The Body Dilemma

There’s more that influences our food choices than we may realize. Often, when we serve ourselves another helping or reach for a snack we know our body isn’t craving, we blame our lack of discipline and willpower. In reality, the reactive, compulsive, and automatic ways we engage with food are, in part, a downstream effect of living with unprocessed body grief, shame, and neglect, or feelings of unworthiness and disappointment in our bodies and ourselves.

So what can you do about it? Keep reading to learn about the five mindsets and practices I turn to in order to help my clients gently process the emotional discomfort often tied to food, so they can begin to feel more at home in their body as it is and move forward in a healthier and more complete way.

Bridging the Gap Between the Body and Mind

When partnering with a client to heal their relationship with food, we explore and process the feelings they have about their body. Then, I help them navigate ways to extend compassion, acceptance, and trust to themselves — as they are today.

This two-step process can be challenging if a client is unhappy in their body and feels conflicted about their progress. That conflict arises when the client becomes more intentional and mindful with their food choices, but their body doesn’t respond the way they’d like. They are proud and more free when they begin to feel emotionally lighter around food and they’re no longer willing to tolerate a mentality or lifestyle that perpetuates food preoccupation or harmful eating and exercise patterns. But — despite making positive emotional and behavioral changes — they may still feel physically uncomfortable in their body or experience social or familial pressure and judgment about their weight.

Although weight loss is not the goal in our work, it’s normal to feel disappointed, confused, and stuck when we face these opposing feelings. When our physical body does not reflect our emotional healing in the way we had hoped, it’s totally valid to grieve this mismatch.

If left unresolved, grief and emotional unrest can manifest in any number of coping strategies that don’t serve us. While the life hacks and body-positive affirmations of today’s wellness culture may offer temporary relief, when used alone, they diminish and bypass the deeper internal conflict many of us feel about our bodies. That brings us to our five thoughtful ways to work through this deep-seated emotional discomfort.

5 Practices to Feel More at Home in Your Body

1. Become informed

   • Put on your neutral, observant journalist hat and turn toward the feelings you have about your body. Name them — without judging or reacting — so you can fully understand them.

   • Explore your body story, too. What do you believe and say about your body? Where do these beliefs and body standards come from?

   • This story is a part of your healing. When you acknowledge the role it has played in your life — even if it’s holding you back now — you diffuse its power and can begin to separate your own beliefs from what the story tells you.

2. Recognize and process body grief

   • Give yourself the time and space to feel the sadness and loss of the body you desire. This article I wrote can help you get started.

3. Widen your window of tolerance

   • Get curious about the situations that lead you to feel unaccepting of and unsafe in your body. What are you doing or who are you with when you feel triggered?

   • Learn kind and constructive ways to build your capacity to sit with discomfort and to release, reset, or self-soothe when you feel numb or overwhelmed.

4. Meet yourself where you are

   • Recognize that healing is a process. Seasons of transition are inherently uncomfortable. But it’s this discomfort that can help you gain perspective and self-awareness and allow you to take steps forward. Trust that how you feel about your body today is a valid place to be in your journey and it’s not a fixed state.

   • Validating where you are is an act of radical acceptance rather than resistance. Instead of getting stuck in a state of contraction, struggle, and exhaustion, you can meet yourself with honesty, compassion, and perspective. With this lens — as opposed to feeling complacent or resigned — you’ll be more receptive to your needs today and able to respond in a way that helps you feel supported and capable of taking the next best step tomorrow.

5. Nurture with kindness

   • Nurturing with kindness is finding the middle path where you’re able to hold two truths at once; you can acknowledge the body discomfort and still choose to live in a way that feels authentic and meaningful to you.

   • But we don’t care for what we don’t value. The practices above can help you honor and validate yourself and all parts of your story. They will help you gain clarity about what matters most to you and take aligned action when you feel ready.

Moving Forward

These practices may sound simple, but please give yourself grace if they don’t feel easy to implement. They’re not supposed to be! How we think about and treat our bodies is a biopsychosocial phenomenon. In other words, our beliefs and behaviors are a product of the environment in which we grew up, our life experiences, the culture and communities we live in today, our psychology, and our biology (yes, generational trauma is real and body trauma and anxiety can be passed down). It takes time to integrate all these parts of us. And we often benefit from the safe support of a therapist or coach to do so.

This article is not designed to be a complete step-by-step guide, but rather a framework to offer perspective and hope that there’s a gentle, non-diet, and evidence-based way forward. If you’d like to learn the tools and skills to incorporate these mindsets and support your emotional and physical health, get in touch for a free 30-minute consult.