The Body Love Society – Thrive Global
Todays guest is Jenna Free, who is one of the two lovely ladies behind TheBody Love Society! Listen in as we discuss thoughts on diet culture, intuitive eating when you want to lose weight, and how to accept your body!
Jenna is passionate about body love, and uses the terms un-dieting as she shares about her passion for self-love and self-acceptance on this wonderful episode. (Be sure tocheck out IGto learn more about The Body Love Societys free challenge too!)
The Body Love Society works with women who are interested in intuitive eating and un-dieting. Usually, their clients have struggled with social messaging that tends to lead to obsessions around food, which includes eating, dieting, and body image. At The Body Love Society, theyre passionate about living a life ofwellness without obsession.Jenna also clarifies that intuitive eating and un-dieting are not code words for just give up or quit caring. Choosing to eat intuitively is a way of honoring and caring for yourself, and is not about just throwing in the towel!
Jenna and her partnerdesire to live an abundant, vibrant, and energetic life.but without restricting or obsessing about it! Theyve found that women are often fearful about letting go of control of their food. This seems to be connected to the idea that we can achieve some sort of ideal state when focus on our weight. The reality is, however, that there is no connection between losing weight/controlling food intake and being abundant, energetic, and feeling great!
Dieting isnt saving you from food obsessions. It is CREATING your food obsession.And as youve probably experienced for yourself, dieting never ends with you feeling wonderful and being free to live your life. Instead, it constantly requires more, more, more. Its never ending, exhausting, and. completely unnecessary!
Is intuitive eating just eat whatever you want, whenever you want?
Well.yes and no.
If youve had a dieting mindset for most of your life, youve internalized so many messages about what you can and cant eat, what foods are good and bad, and how you can control your food intake. Youve also gotten used to constantly restricting and binging. A lot of obsession and control are involved!
If you move from that dieting mindset straight into intuitive eating, sometimes you do start eating everythingbut you miss the whole listening to your body part. Instead, youre in rebellion mode. (That can be part of the process, but its not where youll stay!)
As you do the mindset work and recalibrate yourself, you begin to experience the freedom of eating anything you wantas a part of listening to your body and its needs.
So YES once youve done the mindset work, intuitive eating does mean eating whatever you want. Its just that the way you understand that (and practice it) is significantly different once you get out of your dieters brain.
The next most common question is often:Is intuitive eating healthy?
Jenna describes herself as the cute chubby one as a 16 year old. Looking back she can see just how cute she wasbut at the time she decided she needed to get on a diet and start exercising. And if eating more veggies and moving more was where it stopped, it would have been fine! However, weight loss and dieting lends itself to a never enough mentality.
In her life, this led tofood regimens and workout routines that became more intense, more restrictive, and more consuming.(Can you resonate?)
Jenna became all too familiar with the dieting lifestyle, and experienced falling off the wagon (and climbing back on) over and over again. She found that her world was her body, and she was consumed with thoughts about food and eating. During this time she would have cheat days and binge on huge amounts of food, then not eat anything for the rest of the week.
As an intuitive eater, shes been able to move towards mindfulness, creativity, and awareness of the present moment instead. Rather than obsessing about food consumption and rule following,she is able to release all that in favor of practices that actually make her feel good!
While trying on her bathing suit years ago, Jenna realized that her preoccupation was with the 5 pounds she needed to lose so that everything would be perfect. Rather than focusing on how fun her upcoming vacation would be, she was devising ways to lose weight. It was an aha moment to recognize thatevery moment seemed to be marked with what she needed to fix or change before she could fully enjoy her life.
After a few of these aha moments in a row, she decided that her body looking a certain way wasnt going to fix her life in the ways she kept thinking it would. As she journeyed through this process towards becoming and intuitive eater and un-dieting once and for all, she realized that she had suffered through the dieting lifestyle for nothing!
Dieting is like holding on to a ledge SO tightly, with extreme fear about falling or losing control. And then when you finally let go
the ground is 3 feet away.
All that fear, control, and obsessing are unnecessary.
When youre engaged in the dieting mindset, what youre searching for (weight loss) isnt the answer you need. What you truly desire is usually something like: worthiness, love, acceptance, energy, wellness, confidence, and more. Andyou can have ALL of those thingswithout having to diet or be a certain size.
Sharing about intuitive eating and un-dieting isnt as simple as showing before and after pictures that show weight loss! After all, thats not the point of this lifestyle. So what attracts people to it, and what fears threaten to hold them back?
Well, many women express lots of fears about possibly gaining weight if they give intuitive eating a try.
Jenna shares that The Body Love Society approach is toremove the hyper-focused attention on weight. After all, many women have lived in that weight-based mindset for 10, 15, 25 years. Years! So if your biggest concern is weight gain, the first question for you to consider is
What has your obsession with weight given you so far?
When you can recognize that it hasnt provided anything desirable so far, youre free to choose somewhere else to focus your time and energy. And remember: Youre not just giving something up. Youre gaining something too!
With intuitive eating, your body may lose weight, gain weight, or stay the same. However,that is the LEAST interesting part of this journey. The newfound sense of freedom (and the dieting baggage you leave behind) is where the fun is!
It can be scary to STOP focusing on something youve obsessed over for years
but it feels SO good once you finally let go.
At some point, you can decide to change your mindset and refocus your life.Every single day you can shift your thoughtsfrom control, restriction, fear, and obsession. Instead, you can choose to embrace freedom, self-love, courage, and acceptance of your body exactly as it is.
Just a reminder this is not about giving up on taking care of yourself.
When intuitive eating, you still get to think about feeling good, and youre still taking care of yourself. Youre justdoing it from a place of self-care and compassionate listening, rather than pursuing weight loss as the magic cure.
When you stop dieting, you might experience changes in your body. Thats to be expected! Coming off of years worth of dieting is going to involve some shifting and recalibration. Thats normal, and nothing to stress over! Let your body find its groove, and prioritize balance and self-care.Expect ups and down, and learn to listen to your bodys needs through the process.
Read more:
The Body Love Society - Thrive Global
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