Why ‘Letting Yourself Go” Is Not An Insult

Diet culture’s toxicity will have you believing that if you aren't controlling the size of your body (to be smaller), then you've 'let yourself go'.

This 👆🏾 negative connotation is rooted in shame and prejudice cultivated by oppressive systems of which diet culture is part of.⁣

It is the thing that keeps you tethered to hamster wheel of dieting and exercise burnout.

Here’s a truth:

Sometimes putting yourself first and prioritizing your health and well-being may result in weight change.⁣

You taking care of your health means doing what's best for you to show up in your life all the way.

⁣And how this looks for every person will differ.

The thing you need to know is weight loss isn’t the only option and weight gain isn't a failing, a character flaw or something that needs to be explained away.⁣

What’s missing from the health conversation is that bodies are meant to change, they come in different shapes and sizes, aren't all meant to work the same (even if we do the same things), and will do what biology intends for them to do whether you agree with it or not.

In addition, your body size is not your health status, your weight is not a behavior and neither of them are anyone's business but your own.⁣

So maybe your body has changed.

Thanks to diet culture and the fat-phobic tenets embedded within, it isn't surprising for feelings of judgement to surface (never mind that you’ve been prioritizing other aspects of your health).

If this is you, I invite you to remain kind to yourself. The world is a tough place to navigate as it is, to add punishing and picking on your body is what those who benefit the most want you to continue doing.

Secondly you can apply to work with me to get support in shifting this perspective to find greater body acceptance.

Secondly, be reminded that the ways you can and need to take care of yourself will likely shift over the many phases of your life. What you did when you were 20 or 30 years old may neither be sustainable or relevant to you now in your 40’s, 50’s etc.

While dieting and exercising to fit an ideal body size or look may have been rewarding and the entirety of one’s focus in our 20’s, women like myself and those I work with, now realize the importance of whole health and wellness over aesthetics.

It’s that realization which releases us from the anxiety of food rules, the emotional distress of fighting and being unkind to ourselves and the weight of other people’s expectations and judgements.

If that’s what you’re looking for then YES maybe you do need to let yourself go…to exactly where you need to be to thrive.

And if in doing so you=r body does change, it doesn’t mean your health isn’t a priority, but rather that it is THE priority, to which there is so much more than one’s body size.