The worst thing I ever did for my body

Plus breaking down what it really means to eat intuitively.

(Originally published on Substack)

The worst thing I ever did for my body was buying into the (toxic parts of the) body positivity movement.

At the surface, body positivity should be a good thing. We should be able to love and appreciate our bodies no matter what’s going on. I support that idea and that aspect of the movement. But for me (and I know I’m not alone in this) buying into the deeper rhetoric of body positivity (which ignores the health aspects of nutrition, weight, movement, and what’s healthy vs what’s not) led me to another form of disordered eating and thinking that was as detrimental to my health as restriction and diet culture once was.

When I first was introduced to what became the body positivity movement, I was learning how to love my body after chronic disease. I had a lot of restrictive eating habits and really needed to unlearn those. At the beginning, body positivity helped me. I learned to care less about my outward appearance and to put more emphasis on fueling myself properly, caring for my mental health, and I was able to get out of restrictive eating patterns. Those things were good! I also finally gave myself permission to stop relying on HIIT workouts to stay in shape and healed my cortisol levels (I know that sounds very trendy right now, but eight-ish years ago, which is the time frame I’m talking about here, I actually had my cortisol levels tested via a DUTCH hormone test and my body was making almost 0 cortisol throughout the day. My adrenals were really struggling).

Here’s what was detrimental for me:

First, I bought into living a “soft” lifestyle and believed that was the most positive thing I could do for my body. I was seeing a lot of stories from women online about how once they stopped going to the gym and lifting heavy weights their lives became better, easier and softer, and their bodies became healthier. So I stopped strength training and became a yoga and pilates princess. I lost so much of the muscle that I had worked really hard to put on my body because I really bought into the idea of living a “soft, feminine life”. In reality, I did not need to stop strength training, I just needed more balance. It took me almost 4 years before I picked back up weights that were heavier than about 5 lbs and that was detrimental to my long term bone density and overall health. Muscle is so important for our health, and contrary to what the “soft lifestyle” movement tells you, pilates and yoga do not provide enough resistance or load to meaningfully build muscle or bone density (especially long term. They may help you at the very beginning of a fitness journey, but you can’t progressive overload - which is what you must do to build muscle - with these forms of exercise for very long).

Second, I quickly developed the opposite problem of under-eating - I started overeating, and fast. It is important to mention that I had always had a bit of a binge-restrict pattern. Once I unlearned excessive restriction, I spiraled into excessive bingeing. I had spent so many years ignoring my hunger and fullness cues that I didn’t know how to hear them anymore. What I (thought) I knew how to do was to eat intuitively. I was actively building my intuitive muscles at this time, and figured that eating intuitively must be as simple as eating whatever my body craved, whenever it craved it. That’s what I surmised from everyone I followed online talking about intuitive eating at least. They all recommended, “eat what your body wants to eat. It’s that simple! What are you hungry for? A burger - eat that! A cookie - have that!” So that’s what I did. For a long time I used this to justify bingeing. My body is craving ice cream? Great, I’ll eat as much as my body craves, because I’m following my intuition and I spent so long restricting my body that I just need to give it whatever it wants. I didn’t realize what I was doing - I thought I was eating healthily and mindfully. But in reality, I was overeating and harming my body.

Third, there were several lies I learned from the online world of body positivity that helped me continue thinking I was doing the right thing for a few years. Buzz phrases that I saw everywhere, like (paraphrased): “clothes should fit you, not you fit them,” “you’re meant to get bigger as you age, you’re not a child anymore”, one of my favorite ones from the energy worker community: “having a bigger body is part of doing energy work, you need extra food and fat to be able to hold space well,” to name a few, really influenced my body image. I steadfastly ignored that I was gaining weight for way too long, buying new clothes so I could ignore the unhealthy weight gain. I was convinced that this was the healthy outcome of living a softer, more feminine lifestyle, growing into a more adult body, and being a good space holder and energetic teacher/worker.

Fourth, I internalized the idea that there is no “good” food or “bad” food. I remember once saying that a donut could be as healthy as broccoli if you ate it with pure intention. I can hardly write that sentence now without cringing at younger me. That’s complete bullshit. A donut is delicious, but has little to no nutritional value, unlike broccoli which is quite nutritious. While I still don’t believe we should be “demonizing” foods, I now reject the notion that all foods are equal. What we eat does matter and it’s important to eat mostly nutritious foods (like broccoli), while making space to have things that are not nutritious but fun, like a donut.

Before I go further, I think it’s important to add that I am definitely not abdicating my personal responsibility in this journey. I chose to buy into this rhetoric for several years and I chose not to think more critically about it because it validated things I wished were true, like that I could eat whatever I wanted with no health implications or that I didn’t need to push my body to stay strong and in shape. It was much easier, for a long time, to believe that I was only getting “bigger” because I was processing so much energy and my body needed the extra padding for protection. While that was partially true — I did have to do quite a lot of mental/emotional work around safety and being seen to lose weight eventually — this was not the whole truth. The truth was that I was burnt out from years of fighting for my health and my life and I just needed it to all be easier.

The other truth was that I didn’t really understand proper nutrition. I am someone who has done a lot of research about different ways to eat and take care of the body for optimal health (as a result of having had a chronic illness). I had thought that was enough to teach me about nutrition. It wasn’t. I did not understand how to calculate how many calories I needed to eat each day, or how many macros (protein, fat, carbs) I needed to eat for optimal health. In fact, I’m embarrassed to admit that I became so anti-restriction that I truly used to tell myself that calories didn’t exist. I just knew that I needed to nourish myself, so I would overeat and call it nourishment. I got my hunger cues so messed up that at a certain point I didn’t think I was full or had eaten enough food if my stomach wasn’t distended because I’d filled it so much.

Oh and the cravings — they were so loud, so “intuitive” that I gave into them all the time. More chocolate? Why not, my body wants some. More cheese? Body wants it, I’ll eat it. And there I could easily spiral into a binge.

This was an eating disorder.

This was an eating disorder that was fueled by my inner avoidance and self soothing patterns and by the overwhelming rhetoric I saw everywhere that living in an overweight body is normal and healthy and just how some people are built.

I assumed I was one of those people.

So what woke me up and knocked me out of body positivity? My boyfriend. After a few months where I binge ate a lot while going through EMDR therapy, he started trying to tell me he was concerned about my health because it seemed like I was always massively bloated. He was gentle and kind about it. I spiraled. The stories were loud: my body has been through so much, this is healthy now. I am healthy, end of story. etc. I brushed off his concern. Until, one day when I was feeling very uncomfortable in my body, I realized I could step on the scale and see if anything had changed. I did.

200 lbs blinked up at me.

I temporarily left my body at that moment. I was shocked. Earlier that day, I had gone to a client visit and stopped at Starbucks on the way home. I got a coffee drink and a slice of cake, thinking it was a little treat. It was probably 700 calories. Not a little treat. All of a sudden I realized that I had been eating in a crazy way. Eating whatever I wanted. Excusing the changes in my body as energy, totally out of my control. It had to end now.

It did. With my boyfriend’s loving support, I figured out how many calories I needed to eat to be in a healthy deficit, and the next morning I started it. I tracked my calories for the first time in years. I did not let myself over-restrict. Over the next couple months, I learned about calculating macros and eating more protein to stay fuller, longer. I adjusted my diet more. I had already been lifting again at this point, but I started adding in more cardio and lifting heavier (with a safe, healthy plan). I started scrolling past anything I saw on any media platform about body positivity.

I lost my first 13 lbs in about 2 months. I lost 20 within 4, 30 within 6. I gained muscle, I scheduled more walks and step breaks into my day. It took me about 13 months to lose 55 lbs. I intentionally lost weight slowly, wanting to make sure that I gained muscle along the way and took the time to develop healthy habits that would stick for life. I later got really sick and couldn’t eat for nearly a week, bringing my total weight loss to just over 60 lbs. At my skinniest, I weighed about what I did in high school. At that weight, I felt frail. I could feel my bones too prominently. But now, I understood nutrition. I added in more protein and fat. I lifted more weight. I “reverse dieted” until I felt strong and healthy again.

7 months later, I went to Greece for a 2 week long retreat to learn womb continuum care. I was gone from home for 3 weeks total, spending time in Ireland with friends afterwards. For 3 weeks, I didn’t cook my own food. I didn’t have access to weights. I took long walks, did my best to eat high protein, nutritious meals, had some sweet treats, and didn’t even try to calculate a single calorie or macro. I couldn’t. I didn’t even wear my Apple Watch for the whole retreat, because you can’t wear a watch and do bodywork. So I had no idea how many steps I was getting or what my activity level was. I had to truly, intuitively, trust my body. It worked. I came home at approximately the same weight as when I left (I weigh myself every week or two because I continue to find it a useful metric). My body had found a new set point, my hunger cues truly felt reset and functioning properly, and I finally knew that I can eat intuitively.

Here’s the thing: eating intuitively doesn’t mean eating whatever your body wants. It means knowing how to properly fuel your body for optimal health and well-being (because like it or not, the amount of fat and muscle we have on our bodies does influence our overall health), and then learning how to follow your body’s signals to properly nourish it. Intuitively eating means noticing the cravings but not giving into them unless/until you’ve determined that it’s something you actually want to eat. In my case, until I’d done the work to unlearn all my disordered eating habits, I couldn’t eat intuitively. My body was not a reliable narrator. What I thought was intuition was actually old patterns and addictions influencing how I related to my body. These things had to be unwound and released from my mind + body (which I did mostly with shamanic journeying, TOTALITY energy work, and by developing a strong sense of self trust and discipline) before I could eat intuitively.

Let’s loop this back to body positivity. I thought body positivity meant that I had to accept whatever was happening to my body, never pay attention to calories or nutrition (because all food is created equal), live a soft, easy life and never work out hard, all in the name of self acceptance. I thought it meant that I had no agency over how my body changed because if I dared to track my macros then I would immediately become a victim of diet culture again. I thought it meant that I could be healthy at any weight, with any amount of fat on my body and I didn’t need to worry about it. I thought it meant these things because that’s what I kept seeing in the media all around me. And it sounded so good. I wanted to believe all of those things, so I did. Until it started to impact my overall health, energy and vitality.

As I said at the beginning, I think the core message that we need to love our bodies is great. I agree with that. But what body positivity became in the media is not real body positivity. In my opinion, real body positivity looks something like this: learning self love and acceptance, while also learning about proper movement, nutrition, and how to take care of the body for optimal health and longevity. Real body positivity means developing the discipline to go to the gym and build muscle for your health as you age. Real body positivity means eating nutritious foods 90% of the time and having some fun treats in moderation. Real body positivity looks like knowing how to fuel your body properly - not overeating, not under-eating. Real body positivity looks like being able to look in the mirror and say to your body, “I love you, and I am going to work on improving you.”

The media version of body positivity was the worst thing I ever did for my health and body. It validated my trauma and felt like it gave me permission to stick my head in the sand and ignore what my body needed for health and vitality. What I consider real body positivity — what I wrote in the paragraph above — has brought me into loving relationship with my body, my hunger cues, with food and exercise. It’s given me health, strength, and discipline. It’s taught me that it’s safe to be fully me and that I don’t have to hide in a “soft life” anymore.

So I guess real body positivity is the BEST thing I’ve ever done for my health.