By Hilary Kinavey, MA, LPC
Last week Jess Weiner, a well-known speaker in the arena of body acceptance and self esteem wrote an article and had a Today show appearance to discuss how health and body acceptance collided in her life. Her article has sparked debate in the Health at Every Size® community, and you can read some of the responses here, here, here and here.
Weiner, in her TODAY show interview, said she has identified a struggle in the body acceptance movement. She and many of the women she talks to could embrace body acceptance but are not doing anything for their health. This comment is so connected to the very life force and essence of my work in the Health at Every Size movement that I feel compelled to respond.
It is easy to assert that body acceptance is essentially health promoting. This wonderful, logical idea is what captivated me 15 years ago and called me to this field. It is known that when we experience love and self-acceptance, we are more equipped to act in our own best interest. This truth is so far-reaching in its effect on our lives that we can find places of calm and peace that transcend the old disordered and deprived thoughts about ourselves; the one’s formerly rooted in worthlessness and isolation.
When I hear a woman say words similar to Weiner’s, I am most ignited and passionate about this body acceptance and Health at Every Size® movement. I want to stand on my chair and yell (a kind and warm yell, if that is possible) “No, no, don’t abandon ship here. Keep going! There is more! Don’t run from yourself now! This is where the body-acceptance stuff gets really good!”
Loving our bodies does not mean living in opposition to our health. Accepting and loving yourself into better health (or perhaps despite your health) is a simple and beautiful option that has spawned the “new peace movement” and has become a foundational tenet of Health at Every Size®. Every body is a good body.
Embracing this tenet is much more challenging for those who've had an eating disorder, suffered from body hatred or live in a larger body. Our bodies, especially after years of trying to change them, can become difficult to learn to love, trust, and care for because they are often identified as the source of all pain. We question whether our bodies are betraying us. Standing with our bodies and claiming them as a part of ourselves is difficult. This is especially true when we are used to abandoning them when facing the challenges that come with inhabiting a body, such as health concerns.
So, it seems that there is an elephant in the room here. At this time, in this culture, there is a space that exists between loving our body and acting on behalf of our health. For many of my clients, myself, and I guess much of our culture, it can be hard to find the self-love and acceptance we need in that gray space. The space is cob-webby, full of the old rhetoric and words, the language of fear. The space is one where we hand over the expertise of our bodies to others, and we hope that we find a better, more improved version of ourselves on the other side (remember, this has never really worked before).
Healing from this body-directed hatred and moving towards health is quite a process, certainly far more layered and involved than making a simple decision to join a movement. So, when a person that represents medical authority gives you medical news that concerns you, it can feel like the best thing to do is abandon the “self-love” ship and go back to relying on the dieting mind to tell you what to do again. There aren’t any new answers in returning to the old diet-y path, but it sure can be clearer than a non-diet, approach Health at Every Size® approach to food, weight and health. They definitely do not garner the “atta-girl” kudos that can make us feel better under these circumstances.
Feeling ambivalent about Health at Every Size® is part of the process. This ambivalence helps us learn our own truths about our bodies, our minds and our hearts. HAES™ and body acceptance are truly helpful and life changing and can be ripe with complexities. There are no easy answers here, ask anyone that is putting this to work in their lives. The path to self-acceptance and self-love is a long and winding road, one so worth trekking. One of the biggest challenges is the courage it takes to keep going.
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