GIRL- YOU ARE SO DAMN WORTHY

 There are things in your life that have purpose and value outside of your body. I don’t want to spend my life obsessing over how my body looks. I’m a good person I don’t have to qualify by being a certain size and I don’t owe anyone my thinness. 

Body dissatisfaction and coping through righteous eating and creating a disordered eating mindset is directly linked to mental health issues. I didn’t know I had a problem until I recognized my mental state was so bad. I had severe anxiety and started to have depression symptoms. I was mentally exhausted hating myself and trying to find self love by eating perfectly and getting as thin as possible.

Your body is the longest relationship you’ll ever have and it’s diet culture that makes you believe that at some point there’s this end where you just suddenly don’t have to take care of your body or have these conversations of dissatisfaction because you made it to a certain weight. 

If you talk about hating your body what you’re really saying is you hate yourself and you don’t feel good enough or that you’re worthy enough to be valued by others. No matter how thin you get you will never feel entirely whole if you don’t address the acceptance of yourself. Weight loss doesn’t heal body image. Weight loss will never give you the confidence and ease in your body that you want. Finding self worth and value is about your mindset and not about the size of your body. 

When we say “I just want to be healthy” we really mean skinny and that plays with your mind and gives you a cloak to hide disordered eating. You call it healthy but what it really is is that you’ll do anything to be skinny. 

When you lose a lot of weight people compliment you and eventually the compliments stop because that becomes how you naturally look and you’re no longer losing weight and the external validation of your worth stops and the happiness of earning thinness stops so now your thought becomes obviously I gotta lose more weight. The belief that the only way to feel worthy is by being as skinny as possible is an insidious cultural issue for all females in this country. 

Right now diet culture is so sneaky- it’s labeled “health community” or “wellness”  it’s a lifestyle of healthy clean eating - but the reality is it’s a diet and it’s not about health it’s about getting skinny. 

Diet culture has made us feel we need to be told what food is good and bad and when we feel broken ie fat the way to fix it is to adhere to the diet and the list of foods that are “good”- we feel we have control and that if we’re eating these foods we are worthy and righteous. Women have normalized that our worth is tied to our body size and beauty. We’ve been told our worth is earned by external standards. So our lives are spent constantly seeking worth through what society values in your looks. If we don’t get it right we’re less worthy and it makes you feel shame. We feel worthy when we eat the right foods or when we post those gym selfies because now we look externally to society as a worthy individual. Having a super complicated strict and restrictive diet like Whole30 or paleo makes you feel like you have control over your body and that you are superior to people who aren’t as healthy as you. In the hierarchy of worthiness-  healthy is the top. If you’re thin and eating super restrictive and working out daily you’re in the elite category. You’re a superior woman. This is called healthism and I was completely a victim of it. My worth was tied to me attempting optimum health. This is an attempt to make up for that feeling of unworthiness. My perfect eating was me making up for not feeling good enough about my body. We hold the belief we’re not good enough because of how much we weigh or how we look and even the act of righteous eating and healthism without losing a pound can give you a sense of worth. WHY?!? Because we have thoughts like this: 

“You go girl! You made it another week of perfect eating.” “Look at how she eats- if only she knew how bad that is for her!” “I’m so damn dedicated resisting these brownies! I finally have willpower.” 

You can decide you’re worthy regardless of how you look or what food you eat -you can stop the obsessive hustle and accept that you have worth regardless. You don’t have to do a damn thing to earn worth! 

ALL HUMANS ARE WORTHY