Reclaiming Body Trust

1. Body Trust is Your Birthright, Not a Privilege.

When we are born into this world, most of us feel at home in—and trust—our bodies.

Inherent connection. Every person is born with an innate trust in their body, free from societal judgments about size, appearance, or worth. This natural state involves unapologetic self-expression, responding instinctively to hunger and rest, and a clear sense of likes and dislikes. This fundamental connection is a birthright, not something to be earned or achieved.

Societal rupture. This inherent body trust is systematically eroded by early socialization, where children learn that certain bodies are valued over others. Messages from family, media, and institutions reinforce gender roles, racist beauty standards, and fatphobia, often before the age of ten. This indoctrination leads to a "body project" mindset, where individuals believe their bodies are problems to be controlled or fixed.

No fault. The struggle with body image and food is not an individual failing but a consequence of living in a weight- and health-obsessed world. The $71 billion diet industry thrives by shifting blame from its ineffective plans to the individual, perpetuating cycles of self-blame and distrust. Reclaiming body trust means recognizing that you are not broken, and your suffering is not your fault.

2. Your Coping Mechanisms are Rooted in Wisdom, Not Weakness.

Your coping has been rooted in wisdom, and we aren’t here to take away anything you need to survive.

Survival strategies. The ways individuals cope with body-based oppression, shame, and societal pressures are not signs of weakness but intelligent survival strategies. These patterns, often involving food restriction, compulsive exercise, or body alteration, help navigate a culture that devalues certain bodies and demands constant self-improvement. They are a means to endure adversity and protect oneself from perceived threats.

The Cycle. This coping often manifests as a predictable "Cycle" of thoughts, feelings, sensations, and behaviors. It typically starts with "The Problem" (e.g., emotional eating), followed by "The Shame Shitstorm," leading to "The Plan" (a new diet or exercise regimen), which eventually gets disrupted by "Life," sending the individual back to "The Problem." This cycle reinforces self-blame, but it's crucial to understand that the plans themselves are often unsustainable.

Uncovering wisdom. Illuminating this cycle reveals the underlying wisdom of these coping mechanisms. For instance, "emotional eating" might be a body's desperate attempt to find comfort or meet unmet needs after prolonged deprivation. Recognizing these patterns with kindness and curiosity, rather than judgment, is the first step toward transforming them and rebuilding trust with oneself.

3. Diet Culture is a Sneaky Shape-Shifter: Divest from its Lies.

Efforts to lose weight disconnect you from your body’s wisdom.

Disguised control. Diet culture has evolved beyond explicit "diets," now masquerading as "wellness," "healthy lifestyles," or "clean eating." Programs like Noom, despite claiming psychological backing, still promote daily weighing and food tracking, perpetuating the same restrictive mindset. This constant repackaging co-opts anti-diet language while maintaining oppressive and mechanistic views of the body.

Signs of investment:

• Tying self-worth to weight or appearance.
• Seeking external "experts" for food/exercise rules.
• Exercising primarily for weight control or aesthetics.
• Using calories, points, or macros to dictate eating.
• Judging food as "good/bad" or "healthy/unhealthy."
• Suppressing natural weight despite the body's resistance.

Systemic harm. This pervasive culture is deeply intertwined with neoliberal ideas of personal responsibility, healthism, and beauty standards, all rooted in white supremacy and anti-Blackness. The BMI, for example, was developed in the 19th century for white populations and is misused to pathologize bodies, fueling a multi-billion dollar industry that profits from shame and fragmentation. Divesting means recognizing these systemic lies and their harmful origins.

4. Reckon with Your Eating: Unconditional Permission is Key.

All human beings have a right to access enough enjoyable food to meet their needs without experiencing guilt or shame.

Beyond fuel. Food is far more than just fuel; it's deeply personal, flavored with meaning, history, culture, and emotion. Reducing food to its nutritional components (nutritionism) ignores its profound role in human connection, tradition, and comfort. This reductionist view often leads to disordered eating patterns and a fraught relationship with food.

Deprivation's impact. Chronic food restriction, whether due to diet culture or genuine food insecurity, leads to intense food preoccupation, cravings, and a feeling of being "addicted." The Minnesota Starvation Experiment demonstrated how even short periods of deprivation can cause lasting psychological and physiological harm, making it difficult to normalize eating patterns. The body's biological drive to survive famine overrides attempts at control.

Path to healing:

• Unconditional permission: Eat what you want, when you want, without conditions, guilt, or shame. This is crucial for neutralizing food and reducing preoccupation.
• Increase access: Ensure consistent availability of enjoyable foods to reduce deprivation-based eating.
• Attuned eating: Listen to your body's hunger, fullness, and satisfaction cues, rather than external rules.
• Neutralize food: See all foods as morally equivalent, removing "good/bad" labels.
• Habituation effect: Repeated, guilt-free exposure to "forbidden" foods reduces their elevated status and excitement.

Reclaiming your identity as an eater means moving away from rigidity and perfectionism towards a flexible, compassionate, and connected relationship with food.

5. Grief is an Essential Part of the Healing Journey.

What is healing if not also a grief process?

Acknowledging loss. As individuals divest from diet culture and the illusion of control, they often encounter profound grief. This grief stems from realizing they haven't failed, but rather have been failed by a system that prescribed constant self-improvement. It's a mourning for lost time, misdirected energy, and the fantasy of a "thin ideal" that promised acceptance and belonging.

Stages of grief. While not linear, the process of grieving in body trust work often mirrors Kübler-Ross's stages:

• Denial: Clinging to the hope of control, continuing restrictive behaviors despite knowing their futility.
• Anger: Externalizing frustration and rage towards diet culture, anti-fat bias, and systems that perpetuate harm, rather than directing it inward.
• Bargaining: Negotiating with oneself, seeking new rationales to continue dieting or postponing full divestment.
• Depression: Facing the sadness of letting go of what isn't working, acknowledging the futility of past efforts, and the difficulty of living in a fat-phobic world.
• Acceptance: A deep, rooted understanding that involves letting go of the struggle, embracing reality, and moving towards self-compassion and new ways of being.

Collective grief. This grief is not solely individual; it's also a collective mourning for the ways dominant systems have marginalized and harmed vast groups of people. Unprocessed grief permeates families and communities, perpetuating oppression. Ritualizing and holding space for this grief, individually and collectively, is a necessary catharsis for true healing and liberation.

6. End the Hustle: Perfectionism and Shame are Tools of Oppression.

My perfectionism arose as an attempt to gain safety and support in my dangerous family.

Systemic demands. The "hustle" for the perfect body, driven by perfectionism and shame, is a survival mechanism taught by systems of oppression. These systems, rooted in white supremacy, ableism, and patriarchy, demand constant striving and competition, normalizing the idea that one must "earn" worthiness, value, and success through body modification. This keeps individuals fragmented and distracted from deeper issues.

Shame's function:

• Internalized oppression: Shame speaks with the voice of dominant culture, reinforcing beliefs of defectiveness and inadequacy.
• False motivation: It creates short bursts of "better behaved" actions, but doesn't lead to sustained, authentic change.
• Protection: Paradoxically, shame can protect by keeping individuals small, compliant, and under the radar, avoiding further judgment.

Dehumanizing pursuit. The relentless pursuit of an idealized self, often tied to thinness, athleticism, or specific beauty standards, is dehumanizing. It forces individuals to outsource their self-worth to external validation, leading to self-harming behaviors and a disconnection from their authentic selves. This "idealized self" is a product of systems designed to profit from diminished self-regard.

Ending the hustle means recognizing that you are not the problem to solve, but rather a whole, worthy being whose presence is welcome simply because you breathe. It's about reclaiming your humanity and challenging the systems that profit from your self-doubt.

7. Reclaim Your Body by Entering the Wilderness of Embodiment.

Re-occupying the body is a political act.

Leaving the familiar. Disconnecting from the body, or living as a "floating head," is a common coping mechanism in a disembodied culture. Reclaiming body trust means leaving the familiar, externally-driven roadmap of body management and entering the uncharted "wilderness" of embodied experience. This journey is vulnerable and requires trusting internal wisdom over societal norms.

Dimensions of embodiment:

• Body connection and comfort: Safely accessing sensations, addressing chronic pain, and wearing comfortable, affirming clothing.
• Agency: Reclaiming your voice, advocating for needs, setting boundaries, and expressing yourself authentically.
• Desires: Rediscovering and honoring what you truly want, free from shame or judgment.
• Attuned self-care: Developing compassionate, weight-neutral practices based on internal wisdom, not external mandates.
• Resisting objectification: Shifting from external scrutiny to subjective immersion, experiencing the body from within rather than how it appears to others.

Wild transformation. This process is not about achieving a perfect state of embodiment, but about creating more possibilities for positive, connected experiences with your body. It's about pushing past discomfort to discover the "raw new unexplored universe within yourself," reconnecting with your wild, feral, and free self, attuned to your own rhythms.

8. Pleasure and Satisfaction are Healing Forces, Not Indulgences.

Pleasure is a necessary, core intelligence of humanity.

Reclaiming desire. Diet culture and oppressive ideals often lead to a disrupted relationship with desire, making pleasure seem suspect, secondary, or shameful. Reclaiming pleasure is an act of resistance, an expansion of self that says, "I'm here." It's about rediscovering what lights you up, what you truly enjoy, and allowing yourself to experience it without guilt.

Fullness vs. satisfaction:

• Fullness: A basic physical sensation of having enough food in the stomach.
• Satisfaction: A deeper, more full-bodied emotional reaction, a sense of contentment and fulfillment from eating.
• Often, individuals are full but not satisfied, leading to continued cravings or a feeling of "wanting something else."

Pleasure's political nature. The denial and policing of pleasure are deeply rooted in puritanical, white supremacist, and patriarchal systems that seek to control marginalized bodies. Fat bodies, Black bodies, and other marginalized identities often face public scrutiny and criminalization for expressing joy or desire. Recognizing this political dimension highlights why reclaiming pleasure is a vital act of liberation.

Awakening sensation. Numbing unwanted thoughts and feelings also numbs joy and pleasure. Reconnecting with pleasure means reawakening to the full spectrum of sensation and emotion. This process, though confronting, is essential for healing and for experiencing life with vitality and exuberance, rather than through the deadening lens of self-improvement.

9. Movement is for Joy and Connection, Not Punishment or Aesthetics.

Human beings need food and movement to survive. Diet culture steals food and movement, deeply pathologizes them, then commodifies them and sells them back to us.

Stolen agency. Just like food, movement has been co-opted and pathologized by diet and "toxic fitness culture." What was once joyful, innate play becomes a tool for body modification, weight control, or aesthetic performance. This shift robs individuals of their agency, replacing intrinsic motivation with external mandates and shame-based obligations.

Toxic fitness culture:

• Promotes fitness solely for weight loss.
• Encourages pushing through pain and ignoring body signals.
• Believes thinness is the only sign of "hard work."
• Lacks diverse body representation and accessibility.
• Perpetuates the idea that "beating your body up" is a good workout.

Fitness without "the look." Fitness does not have a specific appearance; people of all sizes and abilities can be fit and active. The pervasive weight stigma in fitness spaces often leads to trauma, making these environments unsafe for many. Reclaiming movement means divorcing it from appearance-based goals and reconnecting with its inherent joy and benefits.

Compassionate movement. This involves a flexible, non-prescriptive approach:

• Rooting movement in loving-kindness and gentle expectations.
• Moving for connection, sensation, pleasure, and joy, not compensation.
• Adjusting activities based on energy levels and body signals.
• Fueling the body adequately for activity without guilt.
• Allowing for rest without shame.

Reclaiming movement is about honoring your body's unique needs and rhythms, fostering an attuned relationship that prioritizes well-being over performance or external validation.

10. Deepen Your Roots: Healing is an Ongoing, Resilient Practice.

To take one step is courageous; to stay on the path day after day, choosing the unknown, and facing yet another fear, that is nothing short of grace.

Non-linear journey. Reclaiming body trust is not a destination but an ongoing, evolving process. It's multifaceted and non-linear, characterized by moments of progress, setbacks, and continuous learning. This journey requires patience, self-compassion, and a willingness to navigate discomfort, especially in a world still steeped in diet culture.

Rebuilding trust:

• Reciprocal process: You learn to trust your body's wisdom, and your body learns to trust that its needs will be met consistently.
• Small, consistent acts: Trust is rebuilt through daily, gentle practices, not grand gestures or perfection.
• Resilience: Developing deeper roots in body trust makes you more resilient to external pressures and "bad body days."
• No guarantees: The outcome for weight is unpredictable (gain, lose, or stay the same), but the focus remains on healing the relationship with the body.

Foundations for resilience:

• Work the edges of your comfort zone: Grow by embracing slight discomfort.
• Look with kindness & curiosity: Replace self-criticism with gentle inquiry.
• Go for a C-: Release perfectionism and embrace imperfection.
• Locate yourself & widen the lens: Understand your positionality and systemic influences.
• Find community & share your process: Seek support from like-minded individuals.
• Honor your self-preservation practices: Acknowledge and respect your coping strategies.

This practice is about showing up again and again, allowing for new possibilities to emerge from within, and trusting your inherent capacity for healing.

11. Make Your Healing Bigger Than You: It's a Political Act.

If you have come to help me you are wasting your time. But if you have come because your liberation is bound up with mine, then let us work together.

Collective liberation. Individual healing from body shame and diet culture is not an isolated event; it's a political act that contributes to collective liberation. By divesting from oppressive systems personally, individuals help dismantle the structures that harm everyone. Your healing is intertwined with the liberation of all bodies.

Beyond individualism. The dominant culture promotes individualized healing, often ignoring the systemic roots of body dissatisfaction. True healing requires recognizing that challenges with food and body are not separate from broader issues like classism, racism, sexism, ageism, and ableism. This understanding shifts the focus from "what's wrong with me?" to "what's wrong with the world?"

Building equitable community:

• Communion, not isolation: Healing is an act of communion, best fostered in supportive communities that prioritize equity and shared experience.
• Affinity groups: Connect with others who share marginalized identities (fat, queer, BIPOC, trans, disabled) to build solidarity and mutual support.
• Conscious communication: Engage in conversations that are fat-affirming and anti-diet, recognizing the impact of diet talk on others.
• Advocacy: Use your reclaimed voice and agency to speak up against injustice and advocate for a body-compassionate, weight-inclusive world.

Your presence in this movement, your willingness to heal and challenge the status quo, is essential. It's about creating a world where dignity, belonging, and humanity are universal, not conditional. Your freedom is a vote for everyone's freedom.