#97: Debunking “Love Yourself Thin” and Other Messages

Hungry: Trust Your Body. Free Your Mind.

There was a point in time, before I discovered Intuitive Eating, when I believed that my rocky childhood and poor self-image were the reasons I couldn’t keep food under control and stop eating emotionally. Sadly, a decade or so later, I’m hearing the same messages from diet culture that tell people they need to do the inner work if they want to lose weight. For example, when deciding on the title of this podcast, I found an article called “How to Overcome 5 Psychological Blocks to Weight Loss”. It’s easy to believe this advice when the authors are highly educated and the article is stamped “medically reviewed”.

And guess what? In some ways, this message isn’t completely wrong. The work I do with my clients is all about challenging old beliefs and shifting mind-set. But where this advice goes wrong, and destructively so, is telling us that how we feel about ourselves and how we’ve been surviving is getting in the way of us achieving a body size they feel is appropriate. It’s incredibly deceitful and very tricky to piece apart.

Which is why I wanted to highlight what these articles aren’t saying. I want you to be aware of the subtle assumptions that are probably making you blame yourself for diet failures and wondering what’s wrong with you. And I want to remind you of the truth; diets won’t deliver on long term weight loss and you don’t need to wait to lose weight to treat your body with great respect.