Tag: bodyimage

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Sin, Snacks, and Self-Control: Revelations on the denial of pleasure and reclaiming satisfaction with food

Written by: Raquel Griffin MSW RSW
Time to read: 5 minutes

Sinful snacks, cheat days, and junk food— oh my!! These phrases probably sound pretty familiar; they demonstrate some of the ways in which diet culture’s flavours of puritanism, morality, and virtue are baked into our common discourses surrounding food and eating.

Historically, religion has long shaped the way we think about food and our bodies. Religions issued warnings about gluttony, engaging in fasting practices and avoidances of what could be seen as indulgent. These practices weren’t about weight loss for its own sake or the effects of eating on a person’s size, but about how bodily pleasure was thought to compromise the soul. It was penance: a way of making up for all the times you had screwed up that year, rather than a way of punishing your body for being too large.

Early Protestant Christianity associated bodily pleasure with moral weakness, emphasizing restraint and self-discipline as pathways to spiritual purity. Protestant Christian clergy and leaders like Sylvester Graham and John Harvey Kellogg were pioneers of so-called “healthy eating”, linking bland diets to moral and sexual chastity; this included their own inventions of the Graham Cracker and Cornflakes. Graham believed that all of America’s moral failings could be traced back to “unholy” ways of eating, which could be cured with a strict diet. Graham’s list of “excess” of sinful indulgences included: meat, spices, caffeine, alcohol, and warmed/heated food, to name a few. He even instructed his followers to abstain from dancing (“Footloose” style), to take cold baths, and sleep on hard beds. These practices weren’t merely about health—they were about control and conformity. 

While some of these diets would be seen as overkill today, their legacy persists in modern diet culture’s manifestations, emphasizing individual responsibility which equates thinness with virtue and fatness as a moral failing. In practice, this looks like promoting restrictive eating as a marker of self-worth, abstaining or using “caution” with demonized foods, and pathologizing fatness as inherently diseased and wild. Diet culture’s obsession with categorizing foods as “good” or “bad” not only distorts our relationship with food but also fuels systemic oppression. It marginalizes those who don’t fit its narrow ideals, often targeting women and femmes, racialized folks, queer folks, disabled and those in larger or fat bodies. These standards are rooted not in health but in control—diet culture is a system of oppression, in all its facets.

Reclaiming Pleasure with Intuitive Eating
Intuitive Eating principles offer a roadmap for this reclamation like rejecting the diet mentality, honouring hunger, making peace with food, and discovering the satisfaction factor.

  • Unconditional Permission to Eat
    Instead of viewing food as an enemy, allow yourself to enjoy it— label guilt as such when you notice it. You’ll notice that when you embrace variety and remove restrictions, food eventually loses its “forbidden fruit” allure.
  • Discover the Satisfaction Factor
    Tune into your senses: what flavours, textures, or aromas do you truly enjoy? Eating with intention—savouring each bite and minimizing distractions—can transform meals into moments of joy.
  • Create Joyful Food Memories
    Food doesn’t solely meet physical needs but also serves as a source of emotional and social connection. It brings people together, creates traditions, and tells stories. Recognizing these facets helps us see food as more than calories or nutrients—it’s a part of life’s richness. Make meaningful connections to memories involving food that were joyful. Who were you with? What made the experience special?


Reclaiming pleasure in food is an act of resistance against diet culture and the oppressive systems that sustain it. By rejecting rigidity, embracing flexibility, and reconnecting with ourselves, we can rediscover the joy and pleasure that eating was always meant to bring. A parting invitation: take that treasured creation of Sylvester’s Graham cracker and squish between two of them a warm, toasted marshmallow and melted chocolate square… Mmmm… what a delicious “Fuck you” to diet culture.

References:

Carlton, G. (2022, February 2). Meet sylvester graham, the religious health nut who thought white bread was evil. Retrieved from: https://allthatsinteresting.com/sylvester-graham

Look, M. (2024, February 12). Why was cereal invented? A brief history of corn flakes. Retrieved from: https://history.howstuffworks.com/american-history/why-was-cereal-invented.htm

Harrison, C. (2019). Anti-diet: Reclaim your time, money, well-being, and happiness through intuitive eating. Little Brown: UK.

Harrison, C. (2019, May 20). Episode#196: diet culture’s racist roots with Sabrina Strings. Food Psych. Retrieved from https://christyharrison.com/foodpsych/6/the-racist-roots-of-diet- culture-with-sabrina-strings-sociologist-and-author-of-fearing-the-black-body 

Harrison, C. (2018, August 10). What is diet culture? Retrieved from: https://christyharrison.com/blog/what-is-diet-culture

Smith, A. F. (2009). Eating history: 30 turning points in the making of American cuisine. New York: Columbia University Press.

Strings, S. (2023, May 6). Fatphobia as misogynoir: gender, race & weight stigma. Body Talks Conference, Untrapped Academy. 

Strings, S. (2019). Fearing the black body: the racial origins of fatphobia. New York University Press: New York.

Tribole, E., & Resch, E. (2020). Intuitive eating: A Revolutionary Anti-Diet Approach, 4th ed. St Martin’s Publishing Group: New York.

Tribole, E., & Resch, E. (2017). The intuitive eating workbook: ten principles for nourishing a healthy relationship with food. New Harbinger Publications: Oakland.

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Beyond Self-Acceptance

Written by: Dustin LindenSmith

Time to read: 9 minutes

Trigger warning: In this article, there are references to abuse and trauma (with no details described or disclosed). There are also sensitive emotional topics discussed which could trigger an emotional reaction in you if they resonate strongly or if they make you recall painful events from your own life. Please be mindful of your own state of mind right now, and exercise healthy boundaries around engaging with this article if you don’t feel emotionally safe, secure, and stable at this time.

My first blog post was tied to my first Aleo webinar about what it’s like for fat people to live in a fatphobic world. I suggested four specific actions we can take to find some peace of mind within that reality: (1) changing the way we think (and act) about fatness and our bodies; (2) cleaning up our social media feeds; (3) working on our boundaries; and (4) seeking professional support to work with any or all of the above. My second webinar was focused on how I started doing real work on that first step through the illuminating and inspiring work of the American Black fat activist Sonya Renee Taylor through her book, The Body Is Not An Apology. In this blog post, I will share some of the insights I learned from her powerful writing.

On developing the mental and emotional skills to enter recovery in the first place

Like any fat person, I have experienced various forms of discrimination and negative judgments from others—even from within my own family. But my suffering in that regard has also been strongly mitigated by the fact that being an affluent, cisgender White man affords me many privileges that help me overcome that bias in the external world. Even so, that privilege hasn’t insulated me from developing my own internal shame and self-loathing about the size and shape of my body, and for how poorly it has always fit into our culture’s apparent standards for attractiveness.

In order for me to enter recovery from my binge-eating disorder, I first needed to overcome that shame and self-loathing, develop accurate self-awareness and attunement to my own body’s internal states, and then adopt a more intuitive approach to food and movement that was driven by my body’s in-the-moment needs, as opposed to that of my emotions alone. I had to start that by changing my mind.

A reminder about how and why we arrived here

News articles abound on “the obesity epidemic” and how much our numbers are increasing year over year throughout the entire world. The traditional medical model for “treating obesity” has failed in almost every respect, and most of us have also experienced some form of fat-shaming at a doctor’s office at some point. The medical field has also been convinced by recent pharmacological innovations in satiety hormone re-regulation (i.e., GLP-1 inhibitors like Ozempic) that pathologizing the mere state of being fat and taking a drug to fix it will save all of us fat folks from our certain morbid fate.

Many fat people have also had a love-hate relationship with food and movement (i.e., diet and exercise) for much of our lives—not to mention our bodies themselves. We have often developed a distrust in our own judgment about what our body actually needs or wants at any given time. This is a natural result of having successfully lost weight so many times on a calorie-restricted diet, only to gain it all back—with interest—months later. Many of us also have trauma histories, relational issues, and self-image and body-image problems which all increase those feelings of disconnection, dissociation, disavowal, shame, and mistrust towards ourselves. Shame and trauma work together to convince us that our bodies are not good enough, not small enough, not strong enough, or not attractive enough. Dr. Becky Kennedy has also written about how common unresolved ruptures can be in parent-child relationships, but that many of us in larger bodies are likely to have experienced more of them by virtue of our family often trying to get us to diet or address our fatness.

Developing a new way to look at ourselves and our fatness

It was Sonya Renee Taylor’s writing that first truly awakened me to these five essential truths:

  • at our basic, human essence, we are all perfectly good, and normal —no matter what size we are, or whatever number comes up when we step on a scale;
  • for perfectly valid reasons (often arising from childhood trauma or adverse events), many of us have used food for emotional self-regulation since childhood—and this may have resulted in our eventually becoming fat;
  • given those valid underlying reasons and our dysregulated eating habits and relationships with our bodies that resulted from them, many of us who now live in fat bodies are faced with inexorable pressure from all directions to lose weight, and we’re encouraged to think of ourselves as failures if we can’t manage to follow a weight-loss diet to get smaller;
  • this process develops within us an adversarial relationship with our bodies; and
  • no matter what size you are, you deserve to have a peaceful relationship with food and your body. You also deserve to eat full, delicious, nutrient-filled meals that will nourish your body and mind to accomplish all of the important things you do in your life each day. You also deserve to each those meals without feeling the crushing weight of internalized shame, blame, or negative judgment that makes you feel like a bad person inside.

Inquiry # 7, 9, and 12: Body shame origin story

Sonya Renee Taylor’s book is peppered with thoughtful journal and meditation prompts to propel you along this path to self-discovery. Three of those inquiries focus on the body shame origin story. She explains that this developed in our youth in response to rapid or unexpected change—often arising from puberty. It occurred when we became aware of difference, and it made us assume there was some “should” about our body which then became attached to our feelings of value and worth. If we happen to have experienced abuse, that complicates our body shame even further because of how we may erroneously perceive our bodies to have incited that abuse.

Here are some of her prompts for you to consider about your own body shame origin story:

  • When did you first become aware of difference, and when did you first start to feel different from others?
  • When did you first become aware of something your body should do/have/look like?
  • Who in your life is most affected by your body shame, and how is it impacting them?

Sonya Renee Taylor also encourages us to make peace with not understanding all of these differences we notice. She asks us to make peace with those differences, and then to make peace with our bodies.

Inquiry #19: The fog of living in body shame

Sonya Renee Taylor asks: In what ways has the fog of living in body shame hindered your most amazing life? What is incomplete, unexplored, ignored inside you because of your belief that something about you and your body is wrong?

Personal Note: I noticed real grief arise within me when I did this inquiry. I experienced grief for the years I had spent harming myself with food, and for all the opportunities I had missed out on being mindful and happy with my family and friends because I had spent so many years living in a chronically dissociated state from being in that fog of body shame. I encourage anyone who does this work to be gentle, loving, and graceful with yourselves as you contemplate what you may have lost as a result of this way of living. Take solace in the fact that you are recognizing where you are now, and that you are ready to inhabit your body and your life in a much more open and embodied way than you ever have before.

You are not your thoughts

As we continue to reflect on these prompts, Sonya Renee Taylor encourages us to reflect on the differences between thinking, doing, and being. She reminds us that:

  • we are not our thoughts;
  • not every thought we have is true; and
  • many of us are caught in negative thought patterns about ourselves and our bodies that are simply not true.

She asks us to notice the next time our actions are not in alignment with our thoughts or our beliefs, and to ask ourselves: what is our body trying to tell us? And how can we listen to what our body has to say if we’re not used to doing that or don’t have the first clue of how to start?

On the challenges of becoming embodied

Many of us are unskilled at listening to what our bodies have to tell us. Not coincidentally, if we have engaged in chronic weight-loss dieting, we have trained ourselves to ignore our body’s calls for food that arise from being in a state of caloric deficit so often. Listening to our body and noticing what comes up simply does not come naturally to those of us who can’t even stand the sight of themselves in a mirror or who feel like they will never find love because they’re fat. We are simply too accustomed to living in a disconnected state from our bodies during most of our waking hours. Extend some forgiveness and grace towards yourself, and see if you can gently extend a helping hand to your own self to guide yourself out of the fog.

As I bring this article to a close, I would like to invite you to experience the gift of your own body right now through this short mindfulness exercise:

take a few moments to let your body settle gently into a relaxed and comfortable position

observe yourself take three… deep… breaths…

bring your attention to your body, starting with the feeling of your feet in contact with the ground

let your attention flow naturally up through the tops of your feet, your ankles, your calves, your knees, your thighs, and your hips

let your attention keep flowing naturally up through your belly, your chest, your back, and your shoulders

let your attention flow down your arms, all the way to the tips of your fingers, and then back up to your shoulders

as your attention moves up from your shoulders to your neck, let all of the tension in those muscles release…

and as your attention continues to flow upwards through to the top of your head, let the tension in your head, face, neck and shoulders release

now

let your attention rest on your breathing

and let yourself sit in silence for as long as you are comfortable

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All in the family: Learning diet culture

Posted by: Raquel Griffin

Time to read: 4.5 minutes

One of the most devastating things I hear as an eating disorder therapist is how many people have been put on diets as children. 

Diet culture can be so insidious that what a parent thinks is just trying to do the “right thing” or promote a “healthy lifestyle” for their littles, can really be the tee up of an eating disorder. These often well-intentioned parents can be predisposing, precipitating, and perpetuating eating disorders in their kids. Not always, but often times, eating disorders begin in the home and in the family, normalizing the harmful all-or-nothing beliefs of “good” bodies and foods and “bad” bodies and foods. Research shows that kids begin equating “fat” with “bad” between the ages of three and five and one of the strongest precipitating factors in the development of eating disorders is dieting. Dieting is normalized disordered eating and the more this is modelled or expected in families, the more potential for harm.

Here are just a few examples of what I call “family food harms”, adapted from the book Intuitive Eating: 

  • Needing to clean your plate at mealtimes
  • Rules related to snacks, sweets, desserts
  • Food used as a conditioning tool (reward & punishment)
  • Encouraged/told to lose weight, put on a diet
  • Rules related to activity/exercise
  • Parent/caregiver engaged in dieting behaviours or disordered eating
  • Parent/caregiver criticized own body/weight, negative self-talk

    • Taking diet culture harms to the next level in families involves children being encouraged or instructed to limit their food intake for the purpose of losing weight or “preventing” fatness. To be told as a child that there is something wrong with your body and these are the measures you need to take in order to “fix” it is deeply disturbing. And yet, this is a common trauma experienced by many. And, yes I purposefully am referring to this as a traumatic experience for folks. To inflict the deprivation of an essential need such as food onto a child and encouragement of that child to disconnect from their body’s cues and needs is deeply traumatic. 

    It’s completely understandable to have anger toward the people that normalized diet culture to you as a child and taught you to dislike and distrust your body. Honouring those feelings is part of the grieving process. Remember, those who have done harm to us as it relates to food, eating, and our body relationship are also victims of diet culture themselves. Finding compassion for those individuals can be helpful in healing and helping us navigate what to do next, exploring how to provide ourselves the care we needed but didn’t receive. Virgie Tovar, fat activist and author, describes the challenge of this: “I can look back and intellectually understand that my family is made up of real, live, squishy people who are very hurt. […]  I can understand that they need compassion […] I can recognize that […] they actually did their version of their very best. But the body is not a creature of intellect.  It doesn’t care how damaged or hurt my family is because all my body knows is the very thing that has been beating like a drum in the pit of my stomach for as long as I can remember: I am not safe here.” 

    What I appreciate about what Virgie describes here is that we can’t always intellectualize ourselves out of a trauma response. We can intellectually have compassion for and validate the pain and suffering of our perpetrators while also making choices that prioritize our own inner peace. If you’re struggling with finding compassion for your parents and others who have sabotaged your relationship with food or body, you’re not alone. It’s never too late to begin to show your body its worth listening to, worth being respected, worth taking up space. Sure, maybe the best time to plant a tree was 20 years ago, but the second best time to plant a tree is today.

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New Year New View: A Dietitian’s Take on Challenging Diet Culture

Posted by: Courtenay Vickers RD
Time to read: 8 minutes

What is diet culture anyway?

Diet culture can be defined in many ways. I’ve been an RD (short for Registered Dietitian) for the past 10 years, and adopted a weight-inclusive lens with my practice about 6 years ago. I’ll preface this blog (as I did in my recent webinar) that I am constantly learning more about what diet culture is, how it shows up, and what to do instead.

When asked this question (re: what is diet culture anyway) I often reply by saying something to the effect of: diet culture is the harmful belief that certain body shapes and sizes are better than others, and there’s a “right” way of eating. To which I typically get the follow up question of “but you’re a dietitian, isn’t there a right way of eating?”. My response from here can get quite nuanced, depending on the audience – in short, there is no one-size-fits-all way of eating, because bodies are meant to be incredibly diverse and different! Not to mention everyone’s unique relationship with food, cultural connections and traditions with food, access to food, etc.

One definition of diet culture that I keep coming back to is by Christy Harrison:

“Diet culture is a system of beliefs that:

  • – Worships thinness and equates it to health and moral virtue, which means you can spend your whole life thinking you’re irreparably broken just because you don’t look like the impossibly thin “ideal.”
  • – Promotes weight loss as a means of attaining higher status, which means you feel compelled to spend a massive amount of time, energy, and money trying to shrink your body, even though the research is very clear that almost no one can sustain intentional weight loss for more than a few years.
  • – Demonizes certain ways of eating while elevating others, which means you’re forced to be hyper-vigilant about your eating, ashamed of making certain food choices, and distracted from your pleasure, your purpose, and your power.
  • – Oppresses people who don’t match up with its supposed picture of “health,” which disproportionately harms women, femmes, trans folks, people in larger bodies, people of color, and people with disabilities, damaging both their mental and physical health.”
https://christyharrison.com/blog/what-is-diet-culture

Diet culture in the new year

So, now that we have a bit more of an idea of what diet culture is, here’s a short list of various ways I’m seeing diet culture show up so far in 2024:

  • Overemphasis on getting “strong”
  • Influx of “clean eating”
  • Overambitious fitness goals
  • Bigger emphasis on dietary supplements
  • More orthorexic tendencies
  • Orthorexia = an unhealthy obsession with healthy eating
  • Sudden removal of entire food groups
  • Increased use of calorie-tracking apps + smart watches
  • Health washing + green washing on food labels
  • X # of day challenges related to food and/or fitness
  • “Watching” what you eat
  • More labelling of foods as good/bad, healthy/unhealthy
  • Lifestyle changes and wellness journeys

Here’s an interesting fact to highlight diet culture’s prevalence: according to Forbes, the top New Year’s resolutions in 2024 include improved fitness, losing weight, and improved diet.

I think it’s important to note that while there’s nothing inherently “wrong” with these resolutions, I find they are often fueled by diet culture and can perpetuate, worsen, or ignite eating disorder behaviours.

Why I’m concerned as a weight-inclusive dietitian in the eating disorder space

I’m concerned because diet culture can often be a precursor to eating disorders, and can perpetuate disordered eating behaviours. I think it’s important to mention that many factors can spur a full-blown eating disorder, such as genetics, food insecurity, trauma, and more (this is probably a topic for another blog post). And, diet culture is, unfortunately, a common piece that shows up along the way either in the development or recovery from an eating disorder. 

Challenging diet culture

Depending on where you are at with your journey to healing, you may have already started to challenge diet culture! I’ve compiled below a short list of ways I commonly find helpful to challenge diet culture (whether you’re starting this for the first time, or perhaps you are further along):

  • Learning more about the harms of diet culture
  • Setting boundaries (with yourself and/or others)
  • Stop labelling foods in binaries such as good/bad, or healthy/unhealthy
  • Take time to check in with yourself
  • Practice self-compassion
  • Get curious about a non-diet approach (or similar)

Here’s a short list of some keywords you may find helpful to guide your own reading and research as you start to learn more and challenge diet culture:

  • Anti-diet
  • Intuitive Eating
  • Body Liberation
  • Non-diet
  • Weight-inclusive
  • Health At Every Size®
  • Fat Positive

What to do next

A big (non-exhaustive) list of specific things you may or may not want to try instead of participating in diet culture this new year:

  • Eat regularly throughout the day. For some, this might look like multiple meals and snacks throughout the day. This might mean seeking help from a trusted support person, or a professional such as a dietitian. 
  • Integrate challenge foods, if you find there are foods in your life that are holding some sort of power over you. This might be foods that you are fearful of, foods you avoid completely, or foods that you often feel ‘out of control’ around. Integrating challenge foods is something that I typically only recommend once we are getting enough food in regularly first, and then slowly integrating the challenge foods one at a time in a structured way. 
  • Play with movement in a way that feels good for you and your body (only if this is medically appropriate and accessible for you).
  • Work on staying appropriately hydrated. What this might mean is ensuring you are drinking adequate fluids (or high fluid food sources) throughout the day. Watch out for overdoing it with caffeine as this can cause dehydration. 
  • Prioritize rest! And not just sleeping enough at night, but allowing space to rest during your waking hours. For some this might mean taking a nap, allowing yourself to ‘do nothing’ for an afternoon, or perhaps it’s pausing what you are doing for a few minutes periodically throughout the day to slow down and check-in with yourself.
  • Take time to explore your relationship with food and body. This might mean journaling, talking about this in therapy or with a dietitian, or reflecting on your own. 
  • Cultivate self-compassion ❤️ I truly believe we can’t talk about nutrition without talking about self-compassion. Nourishing ourselves and challenging diet culture is not always an easy thing to do. And at times, it can feel like a struggle. Can we work towards being kind and gentle with ourselves as we navigate all the sticky murky bits?
  • Challenge your food rules – especially if you find there are specific rules/patterns/or behaviours related to your eating getting in the way of recovery.
  • Re-evaluate your use of the scale and set limits around this. Many find it helpful to hide the scale, reduce the frequency of how often you use it, or get rid of it entirely. If it’s absolutely medically necessary to be weighed, consider these limits or have it done blindly at a clinic.
  • Put away diet apps and/or fitness trackers/watches. As a dietitian, I rarely find these pieces of tech actually helpful, and, if anything, they often cause an unnecessary focus and obsession with food/movement.
  • Curate your social media to better support your pro-recovery and anti-diet goals
  • Pick up a workbook or book related to ED recovery and/or an anti-diet approach
  • Improve your sleep hygiene. For some this might mean developing a bedtime routine, sticking to a sleeping schedule, or reducing caffeine intake.
  • Try a support group geared towards eating disorder recovery, body image, or intuitive eating (depending on where you are at and what fits best). 
  • Get professional help from an eating disorder registered dietitian, therapist, social worker, nurse practitioner, family doctor, or psychiatrist. 

I hope that by the time you are done reading this, something has stood out to you. Whether it’s a small takeaway, a new learning to ponder, or a new perspective on a familiar theme, I hope this has resonated with those reading. 

For anyone wanting to dig a little bit deeper, I’ll end with a few reflective prompts below.

Reflective prompts to help you challenge diet culture:

Whether or not journaling in a pen-and-paper way is your thing, these reflective prompts may be helpful as you work on challenging diet culture and healing your relationship with food and body:

  • How has diet culture shown up for you in your life?
  • What would it be like to step away from diet culture?
  • What’s the scariest part of challenging diet culture for you?
  • Who or what might be helpful to you during this process?
  • What’s one small thing you can do this month to challenge diet culture in your life?
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Postpartum body image tips: from an ED therapist with ED lived experience

Posted by: Raquel Griffin

Time to read: 5 minutes

Originally appeared on: NEDIC.ca

At first, I thought I was successful in combating ED thoughts and the diet mentality that followed the birth of my child. Sure, my ear would initially be tickled with ED whisperings of fatphobia and diet culture. But just as quickly as they appeared, self-compassionate and comforting hums would replace them. But as time passed, I began to feel more stress about my new body shape and size. I had a number of friends and acquaintances who gave birth very close to when I did, and I really began to struggle with body comparison. Why was my body larger than theirs? Why did it seem like they were restored to their pre-pregnancy body sizes when I wasn’t? These fatphobic thoughts and expectations hung like a cloud as I squeezed my body into my too-small clothes.

At 4 months postpartum, I was horrified to come across a post in my social media feed from my local hospital’s pregnancy unit for an upcoming Q&A on C-sections. The post included a naked, very thin, flat-tummied, stretchmark-free, White person, from the navel down to the thighs. Laying on top of this body was a newborn baby, peaceful in slumber, blocking the birthing person’s labia but also positioned low enough down to wonder how this person had no pubic hair. It was a completely unrealistic picture of any body, let alone a postpartum body. I was so upset that a reproductive-focused medical facility was perpetuating such a harmful body standard (not to mention a weirdly sexualized one). I felt  shame about my postpartum body and at times bought into this diet-culture idea that my body should be getting smaller the further away I got from  my child’s birth date.

Pregnant people are often highly encouraged to try nursing at any cost (a whole separate conversation) and one of the “benefits” often included is weight loss. I hate to admit it… but when feeding/nursing was going well with my baby I was partially relieved, because in the back of my mind, I thought it would help prevent me from needing to adjust to a drastically new and different body. But, I was wrong. I was experiencing shame that my postpartum body was “too large” or differently-shaped. And, then I had shame about my fatphobia-induced shame, as that was not aligned with my values.

It’s a strange thing to hold reverence for the body that withstood such a major medical event and brought my treasured child into the world, while also resenting the bodily evidence left behind. To admire the softness and smoothness from stretched skin where my child was held in their first home, then to shortly thereafter hold disgust for new skin/fat folds and stretch mark scribblings. The good news is, with a lot of work, over time my relationship to my new body as a result of pregnancy and childbirth is becoming easier. If I’m being honest, I’m not yet at a place where I like my postpartum body and I’m willing to accept that maybe I will never be. But, I am at a place where my feelings toward my body are much more neutral and compassionate. My body has been and is capable of great things. My body is worthy. 

These are some of the things that have been helping me move toward body acceptance:

Remind yourself that eating is especially important during this time
Our bodies need energy in the form of food. Providing consistent and adequate nourishment following labour and delivery is extremely important—especially for postpartum bodies. The last thing your body needs right now is to have its starvation response triggered.

Whether your birth was vaginal or Caesarean, your body needs to recover and it needs food to do that. You will need the energy from food to help you combat the sleep deprivation you’ll be experiencing. I was able to have several family members and friends provide food and meals in the weeks after my birth so that I didn’t have to worry about cooking. This was an absolute life-saver. I also made sure I had Ensure and meal supplements on hand to quickly consume nutrients with little time/effort. Eating enough consistently and regularly will also help your milk production if you are nursing.

Respect your body by dressing in clothes that fit and are comfortable
Stop trying to squeeze into your old clothes. Wearing clothes that are too tight does not feel good. 

Pregnancy/maternity clothes are meant to accommodate a changing body. Your body may keep changing postpartum so just because you’re no longer pregnant doesn’t mean you should stop wearing pregnancy clothes if they are comfortable and fit. If it helps you feel better, stay away from the items that accentuate a “bump”.

If you find that your new body shape does not fit in any of the sizes provided in a store, consider buying a size that is too big and then taking to a tailor or a family member who has some sewing skills. Get familiar with thrift stores. I have bought some items new, but I have found most of my success with thrift stores. I’ve even bought a couple items with the tags still on.

Engage in re-embodying activities
With pregnancy, labour, child-birth, and nursing, there is a long period of time where you may feel like your body isn’t fully your own anymore. And, if you have a history of disordered eating and disembodiment, these feelings could be exacerbated. Where possible, engage in pleasurable activities that help you reconnect with your body in positive ways. For me, that was prioritizing walking, getting back to choir rehearsals and singing, and maintaining sexual intimacy with my partner. 

Reject the Diet Mentality
Shortly after giving birth, I completed my Intuitive Eating Counselling Certification. Immersing myself in anti-diet values, principles, and scientific research really helped me to reject the diet mentality and ED thoughts as they arose. 

There is no research to indicate that long-term weight loss is a realistic endeavour.
Speak out against harmful diet culture when you see it. For example, that Instagram post I mentioned— I commented something along the lines of “I’m really happy to see this event on C-sections will be taking place but I am very disappointed you chose to use a promotional image that perpetuates an unrealistic body standard”. Many other commenters followed suit and the account ended up removing that promotional image.
Consume weight-inclusive content, media, and literature that aligns with anti-diet values, fat-liberation, and Health at Every Size. Some of my favourites are:

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