Is Body Love really the goal? What about body neutrality?
Today is National Love Your Body Day!
Did ya know? Bet you did and you're celebrating your body and all it does for you.
Or, maybe like most people, you haven't circled the date in your calendar and you absolutely are in no NO mood to celebrate your body today.
And that's totally OK.
Newsflash: You never have to get to the point of LOVING YOUR BODY.
Yes yes, I know all about the Dove ads and the influencers telling us that we must love our bodies in order to heal, but I'm calling BS on that. The truth is that the majority of us do not get to this place of continuous body love. We have so many road blocks, stories, and trauma to wade through that arriving to the destination of BODY LOVE can often seem unattainable.
So we just give up and go on hating our here-and-now body.
At Happy Valley Nutrition, we do NOT preach body love.
"But wait? Isn't that what you do as non-diet RDs?" I hear you shouting at me.
Yes... and no.
We work with our clients to help them better and deepen their relationship with their body (and food), but getting to the place of love is not the final destination OR our entire mission.
"Ok, so if body love isn't the goal, what is?" You're giving me the side-eye, I can feel it! 🙄
The goal is body kindness and body respect, which can be accessed no matter where you are in your body acceptance journey.
What does body kindness/respect look like?
Feeding your body when it's hungry, or working on eating consistently through the day
Moving your body in a way that feels good....or not moving at all
Wearing clothes that fit appropriately (undergarments, too!) and feel good
Exploring body image with people who feel safe to you
So you see, when we stop the struggle to get to body LOVE and instead sit in the place of body kindness, respect, liberation, satisfaction (or however you want to call it)-- a whole new world opens for us. We can stop pushing and struggling. And if you can get to that place of LOVE, bravo to you! But if you can't, I promise you're not doing this whole body positive thing incorrectly.
For me, there are times when I think my body is pretty awesome, and then times when I really have to sit in grief and tough feelings around it. All are valid and one isn't better than the other. It's just part of our body image story.
