Navigating the food and weight commentary from a non-diet perspective in a world that is full of diet culture isn’t easy. So how do we do it?
You’re in it.
You’re on the journey of intuitive eating and recovery.
You’ve officially opted out of diet culture.
So now what?
What do you do when you begin to walk in a new level of freedom and those around you haven’t chosen that same path?
You may have begun to experience and realize that you are different and yet, you’re still in relationship with people who don’t understand and / or are threatened / intimidated by what you’re doing. They may still even have negativity around food, weight and performative love.
The number one thing to do is to ask yourself…
how are you approaching the food & weight commentary?
It’s important to note at the start that we cannot make the assumption that everyone doesn’t want to understand or listen or learn to not do harm.
When we’ve experienced rejection, it can be easy to think that everyone is against you, however, that’s simply not the case.
Learning to Discern
Learning to discern is the first key to this. Who is okay to have these conversations with and who to not have them with in an effort to avoid getting your head chopped off.
There will be those who aren’t ready, those who don’t understand but are willing to learn and those who are already willing to offer their support.
Are you okay to disagree?
The next piece is to determine whether you’re at a place of being okay even if someone disagrees with you. Can you receive diet feedback to a non-diet commentary.
If you feel that you’re not ready to receive feedback and potential criticism, avoiding food/body language as it exists in the intuitive eating world will be important. Determine the individuals that you need to avoid food/body language with if you’re looking to receive any sort of validation around what you’re doing.
At the end of the day, no matter how someone responds to you and this journey you’re on, remember these three things…
1. that your body is not, and never will be the problem.
2. if someone tries to convince you that if you lose weight your problems will go away, it’s a mind control programming problem of theirs and not a body problem of yours.
3. Your insecurities, fight/flight/freeze responses, yuck from the past, adversity in the right now – none can be fixed by having a smaller body.
