Truth Bombs About Body Image, Diet Culture & Self-Worth

These are truthful statements about your body image, about the culture of dieting, about your self worth and so much more.

Transcript

Hello,

I'm Vania Fetidis from Peaceful Eating and I want to welcome you to the Peaceful Eating approach to creating a natural relationship with your body and food.

You know,

Most of us are surrounded by and consistently fed confusing and unhealthy messages about health,

Weight,

Fitness and worthiness.

It's helpful to raise your awareness about these messages and actively counter them with healthful,

Truthful messages instead.

I call them truth bombs,

So that you can feed those parts of you that want to have a more peaceful,

Nurturing relationship with yourself,

Your body and food.

It'll help to engage with this over and over so the messages can sink in.

But do use this in any way that's helpful to you.

It might be you want to listen to this recording again and again,

Repeat yourself the ones that resonate or maybe even write some of them down so that when you see them you can speak them out loud to yourself.

It's amazing how powerful that is.

Okay,

Let's get going with the truth bombs.

It is not your fault that you've been struggling with food and your body image.

What's happened is that you've internalized messages from our culture that you must be in a smaller body to be lovable,

Acceptable and valued.

But this is not true.

The truth is that all bodies are good bodies,

No matter their size,

Shape,

Colour,

Ability,

Sexual orientation,

Age,

Nationality,

Political persuasion,

Religion or health status.

All bodies deserve respect,

No matter what,

And there are absolutely no exceptions.

You are undeniably lovable,

No matter how much you weigh,

No matter what size you are.

Perhaps you don't believe me,

But here's the thing,

You don't have to believe it for this to be true.

Let's talk about scales.

I think they're for fish and reptiles.

Your worth is not measured in pounds or kilograms,

Inches or centimetres.

I promise you,

If you get rid of your scale,

The sky will not fall down.

In fact,

Getting rid of your scale will probably free you more than you can ever imagine,

Even if it feels really scary to think about it.

Getting rid of your scale is one of the most radical acts you can do on your body freedom journey.

You see,

When you're worried about the number on the scale,

It makes it really,

Really hard to tune into your hunger and fullness.

You might ignore your hunger or not eat until you're satisfied because you want to make sure that number goes down.

So weighing yourself leads you away from your ability to tune into your body's needs.

And becoming a peaceful eater means developing the ability to tune into your body.

Dieting and restricting are often the cause of a dysfunctional relationship with food,

Rather than the solution to it.

Overeating does not mean you're weak or worthless.

At some point,

Possibly a long time ago,

You learned that food could bring comfort and that it could ease the pain.

You may have needed its help.

You've been doing the best you can with what you have.

While you're learning new ways to meet your needs,

You may still resort to it from time to time.

But this doesn't make you a bad,

Weak or worthless person.

And it never will.

When you have the urge to eat when you're not hungry,

It's often a signal from inside of you to pay attention to yourself.

There's something you're needing,

That you've learned to meet with food.

But food won't solve this problem.

Learning how to decode your needs and then how to meet them appropriately is much more likely to lead you to a satisfying life.

Your body has a natural weight range that it'll settle into when you stop dieting and restricting and instead,

Most of the time,

Meet the needs of your body,

Mind and spirit appropriately.

It's absolutely possible to come to a place of acceptance and appreciation of your body.

Think about this.

Every experience you've ever had,

Every taste you've ever experienced,

Every single thing you've ever seen,

From a thunderstorm to a sunset,

Everything you've ever heard,

Birds singing,

A baby crying,

Everything you've ever touched,

From walking barefoot on a beach,

To the feeling of joy,

To the feeling of sadness,

Everything you've ever smelled,

Whether it's a Sunday roast or dog poo on your shoe,

All of it,

You've experienced by virtue of having a body.

Your body.

Your body has enabled every single experience you've ever had,

Including every single thought,

Idea or action.

The best way to settle into your natural weight range is to learn how to feel your feelings,

To challenge your conditioning and to remember how to eat in a natural way.

Dropping the fight with yourself will enable you to become curious about your behavior.

Safety leads to discovery,

And with discovery you can change in a gentle,

Kind and nurturing way.

Comfort eating might ease the pain you're feeling temporarily,

But afterwards you still have to deal with those unmet needs and unfelt feelings,

And then on top of that,

There'll usually be some other feelings caused by the emotional eating.

You can learn how to accept and feel any feeling.

No feeling is too big.

No feeling is too much.

You can survive any feeling.

You just need to learn how.

You can also learn how to soften your inner critic and cultivate a kinder,

More compassionate inner voice.

It's not your fault that our culture is obsessed with weight,

Diets,

Fitness and health,

All of which are making us more stressed and,

Guess what,

Probably less healthy.

Eating yourself well,

Mostly according to hunger and fullness,

Is a primary act of self-care.

When you can do that,

You'll start to take better care of yourself in other areas too.

You can learn to trust yourself around food again.

Emotional eating is often a result of poor boundary setting,

And you can learn how to create and maintain healthier boundaries.

The good news is,

There's no perfect way to eat.

Your body's needs fluctuate,

So guess what,

Your eating will as well.

All feelings are temporary.

All feelings pass.

You can learn how to allow them.

Thinking or believing something doesn't make it true,

And you can learn how to untangle from your unhelpful beliefs about yourself,

Food,

Your body,

Exercise and even health.

And here's another thing,

Just because your mind tells you to do something,

It doesn't mean you have to obey.

Food is only food.

It's not good,

It's not bad,

It's not your friend,

It's not your enemy.

Food does not have any inherent emotional power.

It's true that paying attention to the difficult feelings can be hard,

But the good news is that it does get easier the more you practice.

Whereas dieting never gets easier,

In fact it gets harder and harder.

It is possible to learn how to eat when you're hungry and stop when you're comfortably full.

It is possible to unlearn the crazy food rules our culture has inflicted upon you.

It's possible to learn how to accept and feel any emotion.

It's possible to become kinder and more compassionate towards yourself.

It's possible to accept and respect your body as it is right now.

It's possible to have a full life,

Free from food and weight worries,

A life in which you feel free to focus on the things that deeply matter to you.

You can create a peaceful relationship with food,

Your feelings,

Your whole self and your body.

And you know what?

The more you resolve to ditch diets and make peace with yourself,

Your body and food,

The more you're enabling others to free themselves from body oppression and the more you're becoming a part of the solution.

So thank you for taking this time out for yourself.

Thank you for choosing another way.

Thank you for choosing to honour your whole self.

Thank you for choosing peace.

Have a wonderful day.

Reviews

TYVM ❤️

What an incredibly informative and affirming talk. Thank you so much!

Very wonderful. I will listen repeatedly for reinforcement of excellent true concepts. Thank you!

So helpful to hear! Will save to put on repeat! Thank you!

Thank you thank you Vania - I just got BOMBED, and I love it! A beautiful empowering meditation, so encouraging and uplifting. Wonderful!!

Uplifting and encouraging. Thank you for sharing this important message!

I love this so much! Thank you 🙏

This is a wonderful summary of all the points that I have been learning these past two years since I dumped diet culture. I’m bookmarking this as a great reminder of all these truths that diet culture tries to cover up. Thank you!!!

I needed to learn ALL of this. Thank you, Vania!

Begin to break the diet culture mindset. Finding new strength and awakening. So grateful to have a guide like this.

This serves me as a great reminder that my worth is not attached to my worth. I will be listening to this regularly.

Very motivational! I felt like a friend was talking to me😊Thank you!

Thank you for a positive and supportive talk.

Honest and inspiring

Thanks! I felt validated.

Very nice. Respectful way to treat yourself and body! Namaste

Thank you. Great points.

This is something I will listen to again and again. Thank you!

Brilliant! Thank you Vania for this and all of your work! I love your articles and newsletters, always so powerful and eye-opening, though provoking. Thank you for helping to dispel the societal lies we've been taught about food, our bodies and our worth. Deep bows and blessings to you ❤️💕💖🙏🙏🙏