You Are More Than a Body
Written by Laci Whipple, June 28, 2024
If you feel like you are preoccupied with thoughts about your physical appearance, what to eat, what not to eat, and how much you should exercise, you are not alone.
The relentless images on social media, the magazines at the grocery store, and the pervasive messaging of diet culture affect us all. Diet culture encompasses any messaging surrounding food, bodies, and appearances that has you believing that you must do something to change the way you look. Despite what society’s messages will have you believe, your body is not the problem and the root of food issues actually isn’t about the food! We are so much more than what we look like and what we eat. There’s another way to live, where thoughts about our bodies and food don’t occupy 95% of our brain space.
Driven by industries that profit from our insecurities, our society often undermines our self-worth, self-love, and body image. We don’t have to be defined by our bodies, but we do have bodies, and we can learn to love and accept them as they are.
Body image and eating issues don’t discriminate—they can affect every person no matter their:
Gender
Ethnicity
Body shape or size
Sexuality
Age
Body image is how an individual perceives their body; a negative body image can be a contributing factor to eating disorders or disordered eating behaviors. Disordered eating can be described as irregular eating patterns, such as extreme dieting, rules, or cutting out major food groups. Eating Disorders are clinically diagnosed illnesses characterized by “severe disturbances in people’s eating behaviors and related thoughts and emotions . . . [including] preoccupation with food, body weight, and shape . . .” (NIMH, 2024). Eating disorders often involve disordered eating, but disordered eating doesn’t necessarily mean an individual has a clinical eating disorder.
Recovery from disordered eating, eating disorders, and negative body image is possible. Several organizations embody these beliefs and can guide us in recovery from disordered eating and poor body image:
The Body Positive is an organization founded by therapists and advocates, Elizabeth Scott and Connie Sobczak. The curriculum they’ve created uses a model focusing on five competencies aimed at health, self-care, identity, and intuitive eating with the goal of reducing body shame and eating disorders. The goal of the Be Body Positive model is to uncover the messages that have influenced your relationships with body, food, and exercise; to empower you to develop a weight-neutral, health-centered approach to self-care; to provide the tools and resources to help you eat, exercise, and live intuitively; to create space to connect to others through a shared positive approach to beauty, health, and identity.
A Stanford University pilot study (thebodypositive.org, 2024) shows that the five competencies of the Be Body Positive Model had a positive effect on participants’ self-reported guilt, beliefs toward the thin ideal, body satisfaction, and social determinants of body image. The first time I read this curriculum, I couldn’t help but cry, imagining how different my life would have been if I had heard these messages earlier in my life—now, I get to spread this message to others. It has been an honor and a height of my career to teach and share this message, in a variety of formats, that aligns with my own mission.
If you are searching for help with your eating disorder, body image, or disordered eating, you’ve come to the right place. Your identity doesn’t have to be what you look like and you can come home to who you really are because recovery is possible. This journey to self-love and acceptance is a process, but you can rewrite your story; one that lets you live your authentic life instead of a life determined by diet culture—with guidance from my client-centered and acceptance-based approach. I would be honored to collaborate on a recovery path that meets your needs.
References:
The Body Positive. (2023). Research. thebodypositive.org/research
National Institute of Mental Health. (2024). Eating Disorders. https://www.nimh.nih.gov/health/topics/eating-disorders
