Body Image
I want to help you have a better relationship with your body.
This does NOT mean that I want to help you shrink or mold your body. If you’re looking for a therapist who can help you improve your willpower and practice better self-discipline in order to stick to your diet and exercise plan, I’m not your gal. Because research shows that most diets fail in the long-run, and that in fact, people frequently gain back everything they’ve lost and then some.
But I don’t actually care about whether the number on your scale goes down or up. What I care about is the impact that this awful yo-yo self-flagellation process has on your mental health. Because while we’re all obsessing about health, doing extreme diets and exercise regimens, we lose sight of the fact that mental health is health. If you go on a diet and lose weight, the people around you will praise you, your doctor will probably congratulate your hard work, and because of the initial adrenaline burst you experience, you’ll probably feel pretty good.
Until you don’t.
Because if there’s one thing I know about diets and intensive exercise regimens from my personal and professional experience, it’s that when you crash, you crash hard. And you will crash, because it’s not sustainable to live in restriction.
And then you blame yourself, because that’s what a multi-billion dollar industry has taught you to do. But this is not your personal failing – it’s a physiological response to deprivation. You may be unsurprised to learn that the work I do with people who struggle with body image is closely intertwined with the work I do helping people to improve their self-esteems.
You may be wondering: if my approach working with body image struggles does not involve building a better willpower system, what on earth do I do?
My Anti-Diet Approach
First of all, I want to make something clear: I am anti-diet, but I am not anti-dieter.
If you’ve tried a lot of diets and exercise regimens, you are not wrong for having done this. You’re a member of a well-populated club – and by the way, so am I.
But if you’re here, you’ve probably realized that this isn’t working and something has gotta give. And if we start working together and you decide to go on a diet again, that’s also okay. Divorcing diet culture can be terrifying, and the lure of an answer when you’re trying to figure things out can be so, so powerful.
That being said –
My approach to working with people who struggle with body image involves helping you befriend your body. Instead of pinching and poking and criticizing your body’s shortcomings, I want to help you find deep gratitude for what it can do, love it regardless of the number on the scale (actually, maybe just throw away your scale), and believe that your worthiness runs deeper than your physical appearance.
When I talk to clients about body image, I don’t spend very much time talking about food. Instead, I often talk about…
- A sense of control
- Emotional literacy and how to feel feelings
- The messages you learned growing up
- Perfectionism and “good-enoughness”
- Self-compassion
- How to self-soothe in hard moments
- Allowing yourself to be a messy, human person
Food is rarely just food. Diets are rarely just about the shape of your silhouette. I want to help you dig deeper, figure out what’s fueling your insecurity about your body image, and build a better relationship with the body you’ll have to live in for the rest of your life.
Two books I frequently recommend on this subject are:
- Body Positive Power by Megan Jayne Crabbe – How to view the lies we’ve been told about our bodies, and permission to get angry about it (CW: Eating disorders)
- The Fuck it Diet by Caroline Dooner – How to divest from diets, heal your relationship with food, and envision a post-diet life
The “Health at Every Size” Pledge
Because I am committed to helping people overcome body image problems while celebrating all kinds of diversity – including differences in size, age, race, ethnicity, gender, dis/ability, sexual orientation, religion, class, and other human attributes – I have signed the Health at Every Size (HAES) pledge.
In this pledge, I promise that I will support my clients in improving their mental health, and laud their desire to improve their physical health, regardless of their body type. I do not believe that I can tell anything about a person’s health just by looking at them, and want to know what someone’s own sense of their relationship with their body is, rather than making any assumptions.
Furthermore, in my professional experience over the last 15 years, I have learned that people of all shapes, sizes, colors, and genders struggle with body image. Deeply entrenched cultural demands affect us all and spare no one, and a multi-billion dollar industry stands to profit from our shame and struggle.
Lastly, I would be remiss not to mention that in addition with working with many different kinds of people to improve body image, I have also worked on these same topics with people who have visible and invisible disabilities. When we talk about health as the epitome of achievement, we erase the experiences of people for whom this is not an accessible goal.
In short, thinness is not morality. Fitness is not morality. And health is not morality.
Reach out
If the diet industrial complex has failed you, and you’d like support in finding a different way to make peace with your body, reach out to schedule a free phone consultation now!