Do you think Size acceptance equals self acceptance
Size acceptance = self acceptance... or so I thought. But here was the irony...accepting myself, it turns out, actually had very little to do with the physical size of my body.
I know now (what I couldn't see back then) that whether I was anorexic, 'normal' or outsize, I still struggled with self-acceptance. It turned out that no body size, in itself, could actually make me feel good enough.
No, for me, self acceptance came about, when I finally realized that the whole size acceptance thing was a mental job. I had to change my thinking about me as a person, not just my body.
Because whether my body was thinner or fatter - in the end really didn't matter.Size acceptance
(of all my sizes) had to happen in my head. I had to get my MIND over this whole fatter-thinner story!
Do you think dieting leads to size-acceptance
Many dieters aren't even overweight
Much of the time I hated myself and my body - I wasn't overweight which is precisely why I know I needed a healthy mind and body solution rather than merely following more
weight loss advice.
I know I'm not the only diet dummy who fell into that trap. But here's a photo of me before I went on the diet on which I became
anorexic.
I weighed 51 kgs (112lbs) the day I started my 'anorexia' diet - my weight would have fallen into what the
insurance ideal
would have rated as the absolutely ideal range.
But in my head I had no acceptance even of what was supposedly 'ideal' and that was because self acceptance had to come before size acceptance could follow.
By the way, you'll notice that in this picture I have no head - in a fit of self-hatred I tore it off! And acutually, now that I think of it, it's really rather symbolic. During my frantic dieting days, like when I got anorexia, I really did lose my head!
Not even losing 101 pounds would have managed to quieten my body critic or bring me any closer to self or size acceptance.
Do you think the fact that my body was pretty much at ideal stopped me from dieting or
exercising obsessively?
No ways! And guess what - until you look for a healthy mind and body solution, instead of just weight loss advice, it won't stop many of you either.
Having run workshops in different corners of the globe - there's one thing I notice no matter where I am. The vast majority of people who look back at their bodies when they first started with what became their years of following weight loss advice and weight loss tips, tell me they'd kill to have their pre-diet body now!
Only now with the wisdom of hindsight can they see their body wasn't as bad as they though back then. Only now can they reach size acceptance of the body they once felt was too fat, too hippy or whatever else.
Isn't that an eye-opener?
The solution? Self acceptance leads to size acceptance
During 1992 and 1993, I lost 5 children. The first three miscarried and after that the first of our twin sons was stillborn,followed by the other who only lived for 45 minutes.
Life is odd the way it happens because strangely enough it was all these losses that turned out to be the gift that made me relook my life, invest in my spiritual growth which turned out to be what eventually lead to self-acceptance.
And once I had learnt to love me because of my many imperfections (not in spite of them) then loving my size and shape became a breeze. And don't you just love what Joy Nash says on this video?
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