What Can You Do When You're Still Working Through Body Acceptance?

While intuitive eating has been good for me, the changes to my body have been hard. Here are a few things that have helped me move toward weight-neutrality.

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My body is still my big sticking point. 

Yep, I said it. I’m almost a year in on intuitive rating, and I love almost everything about it. 

I love the blissful relief from the “food noise” that used to occupy so much of my headspace, and I love how relaxed I am about food now. Really. I don’t stress over food anymore. This doesn’t mean I eat perfectly, and it doesn’t mean I only eat junk. It just means I do the best I can to listen to what my body needs and respond with the foods I have access to. So there is a lot less judgment around food now and no more shame. I treat myself with so much more kindness and compassion.

But I don’t love my newfound size. 

To be clear, this may not be—probably won’t be—my forever size. It’s fairly common for the body to overshoot its energy needs temporarily after restriction ends. The best evidence we have for this comes from the Minnesota Starvation Experiment, a year-long experiment that put healthy men (World War II conscientious objectors) on a restrictive diet, which found that some overshot their pre-starvation weight by up to 145 percent, but over time their weight settled back to within 5 percent of their pre-starvation weight. 

It makes sense. If your body has been restricted for years or been through years of binging and restricting, how does it know that the restriction is over? It doesn’t. Depending on the state of recovery or restoration your body is in when you start intuitive eating and your individual weight set point, you could go up or you could go down. Most people go up before they come down. 

I don’t know what my body is going to do. I don’t know what your body is going to do. But I do know most attempts to control body size don’t work and can have catastrophic consequences. That’s why we’re here.

So although I struggle to love my new body size, I’m not wavering in my decision to stop dieting. What I am working toward is peace and acceptance. 

If you are struggling to love the body you’re in, there are a few things you can do.

Here are a few ways to help move toward body acceptance.

Buy clothes that fit. 

This is so basic, but so important. And so many people don’t do it. If you want to be happy in your body, wear clothes that fit and make you happy. Yes, this might be a challenge, depending on your size. We live in a fat-phobic society and finding clothes that fit and make you happy might still be difficult. Cultivate your go-tos and buy multiples. If you’re concerned about spending money with your body in flux, shop second-hand or thrift. 

Ground yourself in your why. 

Every time I catch myself in a looping thought about my body, it sets off a cascade of thoughts.

I hate that my stomach is so large; it makes tying my shoes more difficult…

I’m so large, I hate this new body…

What can I do about it? I know dieting doesn’t work…

Anything I initially lost, I would eventually regain, and I would mess up all the progress I have made in learning to listen to my body…

And what message would I be sending to my children if I started dieting again? 

This last thought is the most important one. It’s my why, the one that keeps me from going down this path again. Know your why. Get good and grounded in it. Think about it often, daily if you have to. 

Keep arming yourself with the facts. 

There are so many great resources for learning about why diets don’t work and how to eat intuitively. Here are a few of my favorites: 

Intuitive Eating by Evelyn Tribole and Elyse Resch

Fat Talk by Virginia Sole-Smith

Recover from Eating Disorders: The Homeodynamic Recovery Method by Gwyneth Olwyn

The F*ck It Diet: Eating Should Be Easy by Caroline Dooner

Surround yourself with supporters. 

My husband and my family are my biggest supporters. They’ve been here with me through this very humbling process. I’ve had so much change and re-prioritization of what matters thanks to ditching diets. I am a much more balanced person. I am a much more vulnerable person. This is a good thing.

Beyond family, look to others who share your viewpoints. There are tons of folks doing great work towardsweight-neutrality here on Substack. Here are a few of my favorites: 

Burnt Toast by Virginia Sole-Smith

Ragen Chastain

of

Weight and Healthcare

Laura Thomas, PhD, RNutr

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Can I Have Another Snack?

Linn Thorstensson

of

Joyful + Nourishment

Need a little extra support? Here’s a list of intuitive eating-certified therapists. My current therapist, whom I found through that link, has helped me work through more trauma in a few months than all of my other years of therapy put together. 

Get grounded in the present. 

This is so important for recovery of all types. We spend so much of our time lost in thoughts about the past or the future. Diet mindset almost always keeps us out of the present. When we’re dieting, we hate where we are right now. We often compare ourselves to how we were when we were thinner or we glorify our past diets, especially in the early days when we’re able to override our bodies’ hunger signals. When we’re not in the past, we long for the future and fantasize about the thin version of ourselves that will be possible if we continue counting calories, popping magic pills, and exercising like mad.

The more we get grounded in the present, the more we learn to accept where we are. Yoga, meditation, therapy, mountain biking (my personal fave) … these things can help get you grounded in the now.

Work on your fat bias. 

Learning more about the difficulties people in larger bodies face can provide perspective to help you shift your views about your own body. Pretty much every book by Aubrey Gordon can help.

Focus on what your body can do.

As someone who loves to exercise and be out in nature, I do this all of the time. Years of olympic weightlifting taught me to appreciate my body’s incredible strength, and despite its changing size, here’s one thing I do know: It is still incredibly strong.

What can your body do? Think about it. Write it down. Remind yourself when you need to.

Understand that body acceptance may never happen or that it may be one of the last pieces to fall into place.

Yep. This is hard to accept, but it’s possible you will never fully love your body. And it’s possible you may not care, because the real goal is body neutrality. As time goes on in diet recovery, we tend to shift to a more weight-neutral perspective. Our focus moves away from our appearance, and love or hate for our body dissipates. When we stop obsessing over dieting and weight loss and how we look, we focus on the things that really matter to us. In some cases, we realign our priorities to better reflect newfound or newly rediscovered values. This is beauty of body liberation.

Have a suggestion I haven’t included? Share it in comments below!

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Friends, I Was Featured on the Eating Disorder Therapist Podcast

I am still working up my courage to listen, but I shared my story about why I made the decision to ditch diets and work on my body issues in an interview with therapist Harriet Frew.

The episode is out now, and you can listen in all of your usual places. Here is the Apple Podcast link.

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