How's Your Body Image Doing?
4 quick questions + this week's body image lesson
3/26: “Dieting As A Colonial & Racial Technology Of Forgetting” on VOLUMINATI.
April: Release of “Mild Chunky Salsa,” an absurdist, low fi 8-episode season of 5(ish)-minute podcasts made by me about my favorite fat-positive & food things.
Checking in weekly with your body image can help you feel less overwhelmed and may even help you spot positive or negative patterns. Let’s do this!
No matter how you answered, kudos for taking the time to notice how you feel. Next question…
Just naming factors that might impact your body image is a great practice in self-knowledge and self-awareness. Next question…
Having a small, easy action item helps you learn to take care of yourself and your body image. Ready for your last check-in question?
This week, notice if checking in with your body image helped you feel more clear or empowered.
Scroll all the way down & hit play to do a quick grounding exercise + teensy pep talk (I just added this!) with me and listen to this week’s body image lesson, or keep reading…
Before we get started, let’s ground a little:
Wiggle your fingers.
Wiggle your toes.
Unclench your jaw.
Unclench you shoulders.
Unclench your belly.
Unclench your thighs.
Now take 4 big, slow breaths. As you inhale, I want you to make your belly as big as possible and on the exhale, imagine you’re slowly blowing out a candle.
It’s an especially difficult time for those of us who care about body autonomy and ending weight bias, and we can’t control how long this will go on. We can, however, always remember that our bodies aren’t the problem. Stigma is.
Right now many of us feel gaslit because GLP-1 companies are using health as a way to make every person in a larger body feel that we are ill or have the wrong relationship to food. They’re saying this isn’t fatphobia; it’s “the cure.” It 100% is fatphobia (not a cure). It 100% is gaslighting. Both of these are always wrong.
No matter what the culture says or does, the truth is that your body is good. Regardless of your size or health status, you and your body are always good, and always worthy of respect, love and care.
If you are tired, hungry, headachy, unmotivated, anxious, tired , constipated, forgetting people’s names the second after they say them, waking up with dry mouth, compulsively thrifting, plagued with nightmares, TIRED, jaw clenchy, butt clenchy, cranky or unable to stop refreshing Instagram, I’d like to remind you that you are having a totally normal human response to an extended period of insecurity and fear.
I’d love to remind you that being tired or cranky, achey or on-edge doesn’t mean your body has failed you. It means it’s communicating with you. That’s a