The Reality of Body Confidence: What we are told is ALL wrong!

Imagine a life where you're free from the traps of diet culture and body shaming, where you trust and respect your body and find joy in food and rest. Sounds far-fetched? As your dietitian and body image specialist, I'm here to tell you - it's very much possible. This episode is a deep dive into the lies diet culture feeds us about body confidence and how it traps us in a vicious cycle of unsustainable diet plans and body shame. These efforts often lead to more disordered eating, confusion, and incessant comparison with others. The promised body confidence is never achieved, leaving us with more baggage than when we started.

But, there's a way out, a path to true body love and confidence. We explore how to respect, take care of, and trust our bodies, and to find freedom and acceptance in our here and now bodies. As we navigate this transformative journey, I invite you to listen to this episode for a reality check and a healthier perspective on body confidence. Remember, every step toward loving your body is a victory. You've got this.

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:00

Welcome to Bites in Body Love. I'm Jamie, a dietitian and body image specialist. Join me to liberate yourself from diets and body shame, embracing true freedom and confidence with food and body. Take your place at the table on this transformative journey towards a life of freedom and confidence. Today, we are going to be talking about body confidence and what we are told we need to do to get body confidence, and how. It is all totally incorrect and leading you in a horrible direction that will never actually bring you true, lasting, strong, unwavering confidence with your body.

Speaker 1: 0:39

So typically, we are told that we need to change our body. We are told we need a smaller this, a larger this, a more toned this, a different this. We are told we must change our body in order to gain body confidence. We are also told we must never give up trying to take charge of our body and be super militant and make sure we know we are just controlling everything that goes in right. We need to make sure we're calorie counting. We need to be up to date on the latest diet. We must never give up dieting. We are told if we are not successful at dieting or changing our body, that we are failing and that we just need to try harder. We are told that we failed our diet and we just haven't found the right one. So we need to keep searching, keep making that our life mission, continue taking 95% of our energy to continue the diet, to find a new diet, to research the new diet, because we are the ones failing and we just need to try harder. We are told that we need to give up pleasures, trust, joys like rest and good food, because that is not what taking care of ourself is. Taking care of ourself. To get body confidence is dieting, strictness, external rules, not breaking rules, living rigidly, being hyper anxious about this to make sure you're on top of things. We also are told that we cannot gain body confidence and body trust in our here and now bodies because we won't be lovable or acceptable or and we can't attain body confidence and acceptance and love in our here and now bodies. So we need to keep dieting, we need to change, we need to try harder and we need to try a new diet. We need to change our body, we need to lose weight, blah, blah, blah, blah. We are told that we can't have the life for the things we want without this quote unquote ideal body. So those are the things we're told that we need to do in order to get body confidence. And where does this leave us? Well, it leaves us continuing to keep trying.

Speaker 1: 3:14

Of course we're going to keep trying If we want body confidence real bad. We want to be able to feel comfortable, at least even if we're not confident. We want to be able to feel comfortable in our bodies and be able to tolerate our bodies. We want to know how to respect it and take care of ourselves. So of course we're going to keep trying. We're not going to give up on these tactics that they are telling us. So we'll go on another diet. Of course we're going to keep trying because we want body confidence, because we are also told that if we do acquire perfecting the diet, changing our body that's where our ideal life awaits, and we have put everything on hold and we don't want to keep it on hold anymore. We eventually want to get there We've been striving. So if we give up diets and trying to change our body, that also means that we give up our ideal life, and that is terrifying. So of course we're going to keep trying.

Speaker 1: 4:13

But then what happens? We keep trying, we try a new diet and we continue in this vicious cycle. What happens is we don't have something sustainable. We have something that there's no way we can keep up. We cannot keep up with this crazy diet or this crazy restrictive plan with exercise, or we can't keep up with continuing to shame our bodies in this way. We can't give up these joys. It's just naturally our bodies, our minds, are not going to be cool with that. So it's not sustainable and we never have something that's sustainable when we go that route.

Speaker 1: 4:55

We also never get what we paid for, what was promised to us this body confidence plus some baggage. So we never got what we paid for. But we also get baggage along with it as well, like more disordered eating, more confusion, more comparison of our bodies and behaviors to everyone around us, because we're even more confused about how to eat, how to be, why it's not working. We even feel more like a failure, so we're comparing ourselves more. We're still unable to appropriately, respectfully and compassionately respond to our body. So we still have this relationship like where we're like what the heck do we do? How the heck do we take care of this, how do we trust it, how we even begin to understand how we work together. I don't know. We still don't have trust in our bodies or food, and trust in our bodies and food helps to release us, but we don't have it. So we feel trapped, we feel tied to these diets.

Speaker 1: 6:00

And then we have body image thoughts still taking so much of our space up in our brain up maybe, but maybe even more space, because again it's another diet that we have tried to add to the relentless string of diets that we've already tried. And now we have all of these conflicting information taking up our brain space, making it even more confusing, making us feel like we're even more, like we're never gonna figure this out and like we're failing. And then if our body changes, it's still. It's never lasting. Many times we gain the weight back plus more. And if we lose and stay there, many times we have to really really keep up with a lot of disorder to eating and we, our mental health really hurts and it still never feels good enough. Body image and our relationship with our body and how we feel about our body is still never good enough. We still are hiding our body. We're still so fearful of what's going to happen with it. We still don't trust food. Body image never improved. We never got that body confidence that we were promised.

Speaker 1: 7:04

What we are being told come are all lies coming from diet culture, keeping us in the vicious cycle of distressing our body. So I want you to consider what you are hearing and ask yourself is this actually going to bring you to where you want to go? If this was helpful for you, I would advise you to go check out the episode on the vicious cycle of distressing your body and also the episode on the truth behind diet culture. Thank you for tuning in to Bites in Body Love. Ready for true food and body freedom? Apply to join my program True Body Image Freedom for Everybody, where we will guide you every step of the way. Dm me at jamie rd underscore on Instagram or Facebook for a no-pressure conversation so we can learn more about you and your fit for the program. Remember every step toward loving your body is a victory. Subscribe and leave a review to support our message of body liberation. Stay awesome and see you next time You've got this.