Should body respect be conditional on body size?

Short answer - NOPE. End of post. 

J/k j/k j/k 

We’ll give you the full answer. 

The reason many of us feel like we could only accept our bodies at a smaller size is because our culture has programmed us to value thinness (and associate this with health).  

This is called institutionalized fatphobia.

We have also been programmed to associate fat bodies, or larger bodies, or body fat in general, with unhealthiness, laziness, lack of motivation, discipline, and automatically make assumptions on how people who inhabit those bodies must eat, exercise, and live their lives.

Part of the (multilayered) reasons for why we believe this is because culturally there is the belief that you can ultimately (and should) control your body size. If you can’t, it’s because you’re not “trying” or “don’t care.”.

This fatphobia (both institutionalized and internalized) is often a key piece in what holds us back from accepting and respecting our bodies. 

Makes sense, right? 

How can we possibly accept and respect something that basically is telling the world (and yourself) that you’re unhealthy, lazy, and lack discipline? 

Welcome to the internal struggle with moving through to body neutrality and acceptance. 

This is what leads us to conditional body respect - and to lead us to believe that we need to diet ourselves down to the size that we think we would respect and accept.

But if that were true, everyone who ever dieted and got to their “ideal body size” would have already achieved body respect, acceptance, and neutrality, and be perfectly happy with themselves.

How long have you been dieting down? And are you anywhere closer to body respect and acceptance? 

Be honest with yourself here - nobody has to know. 

Our guess - you’re not. 

And if you’re super honest - has your dieting, restriction, and rules actually pulled you further and further from food peace and body acceptance? 

It’s confusing too because we tend to think of following protocols, restrictions, and food “rules” as a way to SHOW our body respect. But ultimately, it’s conditional on whether or not you achieve the “outcome” of the protocol (i.e. lose weight). 

What if instead of conditionally accepting your body by forcing yourself to diet down you instead focus on the relationship with food and your body and cultivate it to a place where it’s centered on the behaviors rather than the outcome of weight loss at any cost? 

So how do we work on those behaviors, what are they, and how can we do that in a health-focused, yet non-dieting way?

We teach you exactly how to do this in our course, Break the Diet Cycle™.