many of you are walking around with too. This is what I want to break you out of here today with this discussion. 

The Question You Need to Answer

Not: Will I gain weight? Or How much weight will I gain?

It’s: How much longer am I willing to put my life on hold because I’m afraid I might gain weight?

I would also invite you to consider what else you might gain besides weight. I had a client inside NDC tell me last week that she celebrated her son’s birthday with pizza and cake – and in the past she would have either not let herself have the pizza or cake, or she would have eaten it and beat herself up and then thrown her hands in the air and said “Screw it, I already blew it so I’m just going to binge.” Not this time. This time she enjoyed the food that used to have power over her, without binging, AND because of this she was fully present for her son’s birthday. When she first started with IE was she afraid she was going to gain weight? Yes. Has she gained so much more than weight? Also yes. She has gained peace, freedom, connection with her family, self-trust that she can handle these foods, and the confidence to know that she can take care of her body without dieting and having a list of food rules to follow. 

So next time you catch yourself asking “How much weight will I gain?” I want you to reframe the question to “What besides weight will I gain?”

The other thing here is the underlying question beneath “Will I gain weight?” is “What if this doesn’t work for me?” And that’s because you’re still viewing success and failure as being measured on the scale – that in itself is diet mentality. That’s how dieters think. Non-dieters inside my world learn how to view their weight as simply a data point. It’s one piece of feedback from their body, and it tells us very little unless we have other data points to combine with it. For example, let’s say that someone did gain weight…rather than judging that as failure or saying “IE doesn’t work” – I would have them get curious about what’s going on, and we would audit whether there is some eating going on that is above and beyond what their body needs that’s driving their weight up, or if there are other things messing with their metabolism such as sleep issues or stress, or if there are potentially medical things that need to be ruled out such as insulin resistance, thyroid issues, or PCOS/PMOS, or maybe they’re in perimenopause. Or maybe they gained weight because their body needed to gain weight. And this is where their weight needs to be when they are well-nourished and taking care of themselves. We can’t know that until we gather more information rather than just assuming weight gain means failure with IE and that you need to go back on another diet. 

Back to the question I asked you a minute ago – I really want you to sit with this…What beside weight will I gain if I have peace with food and my body?

I LITERALLY WANT YOU TO WRITE DOWN THE ANSWER TO THAT QUESTION…

Wrapping up

In case nobody has told you today – you are ENOUGH ALREADY. We’ll talk again soon.

Rate, Review & Follow Us!

“I love Katy and Rebuilding Trust With Your Body.” <– If that sounds like you, please consider rating and reviewing my show! This helps me support more people — just like you — who are ready to finally discover peace with their bodies. Click here, scroll to the bottom, tap to rate with five stars, and select “Write a Review.” Then be sure to let me know what you loved most about the episode! Also, make sure to follow the podcast if you haven’t already done so. Follow now.