Body Acceptance and Grieving the Thin Ideal

If you’d told me five years ago that I would go on to grieve the loss of the body I had at the time, I would have laughed at you. Deep in the grips of disordered eating and exercise, I was convinced that if I could just make my body smaller, my life would be better.

Letting Go of the “Ideal Body”

During the past five years, I’ve come a long way in terms of my recovery, but I’d be lying if I said that things were easy. When you start down the road to Health at Every Size and Intuitive Eating, you might also find a that a grieving process has been triggered. After all, embracing HAES and Intuitive Eating means letting go the idea that our weight and size are within our control. It means letting go of the thin ideal and accepting whatever body we are genetically predisposed to. It means processing the time, energy, and money that we’ve devoted to pursing weight loss, often without success.

Letting go of the body you dreamed of having can feel like losing a close person in your life. We often place so much value on being smaller that we become unmoored when we no longer have that fantasy to cling to. Many of us have held the false belief that if we could just change our bodies, life would somehow get better. The reality is, you’re still you regardless of your size. And that means that all the perceived problems in your life are still going to be there, regardless of whether you manage to shrink yourself.

Doing the Body Image Work

Body image work is hard. While it often gets boiled down to “love your body”, it’s a lot more complex than that. It’s messy and scary and often involves a lot of uncertainty. And the truth is, many of us will never love our bodies. That’s why I’m a huge advocate for pursing body acceptance and body respect rather than “loving your body.”

Why? Because respect and acceptance are not contingent upon loving your body. Respecting your body means providing it with nutrients, movement, pleasure, and rest regardless of whether you think it’s beautiful. Because at the end of the day, beauty shouldn’t be a prerequisite for receiving love and care. You are deserving of that all on your own, regardless of how you perceive yourself.

If you’re struggling with grieving the thin ideal, here are some tips for handling the emotions that may arise as you move forward in your HAES journey:

1.     Remind yourself of the ways that dieting has harmed you. If it helps, make a list and review it as often as you need.

2.     While it may sound counterintuitive, allow yourself to feel the anger that often accompanies releasing the thin ideal. Allow this anger to fuel your desire for something better for yourself than constantly dieting.

3.     Remember that none of this is your fault. Rather than getting upset with yourself for pursing a smaller body, get angry at society for perpetuating the false idea that smaller = better. If you find yourself continually feeling bad about succumbing to diet culture, write “this is not your fault” on a post-it note and place it on your mirror to remind yourself.

4.     Find a community that can understand what you’re going through. Often, connecting with others can be a powerful way to process the grief that comes along with ditching diet culture.

5.     Find body positive role models who inspire you to live your best life, regardless of size.

Body Respect and Weight Stigma

One last thing - while I have enormous privilege in that I am still considered “straight-sized” (in other words, I can walk into most stores and be confident that I’ll find something that fits me), I still struggle with internalized fatphobia and grieving the loss of my smaller body. But despite how I may feel about my own body, as a straight-sized woman, I cannot possibly understand the lived experiences of people larger than me.

While I’ve experienced some medical fatphobia related to weight gain, it has never prevented me from receiving the care I needed. For many fat folks, this simply isn’t the case. Does body acceptance mean accepting the stigma society attaches to living in a larger body? Absolutely not. If anything, gaining body respect may give you the confidence to advocate for yourself in situations you may not have previously.

At the end of the day, remember – you are so much more than a body. You are a whole, unique, and worthy human just as you are. If you need more body image support, check out my Body Image Workbook. In it, you’ll find journaling prompts, affirmations, colouring pages, and exercises to help you make peace with your body.