If there was one area of my healing journey that took longer than others, it was my relationship with productivity.

Can someone turn rest and self-soothing activities into a symbol of productivity? Yes, they can, and that person is me.

In a diet and body-image-obsessed society, have we normalised under-eating with silent negative consequences?

A disordered relationship with food is akin to wearing an itchy jumper. A cheap, itchy jumper.

When you first put it on, it keeps you nice and warm. However, it is not made of very good wool, so it starts to itch after a while. Sometimes, you might feel like taking it off, but you know that if you do, you will be cold, so you put up with the itchiness. With time, however, the itchiness gets harder and harder to tolerate.

Thought-shape fusion explicitly impacts our body image by attaching a moral framework to food. This distortion materialises as a sensation in the body.

How might your relationship with food be serving you?

Hmmm. I am proposing that, consciously or not, your eating behaviours may have served a purpose in your life.

For many of us, the path to Intuitive Eating begins with untangling the complex threads of emotional eating tendencies. We delve into the intricate relationship between our emotions and food choices, acknowledging that emotional eating is a natural response to stress, sadness, and other feelings. By recognizing our emotional triggers, we empower ourselves to make thoughtful decisions honouring our emotional and physical needs.

The belief is that we can fundamentally change who we are by undertaking these plans. That we can eradicate what we perceive to be the negative aspects of ourselves. There is something very alluring about that.

Here is the thing about body image work…you don’t have to love your body.

No matter how many memes we save on Instagram, moving from body bashing to loving your body doesn’t happen overnight. That’s a huge ask to make of anyone. Especially when we have been conditioned to be on opposing sides. Waging war with it, trying to restrict and sweat it into submission.

It’s tricky to give ourselves permission to prioritise and make space for creativity and play. We live in a society that conditions us, especially women, to justify downtime. That makes us feel guilty for resting, for being ‘frivolous’ with time when we could reorganise a cupboard and earn our productivity stripes.

Still, we can take a beat to consider why we find it difficult. To ask the questions;

Who told us that story?

Where does the idea we can’t make space to let loose and go to the adult roller disco come from?

What would it feel like to do the thing and not give a flying fish what anyone else thought?

What if we just swung from the monkey bars, and the only thought we had was I love how this feels?

Why calorie counting isn’t a science.

Ditch the scales. Why weighing yourself isn’t a true measure.

Are you building your body confidence around who you are now or who you think you should be? ⁣

Could you just love me like this?

January, I shan’t be doing any of these things. So be a doll and bog off with the guilt trips, the unrealistic social media images and your miracle weight loss juices, powders and teas. I’m in it for the long haul. I love my body, heart and mind enough to keep all three of them well, gently. 

Food and guilt don’t belong together. You do not need to earn your food or burn your food.