I Hate My Body and Leaning Into Body Grief
Diet and wellness culture teach us to hate our bodies
How often do you have the thought that you hate your body? I know that I have had this thought many times over the years. I hear it from clients sitting in my office who want to feel better. I hear it from friends and family as they pick themselves apart for any number of reasons. I hear it from coworkers and strangers on the street. This idea of hating our bodies is SO common that we accept it as a truth.
But what do we actually mean when we say this? For a lot of people, this statement around hating their body is deeply connected to diet and wellness culture.
Christy Harrison, a dietitian and author of The Wellness Trap, defines wellness culture as: “a set of values that equates wellness with moral goodness, and posits certain behaviors—and a certain type of body—as the path to achieving that supposed rectitude.” In other words, wellness culture tells us that there is really only one way to have a “good enough” body, and that we should be on the constant path to achieving this. It also tells us that we have total control over our health and well-being, and that we should remain focused on this at all costs.
Where do you see wellness culture showing up in your life?
Some of the ways we might see wellness culture in our day to day:
Diet plan advertisements that tell us it is the answer to achieving the “perfect body”
Ideas around “never missing a day” of exercise even at the expense of our mental or physical health
Forcing yourself to do self-care practices that don’t feel good because you are “supposed to”
Eating only “clean foods” because of fear mongering around certain ingredients (even if you don’t like those foods or have trouble accessing them financially)
In a culture that is deeply entrenched in wellness culture and diet culture, it is no wonder that we are so focused on our bodies and any supposed “flaws” that we can find. This idea of having a “good enough” body is reinforced at every turn and is often difficult to get space from. It is not so easy to heal in an environment that continues to talk about and push the thing you are trying to heal from.
Our relationship with food takes us out of our body
Have you struggled with your relationship with food? Perhaps you have been on diets (either for a short time or chronically - meaning you have dieted for many years), or have been diagnosed with (or feel strongly that you should be diagnosed with) disordered eating or an eating disorder. Wherever you might fall on this spectrum, ways that we “deal” with this negative relationship with food all have the same outcome - they take us OUT of our body and following some arbitrary set of rules or ideas about how we should interact with food.
This is important to understand, because when we are living outside of our body, it makes it easier to criticize and compare. Wellness culture, diet culture, our relationship with food, eating disorders - it all compounds on itself and makes it so that hating our bodies is both accepted and encouraged. No wonder that we have thoughts around hating our bodies - we are taught that this is the way we SHOULD feel.
Why simply “being grateful” for our body falls short
A lot of well-meaning people might give you some tips on how to do this, including the idea of being grateful for your body. Now I don’t disagree with this sentiment, but I do know that this statement is easier said than done.You might have even tried to do this by listing out things you are grateful for, such as the ability to experience the world in your body, or that it has “carried you where you need to go.”
So why does it feel like this falls short? One possible answer to this is that it is hard to be grateful for a demonized body. This can feel very true for those of us that live in fat, disabled, or non-white bodies. When we have been told that certain bodies are bad, it makes it very difficult to be grateful for that body.
You might also be struggling with trying to implement ideas like body positivity - which again, make sense in theory, but can be very difficult to implement in real life. If you hate your body, the idea of feeling positively about it can feel like a giant leap. Even the idea of body acceptance might feel daunting. How can we be expected to accept our body when the world around us tells us its wrong?
Now I’m not saying that body acceptance or body positivity are unhelpful - far from it! I think that these can be really useful tools depending on the person. But, for those of you that might have a hard time feeling like these ideas are doable for you, I want to offer another place to start: body grief.
What is body grief?
Body grief is the loss that we feel around the body that we could have had, or possibly had at one time. This includes feelings around the “what ifs” - for example, feeling like you have been waiting for your life to begin once you achieve that “perfect body” that you may have been aiming for (note that is in quotes because it does not actually exist!). Body grief doesn’t only have to do with weight (although for a lot of people there is a lot of grief around body size), and also can include grief around changing ability or mobility.
Similarly to grief around other things in our lives, body grief has its ups and downs. It may be something that you continuously process, especially considering that natural bodies do continue to change over time and as we age.
Some of the ways I have experienced body grief:
I stopped getting body compliments
For the 20 or so years that I dieted and struggled with my relationship with food, I would always get excited when my body would shrink because that would typically mean getting compliments from others. I talk often with my clients that there is truly nothing like the “high” you feel when someone compliments you. These compliments felt so good because it was proof that I was being “good” and doing what our culture expected me to do.
Having a harder time fitting in public spaces
When I was in a smaller body I never had to worry about fitting in certain seats or making sure a seatbelt would buckle. We can experience a huge amount of body grief when our body feels like it “doesn’t fit” any more. In this situation it would NOT have been helpful for me to simply appreciate me body and let it go. I needed to grieve this. I needed to grieve the fact that the world is not made for all body sizes. I needed to grieve that I might need to speak up and advocate for my comfort which is not always so easy. What was helpful was leaning into this grief in these moments, which also allowed me to NOT blame my body or myself and instead make it known that certain places are not accommodating when they should be.
Trying to shrink my body was my entire identity
I was so attached to the idea of changing my body that I had no idea who I was without it. So much of who I was felt tied to this idea - from the books that I bought to career choices. There was so much grief in acknowledging how much time and energy I put into this and what I could have been focusing on instead. I had to grieve the fact that I didn’t even know what I wanted for myself, and that diet and wellness culture had stolen years from me that I would never get back. Not letting myself feel this would have made it harder for me to decide to live differently.
How would it feel to truly grieve the body that you are longing for? Instead of trying to put a positive spin on how we are feeling about our body, or try to find some bit of gratefulness for it, what would it be like to accept that you might be grieving for a body that you don’t have?
How to let body grief in
If the idea of body grief resonates with you, you might be wondering how to let these feelings in. Here are a few ways to do this:
Show yourself some compassion and lean in
If this is the first time you are hearing about or letting yourself experience body grief, let the idea just be there. Notice what feelings you have around it and lean into them. Instead of avoiding big feelings about it (as we often do as a way of protecting ourselves), lean into those feelings. Avoiding the feelings doesn’t make them go away, so instead, acknowledge that they are there and let yourself experience them. Learning how to coexist with our feelings is such an important way to know that we can feel what we are feeling without those emotions completely hijacking us.
Reflect on what you know about diet culture and reject the idea that weight loss won’t fix your body grief
When faced with thoughts of hating our body, many of us will turn to ways of shrinking our body and pursue weight loss. This is heralded as the “solution” to feeling bad about ourselves - if the problem is the size of our body, then the answer is clearly weight loss, right?
This message is pushed on us from all sides as well - whether it is at our doctor’s office, from family and friends who think they are helping, and in self-help books galore. It feels like “common knowledge” that this is THE answer to our negative feelings about our bodies. When discussing my struggles with my own body years ago, my own therapist even told me that I should try going on a diet. This shit is everywhere, my friends, even in our safe spaces.
Do meaningful things even amidst the grief
Reflect on what you truly want out of life and what you value. What are the things that bring you meaning? What fills you up? The answer here isn’t to find a way to move past the grief and do these things, but instead to FEEL the grief AND do meaningful things at the same time.
It’s normal to feel like we hate our bodies because we have been taught to do so. We are told over and over again that our bodies are not good enough and that we need to change them. The first step to getting out of this cycle is recognizing that it is happening and that it is NOT your fault. How would it feel to lean into body grief and let yourself feel the disappointment around the body you thought you were supposed to have? The body that you were taught was “right?”
If you find yourself struggling with your relationship with your body or exploring body grief, you aren’t alone. You also deserve help if you are struggling and need guidance. As a body image therapist in Florida, I would be happy to walk alongside you and help you unlearn while also building the skills and mindset to make meaningful choices in your life.
