February 8, 2023
Welcome to The Balanced Dietitian Podcast! I hope you are doing wonderful! If you are not doing well, I hope this podcast offers you a space to reflect on your relationship with food and your body.
Today I would like to talk about self-love. I think it is a big and important topic. It comes up often with my clients.
[06:47] What is our self-love and where does it come from?
For years, I really did believe that eating in a specific way was an act of self-love, and I also attached the size of my body to not loving myself. I believed that because my body wasn’t thin, I was showing the world that I did not love myself. That was a big one that I had to uncouple and work through in my own journey. What does self-love actually mean to me? How do I decouple that from the size of my body? It’s not an easy thing. It’s not a tomorrow thing.
[08:47] Acceptance instead of self-love
What if the goal was not to love yourself so much? The idea of self-love may feel overwhelming or even fake. I’ve had one client that told me this feels fake. We can’t expect that we’re going to start loving ourselves or our bodies tomorrow. What if instead, we took the idea of like self-love off of the table? What if instead of love we aimed for the acceptance piece? What if instead of loving ourselves, we aim towards respecting, trusting, and taking care of ourselves?
[12:58] Living a different life
It’s about living and experiencing a beautiful, expensive, full life. I really see this as a transformation. When we heal our relationship with food and our body, we live a beautiful, full, and expensive life. We get to feel different, show up differently, we take care of ourselves differently. But that only happens when we also do the work with ourselves. When we also do the work of accepting ourselves, understanding ourselves, gaining awareness, loving, and taking care of ourselves all of these things are part of the journey. It is so important.
[17:41] Self-Love triangle
I like to look at self-love as a triangle. There are some pillars that we need to work through until we get to the peak. Some days, we get to access all the way up to the top of the triangle and sometimes we only have the base foundation. That’s okay, but it is building that foundation to get to the tip of the triangle.
[20:36] Self-Love is an ongoing process
Self-love is an ongoing process for the rest of your life. The same way that any relationship that you have in your life. We need to continue to nurture those relationships. It’s never done. Relationships are built over time and they’re strengthened over time. It’s the same thing with ourselves.
[24:29] Living a full life
Self-love doesn’t need to be the goal. When we first start, I think it’s a really important thing that we work towards it though. The relationship that we have with ourselves is the ultimate goal when we are healing our relationship with our body. You are so deserving of a beautiful relationship with yourself and you deserve a full life. A life where you get to show up, where food and body are no longer an issue, where your relationship with yourself actually supports you in achieving all your dreams and your goals, being present with your loved ones and happy. I really believe that life is possible for you.
If you are looking for more support from our team - We are happy to help
Every month, The Balanced Practice offers a low-cost workshop on topics related to eating disorders/disordered eating. Check out the next one coming up!
We offer different services in order to meet you exactly where you are at and provide you with the most appropriate level of support to reach your goals (no one-size-fits-all here). Our team works closely together and with other healthcare professionals to make sure we can provide you with the very best care.
Here at The Balanced Practice, we get it. We believe that you deserve more joy, more connection, and more fulfillment. After all, life is meant to be experienced fully (and not spent feeling stuck in our own heads). And we want to help, our team is available during the day and into the evening!
