Body acceptance begins with grieving the thin ideal

Written By Meredith Noble

Beginning down the Health At Every Size, fat liberation, or Body Trust® path can trigger a grieving process. In order to make peace with food and our bodies, we must give up old beliefs and a number of long-held hopes as well.

For instance, we have to give up the idea of one day achieving the thin ideal, as well as the idea that we can use food and exercise to control the size of our bodies. We also have to process the idea that we’ve devoted so much time and energy to achieving long-term weight loss, without success (or perhaps with success but copious amounts of misery).

In order to truly heal, the vision of our ideal selves that we have carried for years and years has to come to an end. Because most of us have believed in the thin ideal and the power of dieting for decades, it’s only natural for some very strong emotions to be triggered when we realize we’ve been sold a lie.

I remember when I first learned that permanent weight loss was not sustainable for most people. In a way, it was relieving, because it confirmed my life experiences up to that point. It was also very sad. I had convinced myself that if only I could get and stay thin, life would be much, much easier for me. I would suddenly have all that thinness buys a person in this culture: desirability, admiration, and better treatment in nearly every corner of life, from the doctor’s office to my place of employment. Giving up that dream was not in the slightest bit easy for me, and I imagine it isn’t for you, either.

To help you process your emotions about giving up the thin ideal and dieting, it can be helpful to consider the “stages of grief” model described by Elisabeth Kübler-Ross. You will likely find the stages she described —denial, anger, bargaining, depression and acceptance — familiar, as they have permeated popular culture in the more than 50 years since she conceived them. While they were originally conceived in the context of dying patients, they have become popular because they feel relevant in many other situations as well. Let’s explore how they apply to the process of adopting Health At Every Size beliefs.

Note: It’s important to understand that we don’t really move through the stages of grief linearly. Usually we will bounce around, and I also think we can occupy some of them simultaneously. Use this list to identify the emotions that are most present for you and find resources to help you.

Denial

When we first learn of Health At Every Size®, fat liberation, and Body Trust® concepts, it is easy to fall into denial, because they contradict our dominant cultural narrative about weight loss and health. “No, no, no, no,” we often think. “It can’t be true!”

We reach back towards the familiar territory of diet culture because it’s all we know, and because it’s so seductive. While in denial, we forget that dieting has been a fair-weather friend. We remember the intoxicating joy of our weight loss successes, but forget our misery when the scale is higher than we want it to be, the pain of bingeing to the point of feeling unwell, or the despair of realizing we’re starving but have already eaten our maximum number of calories for the day.

It is normal to experience denial, and to flirt with the sweet promises of diet culture over and over again as you heal your relationship with food and body. But as you learn more about why dieting doesn’t work, find a community to provide support, and exercise your self-compassion muscles, you’ll spend increasingly less time in denial.

Advice for when you are in denial

  1. Remember it’s normal to fall back into denial repeatedly, particularly given that it’s so hard to extract oneself from the dieting culture present in our families, workplaces, and friendship groups.

  2. Educate yourself as much as possible about why weight is not an indicator of health, and why health is not an indicator of worthiness.

  3. Remind yourself of the ways in which dieting and fatphobia have harmed you. Make a list and review it as often as you need.

Anger

Sometimes the anger phase of our grief process manifests as anger towards ourselves for falling prey to diet culture. However, it is important to know that you are not to blame. You were taught that you weren’t worthy unless you lived in a small body, and that message was reinforced in millions of small and large ways over the course of your life.

I will repeat because it’s just so important: none of this is your fault.

All of this said, I believe it is really healthy to get angry at the culture that led you to this place. There is no shortage of things to get angry about! Examples include:

  1. That we were all sold lies about the feasibility of permanent weight loss, despite a lack of trustworthy evidence, leading to the existence of a $70+ billion diet industry.

  2. That we were likewise told lies about the health benefits we would accrue by being thin.

  3. That we were taught to conflate being “healthy” with being “worthy”, and safe from an early death.

  4. That from a very young age, we were manipulated into believing that we are not worthy of love unless we fit the thin ideal.

  5. That our patriarchal, capitalist system sets unattainable standards that lead to self-harm.

I could go on and on and on, and chances are you can too. These are all valid things to get angry about, and expressing that anger is an important part of healing.

Advice for when you are angry

  1. Let yourself truly feel any anger / frustration / resentment and express it in a productive way. I find physical releases can be really helpful, like stomping your feet, throwing something, screaming, tearing paper, or, scribbling/writing aggressively.
    Get creative and think of what would feel best to you. The only “wrong way” to do this is a way that hurts someone else or destroys something you don’t want destroyed—everything else is fair game. Also, “rage rooms” are totally a thing now—you can rent time to go smash stuff that isn’t yours. What an incredible anger outlet!

  2. Anger can point to things that we value and want to protect. It can also help us figure out where we might need boundaries in our lives. Consider what you are angry about and what it shows you value. Consider if you want or need to protect something that currently isn’t being adequately protected, either via a boundary or some other means.

  3. Try using journaling or free writing as another way to process your anger. (Free writing is just a variant of journaling where you turn off your inner censor and write whatever comes to mind without any editing.)

  4. If you feel so inclined, use your anger to motivate yourself to participate in activism. There are so many ways to be a fat activist or ally to fat people, including sharing educational materials with others, or asking a fat friend if they need help researching restaurants with comfortable seating.

  5. Again, remember that this is not your fault. Get angry at society, not yourself. If you are continually feeling bad about succumbing to diet culture, consider writing “this is not your fault” on a post-it and putting it somewhere prominent in your house to remind yourself (e.g., your bathroom mirror).

Bargaining

Bargaining is negotiating—trying to come up with a trade or a substitute to pursue instead of taking the difficult road of opting out of diet culture.

A classic example of bargaining is, “Okay, maybe I’ll just go lose some weight and then pursue intuitive eating afterward.” Another might be saying something like “it’s okay that those people are fat, but not that I’m fat”.

Advice for when you are bargaining

  1. Continue your education, much like in the denial phase. Remind yourself that the science shows you cannot lose weight permanently even if you think it will make you feel better.

  2. Examine the reasons you want to bargain. What do you believe will be better about the thing you’re trying to substitute? What ideas do you hold that can be challenged? For instance, are there things you’re holding yourself back from doing until you’re in a smaller body that in reality you could do now?

  3. Reach out to a fat-positive helping professional to start to heal the wounds of your body shame and the impacts fatphobia has had on your wellbeing.

Depression

Realizing that weight loss is not possible and that you’ve wasted so much time in an effort to be thin and healthy inevitably results in sadness. Much like when dealing with anger, the important thing here is to allow yourself to truly feel the emotion of sadness.

Advice for when you are depressed

  1. Remember, again, that this is not your fault. You were inculcated in all of this from a young age. There is nothing to feel guilty or shameful about.

  2. Find community who can understand what you’re going through. Share with them, and know that you’re not the only one who has gone through this.

  3. Remember that you have a lot of power despite what our culture tells you! Society tells being fat is terrible and awful, but there are so many ways to have caring, kind relationships with our bodies. You can have an amazing life in a fat body!

  4. Allow yourself to genuinely feel your emotions, including sadness. Talk to your friends about it, and/or reach out to a trusted helping professional who can support you as you truly feel it.

Acceptance

Acceptance is where we have come to terms with the idea that we won’t achieve the thin ideal, the reality that dieting doesn’t work, and the fact that we’ve spent a lot of time getting to this place.

The tricky thing about acceptance is that it’s not a permanent destination we all land at forevermore. When we’re triggered in various ways, or go through high-stress periods, it can be easy to re-experience denial, anger, depression, and bargaining again. That’s incredibly normal and nothing to be ashamed about! But the nice thing is that the stronger our roots in acceptance grow, the easier it is to remember our new values and return to this place. We tend to spend longer and longer periods in acceptance over time.

Advice for the acceptance phase

  1. Enjoy yourself by deepening your sense of embodiment and your relationship with your body. Explore different ways you experience pleasure.

  2. Consider activism; there are others that can benefit from hearing your journey and your message!

  3. Continue to seek out fat-positive, HAES®-informed community. Belonging to a community that is fully accepting of fat people is incredibly powerful and can help us deal with various fatphobia/diet culture stressors as they arise.

In closing, some reassurance

The fat liberation / Health At Every Size® / Body Trust® journey is not an easy one. Grief is a natural and normal part of the process. I hope that these ideas can help you identify and honor your very valid emotions as they come up along the way.

I also want you to know that even though this process can produce some difficult emotions, the peace and liberation that can await us are incredibly freeing.

If you are based in Oregon, I’d be honored to accompany and support you as you process your grief! Learn more about my counseling services.

Sources & Thanks

Huge thanks to Dana Sturtevant and Hilary Kinavey of Be Nourished for introducing me to Jeanne Courtney’s paper and for their own thoughtful work on this topic, which was a jumping off point for me.

Meredith Noble
Next

Coping when your friends, colleagues, and family are still dieting