We’re kicking off the Telesummit tonight with a big fat talk on fat activism!  We’ll be chatting with Marilyn Wann (author of Fat!So?), Amanda Levitt (Founder of Love Your Body Detroit) and Peggy Howell (PR Director for NAAFA).

Over the next few weeks, we’ll be talking health with Dr. Linda Bacon and Ragen Chastain, fatshion with Marie Denee, Rachel Kacenjar, and Yuliya Raquel, sex with Hanne Blank and Virgie Tovar, social media with Marianne Kirby, Margitte Leah Kristjannson and Brian Stuart, fitness with Jeanette DePatie and Anna Guest-Jelley, fat/queer intersections with Bevin Branlandingham, Charlotte Cooper, & Jessica Luxery, and politics with Paul Campos and Amy Erdman Farrell. You can see the full schedule here.

When you register, you’ll get free live access to all of the interviews, and you’ll have the opportunity to get yourquestions answered by our panel.

Click here to learn more and register!

I can’t wait to see you there!

Body Love Revolutionaries Telesummit Starts Tonight! originally appeared on Body Love Wellness on January 31, 2012.

by Golda Poretsky, H.H.C.
www.bodylovewellness.com

Listen to the podcast of this post here:

(I’m bringing an oldie but goodie from 2 years ago back this week.  New stuff next week.  Enjoy!)

How often have you heard the aphorism, “it’s better to give than to receive?”

Well, I’ve heard it a lot, and I must beg to differ. I think they are equally wonderful, but receiving has gotten too bad of a rap.

(Image courtesy of The Graphics Fairy)

Many of us have become accustomed to over-giving. We over-give of our time, our brainpower, our emotional energy. We do this all year long, and then heighten our over-giving for the holidays, where we buy more presents for others than our budgets really allow, we make food that we don’t really like in order to please others, we endure lots of parties we don’t want to attend, etc. etc. etc. It’s as if we’re all suffering from “Over-Giving Syndrome.” Amazingly, we do this at the time of year when the nights are the longest, when our bodies are telling us to rest more, to dream more, to restore our energy.

Giving, when done out of a true desire to give, is indeed beautiful and wonderful. But you can’t get to that point of pleasurable giving until you’ve really received.

In other words, you can’t pour eggnog from an empty container of eggnog.

(Mmmm… eggnog….)

But I digress. In this season of giving, I want to talk a little about the art of receiving as a cure for Over-Giving Syndrome. How is it done? How do you replenish your energy? How do you refill the eggnog container?

(Mmmm… eggnog…)

I think receiving can be as simple as strategically employing a few simple words.

1) Say “No” More Often — “No” is such simple word, yet so hard to say when you’re unaccustomed to it. “No” is one of the best words to use when you feel your energy waning and know that you need to protect it. Practice saying “no” to small things first, just to get used to it. If you typically have trouble saying “no”, remember that “no” is a more loving word than it’s given credit for. When you say “no” to something you don’t want, you are being loving to yourself, your desires, and your needs. In addition, you’re being loving to the person who is requesting something of you, because they know where you stand and won’t suffer through your resentment for “making you” do something you don’t want to do.

2) Say “Yes” More Often — How often do you say “no” to things you want and say “yes” (or acquiesce) to things you don’t want? In order to receive joyously, you also have to learn to say “yes” to the things you want. Just like saying “no” to the things you don’t want, saying “yes” to things you do want can take some negotiation. Say “yes” to lunch invitations, phone calls from friends, curling up with your favorite new novel, and other things that make you happy. If you want to refill your proverbial cup of eggnog, you’ll have to start saying “Yes” when someone cute at the deli accidentally drops it in your cart.

(Did someone say eggnog?)

3) Say “Thank You” (Without Caveats) More Often – Way back when, whenever someone complimented me on my outfit, I would immediately blurt out something like “It was so on sale!” or “Really? It’s so old!” or any number of horrendous things that deflected the compliment and made the complimenter sorry she ever said anything. (Okay, so I still do this 10% of the time. I admit it.) I had no idea that I could just say, “Thank you!” I also had no idea that simply saying “thank you” would have the desired effects of (a) allowing me to receive the compliment, (b) making me feel good, and (c) making the complimenter feel good about complimenting me. When someone gives you a gift or a compliment (which is also a gift), saying things like “you shouldn’t have” or “oh, no, I look terrible” has the completely undesired effects of (a) deflecting the compliment so that it doesn’t sink in and get received, (b) makes you feel bad, and (c) makes the complimenter feel bad because they were just told that their gift was not appreciated or accepted and that they were wrong for giving it.

Who knew it was so easy to receive? A few strategic “yesses”, “noes” and “thank you’s” and you’ll be feeling replenished in no time. Try it and comment to let me know how it goes.

Wishing you a very happy holiday! Have some eggnog for me, will ya?

Golda is a certified holistic health counselor and founder of Body Love Wellness, a program designed for plus-sized women who are fed up with dieting and want support to stop obsessing about food and weight. Go to http://www.bodylovewellness.com/free to get your free download — Golda’s Top Ten Tips For Divine Dining!

The Gift Of Receiving originally appeared on Body Love Wellness on December 5, 2011.

by Golda Poretsky, H.H.C.
www.bodylovewellness.com

Listen to the podcast here:

(Note from Golda: This post first appeared on the lovely blog, Roots of She. I realize it’s a little different than what I write for this blog, but I hope you dig it!)

"Abundantia," by Peter Paul Rubens (courtesy of wikipedia)

Nearly every woman I know has a screwed up relationship with food.  I think the way to heal this is not more of the same, it’s eating like a goddess.

Right now, we’re living in a cultural moment that tells us that the masculine paradigm is better than the feminine.*  This paradigm honors logic over intuition, outer rules over internal guidance, avoidance of pain rather than attraction to pleasure, and fear of scarcity over acknowledgement of abundance.  And this lack of balance between the masculine and feminine shows up again and again in the way we eat.

But our goddess selves know that none of that feels right.  Your goddess self doesn’t believe in diets, or rules, or calories or Weight Watchers’ points.  Your goddess self knows that food is a blessing, that slowing down a bit feels good, that your body knows what food you need and what you don’t.  Your goddess self knows that your body is beautiful, and doesn’t understand why you would control your food as a way to control the size and shape of your body.

In order to heal the way that we relate to food, we have to return to our wilder selves.  We have to let go of the rules, and delve into our true desires.

For many of you, this concept may be just at the edge of your comfort zone.  You’ve been taught to create meal plans, follow rigid rules, count calories, count fat, weigh and measure your food, etc. etc., so when I say to you that all of that should be tossed out the window, it may feel really scary.  Perhaps you even tried to throw it all out the window and things got kind of weird.  Perhaps you found yourself bingeing, and it freaked you out so much that after a while, you looked for your next diet.  You saw that out of control behavior as proof that you need rules and strictures and meal plans and counting.

But you had it all wrong.  Because you were eating at that time as a reaction to diets, and not as acknowledgement of your goddess self.  And the way to do that is to connect with your true abundance.

You see, you’ve got to get past the reaction of “I can eat whatever I want!  Screw you Jenny Craig!  I’m going to eat everything in sight!”  Because when you eat from that place, you’re not eating from a place of abundance, you’re just reacting to the rules and strictures of the masculine paradigm.  And while it may feel good to do that for a while, it can start feeling bad pretty quickly.  It can start feeling really out of control and just as unaligned with your true desires as a diet plan.  So the next move is to truly connect with your abundance, intuition and pleasure.

So here are 3 powerful tips for healing your relationship with food by eating like a goddess:

1) Connect With Your Abundance — Imagine for a moment that you can eat whatever you want whenever you’re hungry.  Imagine that you have a fridge and a pantry full of food that you really love, and that when your body says it’s hungry, you have your pick of really delectable offerings.  And here’s the key, it’s all going to be there tomorrow, and the next day, and the next day.  Whenever you’re hungry, you may eat.  You don’t have to worry about getting enough, because there is always enough.  Diets and restrictions don’t exist in your world.  You can trust that your bodily hunger will always be respected. You don’t have to worry about over-eating either, because there’s no reason to overeat.  Why have more cake tonight, and stuff yourself, when there will be plenty of cake tomorrow?

2) Connect With Your Intuition — Your intuition is a powerful tool that connects you to your body, your wisdom, and a greater knowing.  If you want to start eating more intuitively, then you need to build your intuitive skills.  The way to start building your intuition is by trusting it, even if you think it might be wrong.  You start by paying attention.  If your inner wisdom tells you to take a different route to work, you listen to it, even if it doesn’t make logical sense.  If your inner wisdom says, “I’m hungry, let’s have seconds!” you have seconds, even if you don’t have any weight watchers points left for that day.  If your inner wisdom tells you to say yes to going out for drinks even when you feel like going home and watching TV, go with your inner wisdom.  It’s important to rebuild this trust in your intuition in order to heal your relationship with food.

3) Connect With Your Desire — People often conflate hunger for things other than food with our hunger for food.  Hunger could be for anything from a new job to a new lover to better boundaries with a friend.  But if you don’t take the time to identify your desires, you’re more likely to turn to food to try to satisfy them.  So I’m going to ask you to start listing your desires, and keep adding to that list.  No desire is too big or too small.  Whether you desire a free iced coffee or to own a villa on the Italian coast, add it to your list.  Be specific.  Be bold.  There is no desire too big for a goddess.  Challenge yourself to think bigger than you ever had in your life.  And if you notice a few days from now that a desire has come true, check it off and write “Thank you, goddess!” next to it.  Just remember that these are not goals, they’re desires.  They’re meant to be enjoyed.

*I realize that the terms “masculine” and “feminine” may be problematic.  I’m using these terms to describe a duality of guiding principles for how people look at the world.  In no way do I mean that all men are one way and all women another, or that they should be one way or another.  It has nothing to do with anyone’s gender or identity.  It’s more to do with how an overabundance of one paradigm and a negating of the other is damaging to all of us.

Golda is a certified holistic health counselor and founder of Body Love Wellness, a program designed for plus-sized women who are fed up with dieting and want support to stop obsessing about food and weight. Go to http://www.bodylovewellness.com/free to get your free download — Golda’s Top Ten Tips For Divine Dining!

Eating Like A Goddess originally appeared on Body Love Wellness on November 21, 2011.

by Golda Poretsky, H.H.C.
www.bodylovewellness.com

Listen to the podcast here:

Of course, you don’t actually need my permission to love your body, right?  Who the frick am I to give you permission to love your body?!  That’s your choice, isn’t it?  No one has the right to give you permission or to take away permission.

So if I can’t give you permission, and no one else can give you permission, why then are you (possibly) still struggling to give yourself permission?

Perhaps I can think of a few reasons.  But before I do, I want to make it clear that loving and accepting your body is actually really important, healing, and healthy.  You’re a spiritual being having a physical experience.  The way you experience the world is through your body.  When you feel love and approval toward your body, then you can truly experience your life and the world around you.  The stress of worrying about whether your hair is right and whether your outfit disguises your belly rolls and whether you should’ve had that second cookie at that meeting at work all melts away.  You can live your life with more peace.  You can hear your inner truth.  You can enjoy being in a body that is uniquely yours.  And it truly doesn’t have the negative effects you think it will have.  (For more on why it’s important and healing, check out this post.)

Permission Granted (image by me)

You can do and experience all this and more, but first, you have to give yourself permission to love and accept your body.  In order to get that permission, you’ll probably need to work through at least one of these five objections, so let’s explore them a bit.

Reason #1:  Everyone Around Me Hates His/Her Body, So People Won’t Like Me If I Like My Body.

Most of us have a fear of being different too different than those around us.  For thousands of years, being an outcast could literally mean death, and so that desire to fit in with our social group is quite intense.  At the same time, we have to remember to think for ourselves, and make choices that are for our highest good.   If you’re drawn to body acceptance, there’s a reason for it.  And if you accept your body more and more, you may get some flack for it and you may find that some people in your life don’t understand or respect it.  You may also, however, find that some of your friends want to learn more about it and go with you on that journey, you might find that you make new friends who are into body acceptance and are happy to encourage you, and you may even become a voice for change for those around you.

Reason #2:  Everyone Around Me Hates His/Her Body, So Why Do I Have The Right To Be Different?

One of my favorite quotes of all time is this saying by Hillel the Elder, “If I am not for me, who will be for me?” You have the right to be, do, and have anything that you want.  If you don’t stand for that right, who will?  You must be for yourself.  Acknowledge for yourself that you deserve to love your body.

Reason #3: I’ve Heard Negative Messages About My Body For Most Of My Life, So They Must Be The Truth.

Negative messaging about our bodies is so insidious.  If you’re one of the lucky few who has managed to avoid hearing negative messaging at home and in school, then you’ve gotten it from the advertising you’ve been exposed to since birth.  It’s one of those flaws of human thinking patterns that we tend to believe what we hear if we hear it enough.  But just because you’ve heard something a lot does not mean it’s true.  And even if 99% of people believe it to be true, it doesn’t mean it is.  There is no objective truth that some bodies are beautiful and some are ugly.  There is no objective truth that some bodies are good and some are bad.  Just knowing that your body is not horrible doesn’t mean that your inner critic is going to stop telling you that, but disentangling yourself from this belief is an important first step in accepting your body.

Reason #4: If I Start To Like My Body, I’ll Eat Junk Food All Day And Just Melt Into My Couch Forever.

This is classic inner critic b.s.  Here’s the thing, if you like your body, you’ll want to treat it well.  So, if you’re engaging in over-exercising and harming your body, you might find that loving your body forces you to reevaluate your exercise routine to make it more joyous and fun for your body, but it’s not going to mean never moving again.  Same goes for food.  When you start respecting your body, you’ll start to trust it when it says it’s hungry and when it says it’s full, and it’ll be easier to respect that information and act accordingly.  But I can assure you that you will not melt into the couch forever and ever.

Reason #5: I Don’t Know How To Love My Body

If this is your main reason for not loving your body, this is actually a step forward.  You know on some level that you want to accept and love your body, but don’t know how to do it.  So I want to encourage you to keep reading body positive blogs (including this one) and keep looking to connect with body positive people.  You might find the free teleclass that I’m teaching this week helpful too.  I’ve also opened up a few free Body Love Breakthrough sessions with me this week, so if you’re looking to go deeper and get some one-to-one time with me, feel free to sign up.

Are any of these reasons keeping you stuck in body hatred?  Let me know in the comments section below!

Golda is a certified holistic health counselor and founder of Body Love Wellness, a program designed for plus-sized women who are fed up with dieting and want support to stop obsessing about food and weight. Join her for her upcoming FREE teleclass, HAES For The Holidays: How To Navigate Food, Family & Fatness Better This Holiday Season, by clicking here.

You Have My Permission To Love And Accept Your Body, Just As It Is, Right This Minute originally appeared on Body Love Wellness on November 14, 2011.

by Golda Poretsky, H.H.C.
www.bodylovewellness.com

Listen to the podcast here:

So for some reason, I’ve been writing a lot about my “no-poo” hair experiment lately.  And now I’ve gone even deeper into this experiment, as I’ve begun doing something called water-only washing.  In essence, I’ve completely stopped using any thing on my hair other than water, baking soda, eggs, and apple cider vinegar.

Big deal, right?  It’s just hair.  But by making this change, I’ve noticed some other things start to change as well.

Snuggly Bunnies (Image from herwordskill, Flickr Creative Commons)

Mostly, the way I’ve always treated my skin suddenly feels sort of harsh.  Hot showers suddenly feel way to hot.  The Neutrogena foaming face wash that I’ve used for years suddenly seems overly drying.  The Body Shop body washes that I used to love just feel like they have one too many chemicals.   Now that my scalp is being treated differently, the rest of my skin seems to be calling out for something different too.  I’ve been playing around with the most natural soaps I can find, and using natural oils like jojoba and lovely essential oils as well.

I feel like my skin is calling on me to be more gentle with it, and I’m finding that the more I heed the call, the better my skin feels, and the better I feel. It’s like the old Hermetic, mystical saying, of “as above, so below” and “as within, so without.”  The gentler I treat my skin, the more I seem to find gentleness within.

There is such a beauty in gentleness, and I think it’s a quality that we often forget.  Who are we gentle with, other than babies, and maybe ourselves and others when we’re injured or quite ill?  Wouldn’t it be beautiful if we could cultivate more gentleness in our everyday lives?

Imagine being gentle with yourself when you’re late for work.  How might you feel differently or plan differently for next time?  Imagine being gentle with yourself when you overeat at dinner.   What might you learn from that experience, and how might you treat yourself later that night or the next day if you were gentler with yourself?  What if you were gentler with your friends, your kids, your coworkers, your partners?  How might things shift and change in your relationships and within you?

I see a strength in gentleness.  It takes strength to be kind to yourself and others, to listen, to flow with what is rather than resent that what is isn’t what it should be.  Cultivating gentleness, to me, doesn’t mean ignoring other, potentially less gentle emotions.  It just means deciding, when possible, to go a little easier on ourselves and others than we might otherwise.

Does this concept of gentleness appeal to you?  Is there a place in your life that is calling out for more gentleness? Let me know what you try and how it went on my facebook page!

Golda is a certified holistic health counselor and founder of Body Love Wellness, a program designed for plus-sized women who are fed up with dieting and want support to stop obsessing about food and weight. Go to http://www.bodylovewellness.com/free to get your free download — Golda’s Top Ten Tips For Divine Dining!

Finding Strength In Gentleness originally appeared on Body Love Wellness on October 24, 2011.

by Golda Poretsky, H.H.C.
www.bodylovewellness.com

Listen to the podcast here:

I have a confession to make.

In the last few weeks, I’ve only shampooed my hair once (and that was actually kind of an accident).

Some of you are probably thinking, “That’s gross!” Some of you are probably thinking, “I’ve been there.”  And some of you are thinking, “Golda’s gone no-poo!”

Actually, you’re all kind of right.  I’ve decided to try out “no-pooing.”  If you’re curious about this at all, I wrote a kind of extensive post about it here for Persephone Magazine. I decided to do it for a number of reasons, but mostly because it’s supposed to reset your scalp and make it less oily, my hair color will probably last longer, and it’s an environmentally friendly thing to do.

A "No-Poo" Exemplar? (Edgar Degas "Woman Washing", public domain)

I decided to do this on a whim, but not shampooing my hair has actually been weirdly difficult for me.  I’ve been washing my hair every day since junior high, mostly because I was deathly afraid of having greasy hair.  My hair is both oily and fine, so I washed it every day without fail because I thought it looked even finer when it wasn’t washed.

But when I really connect to the emotions behind this, I think it also had to do with the body hatred and the particularly awkward stage I went through in 6th grade.  I was chronically unhappy with my body, and puberty was exacerbating all of that.  I was dieting all the time and struggling to be thin (with very low levels of success), so I thought that at the very least I could have the best hair that I possibly could.  Washing and styling my hair every day was something within my control.   Having perfectly squeaky clean hair was both socially acceptable and a form of body denial.  As Kate Harding and Marianne Kirby noted in Lessons From The Fatosphere, fat is such a charged word because it’s often meant to stand in for a variety of adjectives, including “smelly [and] undisciplined.”  So it was important to me as a fat kid to be able to deny those other ascriptions.

Now more than 20 years later, I’ve let go of so many “have to’s” about my body, the biggest one being the idea that I have to lose weight before I can do, be and have a variety of things.  I don’t see losing weight as a precondition to happiness anymore, which has been hugely transformative.  And yet, I find it interesting when these other “have to’s” come up.  Things like letting go of the “have to” of washing my hair every day has actually deepened my appreciation and approval of my body. I know that if I work through the resistance and let go of the “have to” big things happen.  Sometimes the littlest action yield big results.

So I’d like to challenge you to let go of one of your appearance-related “have to’s.”  This can be really challenging, so I would recommend trying it out for even half a day first.  Just notice how you feel, what feels different, what fears come up.  This can be really magical.  And I’m not suggesting anything I haven’t tried myself.  (And I know that for some of you, these things will not be challenging at all or are just part of your daily life, while for others this will be much more difficult.) Here are a couple of suggestions, just to start you off:

1) Go out wearing no makeup (or a lot less makeup than you usually do).
2) Try a no-poo option for a few days.
3) Go out without wearing a bra or with a much less constructed bra than usual.
4) Go “commando.”
5) Go much longer without shaving your legs or underarms.
6) Stop wearing deodorant.
7) Wear an outfit that is more form fitting than you’re used to.
8) Wear an outfit that is baggier/looser than you’re used to.
9) Wear an outfit that draws attention to a body part that you normally hide.
10)  If you normally straighten you hair, try letting it be curly, or vice versa.

These relatively simple action steps can feel like a huge deal, but they can also yield big reward and be extremely freeing.  Let me know what you try and how it went on my facebook page!

Golda is a certified holistic health counselor and founder of Body Love Wellness, a program designed for plus-sized women who are fed up with dieting and want support to stop obsessing about food and weight. Go to http://www.bodylovewellness.com/free to get your free download — Golda’s Top Ten Tips For Divine Dining!

Adventures In Body Acceptance: Letting Go Of The “Have To’s” originally appeared on Body Love Wellness on October 17, 2011.

by Golda Poretsky, H.H.C.
www.bodylovewellness.com

Listen to the podcast for this post here:

In the Jewish tradition, the period between the high holidays of Rosh Hashanah (which starts Wednesday night) and Yom Kippur (which starts Friday night, October 7th) is a time when we seek to make amends with people we may have wronged.  Essentially, it’s a time of seeking forgiveness and repairing relationships.

"The Platonic Kiss" by William H. Rau (image courtesy of the Library of Congress)

A few years ago, I started to think about this time as a time to repair my relationship with my body just as I try to repair my relationships with others.  I started to think about the ways that I may have wronged my body.  Had I pushed it to the limit working late night after night?  Had I expressed my hatred for it when my favorite pants felt tight?  Had I resisted movement that would have made it felt good?  Had I yearned for it to be anything different than it was?

So much of the time, we treat our bodies as if they weren’t a part of us.  We take out our frustrations on them.  We seek to change our bodies through dieting and over-exercising when they don’t meet with our approval.  And even if it’s our norm, it needn’t be our norm forever.

Even if you’re not Jewish, you can see this time of the Jewish New Year as a time to make amends with your body. Try this meditation when you have a few minutes (to be guided through the meditation, listen to the podcast above or in itunes):

Get into a comfortable position, either sitting, with your feet flat on the floor, or lying down.  Take a few deep breaths, allowing yourself to feel calm and centered.  Now think back over the past twelve months, and think of the times when you’ve felt ashamed of your body, denigrated it, made fun of it, or otherwise harmed it.  Take a few moments to feel what you feel in your body when you think back on those memories and experiences.  After you’ve spent some time feeling what that feels like, tell your body (either aloud or in your mind) that you would like it to forgive you.  Ask your body what it needs from you to forgive you, and promise to take those action steps.  Begin to feel that feeling of forgiveness within you.  Take a few deep breaths and begin to move your body to come out of the meditation.

As you can see, this not a typical New Year’s resolution which gets forgotten a month later.  This is much deeper.  This is an attempt to heal a rift within you by listening to your body and asking for its forgiveness.

I hope you’ll try it and let me know how it goes in the comments section below or on my facebook page.  And happy holidays to those celebrating!

Golda is a certified holistic health counselor and founder of Body Love Wellness, a program designed for plus-sized women who are fed up with dieting and want support to stop obsessing about food and weight. Go to http://www.bodylovewellness.com/free to get your free download — Golda’s Top Ten Tips For Divine Dining!

Making Amends With Your Body originally appeared on Body Love Wellness on September 26, 2011.

by Golda Poretsky, H.H.C.
www.bodylovewellness.com

Listen to the podcast for this post here:

Oh yeah, it’s about to get real in here.

As most of you know, my job is working with people who want to end their struggles with food and body image so that they can have fuller, richer, happier lives.

It's Tough To Be Fat Wonderwoman Every Day (image courtesy of Alex Heberling (www.alexheberling.com))

This is a journey that I’ve been on myself.  I dieted for 24 years.  I obsessed about food and weight.  And I came out on the other end a completely changed person because of Health At Every Size (R) principles.

But I think we need to let go of the idea that once you’ve learned to accept your body and eat intuitively that you never have little setbacks or moments where things aren’t so easy.  Those moments of doubt or setbacks happen less and less over time, but they’re still part of the journey, even for people who have been practicing body acceptance and intuitive eating for years.

So, I’m about to share some truths with you that are not necessarily easy for me to share.  My hope is that you’ll read these and will know that you’re not somehow failing at accepting your body or changing the way you eat  just because you have moments (even long moments) where you struggle with these things.

Five Totally True Facts About Yours Truly:

1) I get self conscious.  Most days, I feel good about my body, but I have my moments.  Going on TV or talking in front of a big crowd or seeing a picture of myself that I really don’t like can trigger it.

The Good News:  Nowadays, these moments last only a few minutes, instead of a few hours, days, weeks or years, like they did before.

2) I’m not always perfect with intuitive eating. Even though I’ve been practicing intuitive eating for years, I have my moments where I don’t feel like checking in.  For example, I always want to have dessert when I watch Top Chef: Just Desserts.  Even if I’m full, I start feeling really deprived if I don’t at least have a piece of fruit while watching this show.  By doing this, I break two intuitive eating guidelines — stop eating when you’re full, and don’t eat while distracted.

     The Good News:  I eat intuitively nearly all the time, and when I don’t, I don’t beat up on myself.  My practice of self acceptance allows me to accept the fact that watching a show I like is more important to me than being 100% perfect with intuitive eating.

3) I have health issues.  I have PCOS, as I’ve written about before, and a touch of fibromyalgia that comes and goes.  My weight, however, has never affected these things.  They never got better when I’ve been thinner.

     The Good News:  Because of body acceptance, I’m better able to accept myself and these health challenges.  And because I’ve found HAES (R), I know I’m not weird for not finding a cure in weight loss.

4) I have perfectionistic tendencies.  Like a lot of people who grew up “struggling with their weight,” I spent a lot of time believing that I had to be perfect in other ways to deflect attention from my “imperfect” body.  I’ve had to unlearn the idea that it’s bad to be a beginner, to not be able to do something, or to not do it perfectly.

     The Good News:  I’m still sooooo much kinder to myself now, and it allows me to actually try new things even if I might not be good at them.

5)  In my private life, I sometimes fall short of being a good advocate for HAES (R) and body acceptance.  I sometimes struggle to explain HAES (R) and body acceptance to people in my life.  I work a lot at setting loving boundaries and working to have them see why I do what I do, but it’s not always easy, and I sometimes feel like I haven’t done as good a job as I would like.

     The Good News:  It gets easier all the time, and I’ve come to realize that it’s just another skill that takes time to master.

This list could be much longer, but I’m sharing these with you to show you that it’s not easy being a non-dieting, self-loving fatty in this world, and even someone like me, who’s been working at it for years AND supporting others through it has her moments.  It’s not about being perfect, and it’s rarely a straight and direct route from BodyHatredVille to BodyAcceptanceLand.  Your train may get derailed.  Your GPS might fail you.  And even once you get there, you may take a trip or two back, particularly if some well-meaning friend or relative or doctor tells you that BodyHatredVille changed its name to PositiveLifestyleVille and has a water park now.  You haven’t blown it all just because you’re struggling.  That’s just some diet mentality bullshit getting in your way.

In my group program, the Empress Club, I encourage the Empresses to allows themselves to be real with their fellow Empresses.  We make a lot of space to share our good and our struggles, big and small, and to let that vulnerability with one another be a healing force.  So let’s share some of our real struggles with body acceptance and intuitive eating in the comments section below or on my facebook page.

Golda is a certified holistic health counselor and founder of Body Love Wellness, a program designed for plus-sized women who are fed up with dieting and want support to stop obsessing about food and weight. Go to http://www.bodylovewellness.com/free to get your free download — Golda’s Top Ten Tips For Divine Dining!

It’s About To Get Real In Here originally appeared on Body Love Wellness on September 6, 2011.

by Golda Poretsky, H.H.C.
www.bodylovewellness.com

Listen to the podcast of this post here:

(I’ve been a busy bee this week, so I’m bringing back a (slightly modified) oldy but goody.  I’ll be back with new stuff next week!)

The idea that there are such things as “figure flaws” drives me batty.

In many ways, I have the body shape that “obesity experts” wring their hands over. I have a thick waist and narrow hips, such that my waist to hip ratio is nearly at 1. I tend to gain weight around my midsection. I know, the horror! Apparently, per the “obesity experts” I should not only lose weight, I should make the fat move to my hips and thighs because it’s “healthier!”

That is, (a) I should somehow magically move my body fat from one part of my body to another, even though there’s no viable way to do this, and (b) I should worry over the fact that I have this type of body, even though the truth is this unhealthy belly fat thing is all bullshit.

Pseudo Empowerment Through Bodily Sausage Casings? (Image courtesy of Flickr)

Also, worrying about belly fat could increase my cortisol levels, which could make me store more belly fat. So, if someone (a doctor, for example) were really worried about my belly fat, he or she shouldn’t admonish me for it, because that admonishment could stress me out and just cause more belly fat and more alleged belly fat-related problems. The horrors continue!

Yeesh.

I used to worry about this crap a lot. I used to think if I could just have a more hourglass shape, even a fat hourglass shape, things would be better. It’s sort of like a variant of the fantasy of being thin paradigm. I thought if I were a sexy hourglass instead of an upside-down triangle/apple, then clothes would fit better/guys would like me more/I’d win the lottery/etc. etc.

It wasn’t until I started doing an exercise program called T-Tapp back in 2006 that I learned about different body structures. I realized then that people built like me, with torsos that are so short that their rib cages nearly touch their hip bones, always have big waists compared to the rest of their bodies. And by the way, I’m not saying that you need an excuse to be whatever size you are. I’m just saying that realizing that my body shape and structure weren’t weird or bad or whatever helped me get out of the idea that I should be trying to change it. It made me realize that there is no one right body shape, no body shape that is “better” or “worse.” There are no such things as “figure flaws.” Rather than striving for a different body, I finally realized that my body was what I’ve got, so I might as well enjoy it.

So my tip for this week is (if you feel like trying a tip), is to practice enjoying the body you have. Let go of comparing your body to others, or worrying about its shape. Be gentle with yourself as you embrace this concept, and be conscious of the negative voice that will likely come up. (By the way, I’m not saying this easy, just practice it and be open to it for now.)

Golda is a certified holistic health counselor and founder of Body Love Wellness, a program designed for plus-sized women who are fed up with dieting and want support to stop obsessing about food and weight. Go to http://www.bodylovewellness.com/free to get your free download — Golda’s Top Ten Tips For Divine Dining!

Figure Flaws?! originally appeared on Body Love Wellness on August 22, 2011.

by Golda Poretsky, H.H.C.
www.bodylovewellness.com

Thanks to former body acceptance advocate Jess Weiner’s misinformation campaign, body acceptance has been getting a bad rap as something dangerous and unhealthy.

NOTHING could be further from the truth.  I know many of you of have experienced body acceptance as a healing, loving, and transformational force in your life.

Please feel free to use this as your Body Love Saved Me Badge!

Maybe it made you decide to stop dieting and eat in a way that was healing and nourishing.

Maybe it helped you heal from an eating disorder.

Maybe it made you stop over-exercising when you realized that you were damaging your precious body.

Maybe it got you to start exercising when you found that moving your body in loving ways felt good.

Maybe it helped you get better medical care because you knew that you were entitled to more than “it’ll go away if you lose weight.”

Maybe it got you out of a bad relationship, or into a good one. 

Maybe it gave you the confidence to stand up for yourself.

Maybe it allowed you to stop comparing yourself to everyone and see the beauty in yourself.

Maybe it freed you from the pain of self hatred and allowed you to feel good about the person you are.

If body acceptance has been a positive influence in your life, I want to hear your story.

I want to make this really easy.  So please email me at mystory @ bodylovewellness.com with the following:

1) Your first name or initials
2) Your location (city, state, country)
3) Optional: A picture of you
4) Your story of how body love has helped you.

I hope to publish at least 5 of your stories here at the blog.   Please note that if your story doesn’t get published, it doesn’t mean that it isn’t great, I’m just looking to make sure that there’s some variety in the posts.

Please share this with all of your body loving friends and encourage them to write!

Golda Poretsky, H.H.C. is a certified holistic health counselor who specializes in empowering plus sized women to own their bodies and their beauty. Go to http://www.bodylovewellness.com/free to get your free download — Golda’s Top Ten Tips For Divine Dining!

Body Love SAVED Me: Share Your Story originally appeared on Body Love Wellness on August 11, 2011.