âThe most difficult times for many of us are the ones we give ourselves.â ~Pema Chodron
Iâm on my phone, posting a photo of myself on Instagram. Itâs a vulnerable shotâIâm holding my bare belly.
I type in the caption âAccepting my body isnât easy, but itâs worth it.â
I mean this, but I also have voices in my head telling me to delete the picture because Iâm gross, not good enough, and a phony.
I get half a dozen comments supporting me, mostly emoji hearts. One comment reads, âI wish I had your confidence.â I feel weird reading it because my feelings are mixed. I donât necessarily think of myself as confident all the time.
In fact, my reality is that Iâm struggling with body image more than Iâm swimming in acceptance. I think about how this person is comparing their backstage to my highlight-reel.Â
We do thatâwe look at ourselves as ânot enoughâ and think that others have it all together.
Weâre our harshest critics, and we hyper-focus on aspects of ourselves and bash them. We think that behind closed doors we are monsters. But when we focus all of our attention on that behind-the-scenes person, weâre not taking into consideration how human others are, too.
The truth of the matter is that things arenât always as they appear on social media. Yes, I realize Iâm calling myself out, but I think itâs important for people to know that even people who seem wildly body-positive struggle, too. I mean, body acceptance is damn hard.
I didnât get to this point overnight, finding relative peace with myself. Itâs been a long time of hating myself and wishing I was different. Even with finding some peace, Iâm not âcured.â I donât have a magic dose of body love all of a sudden.
In fact, body acceptance doesnât have to be self-love at all. Itâs commencing on a simpler level. How about I just try to find acceptance in myself to think that this is how my body is at this moment? This is where we are, here in this body. Itâs simple, but not easy. Â
Itâs important to note that body acceptance is a moment-to-moment thing rather than a state of being in which you exist. Itâs something that has to be fought for but is sometimes settled on.
My background is that Iâve had eating disorders over the years, Iâve dieted like it was going to save me from body image issues, and Iâve had long periods where I weighed myself every day. Iâve also counted Cheez-Its out of the box, vowing to eat only the serving size. Iâve suffered in not accepting my body and instead succumbing to diet culture.
At points, I thought I had it under control. I had dieted just right. I had even lost some weight. Inevitably, though, the self-disgust seeped in. I fell off the wagon over and over again, binging, particularly on sweets and foods high in carbsâthe very foods I was depriving myself of.
Iâd say, âscrew itâ and Iâd devour pizza with friends. Iâd eat alone with a carton of ice cream or a box of cookies. Binging was inevitable after deprivation. While the high was fun during, it led to being sick and hating myself even more.
In a fit of despair, Iâd vow to âget back on the wagonâ the next day.
Iâd tell myself I was definitely going to do better next time, but next time never permanently came. I may have been able to string together a few days of what I saw as âgoodâ eating, but never lasting change.
I got to a point where I felt defeated.
Diet exhaustion looked like no longer finding joy in foods. It felt like a rock in my stomach. It sounded like sighs from having to make what felt like complicated food choices over and over again every day.Â
I couldnât count my Cheeze-Its anymore. The scale was haunting and owning me. I feared social gatherings with friends, sometimes even avoided them. The next diet be it Keto or Whole 30 just sounded like another opportunity to fail.
I got tired of chasing my tail. Diet culture wasnât working for me anymore.
What was the alternative? My ears started to perk up when I saw body-positive content on my social media feed. There were promises of body freedom and breaking the cycle of binging. I couldnât believe it, but I thought about trying it for myself.
The only thing was that I was terrified of trying it this way. The path of body acceptance sounded like giving up to me. It was far from it, though.
I donât remember if I googled body positivity, ran into it on social media, or some combination. I remember the despair I felt in searching for it. Thoughts passed through my mind like âcould this work?â or âcould this be real?â For so long all I had known was war with my body.
While I was terrified, the positive effects of body acceptance began to flood my world in the best way possible.Â
I found influencers like Lauren Marie Fleming, Megan Jayne Crabbe, and Jes Baker. These women showed me that you could be happy and free in any body type. They started to break down those ideas I had about fatness and even what constitutes health.
I started my journey. I downloaded all the podcasts I could on the topic: Food Psych and Love, Food were my favorites and top-ranking in the podcast charts. I filled my arms with books like Health at Every Size by Linda Bacon and Shrill by Lindy West. I religiously followed Instagram influencers like Virgie Tovar and Tess Holiday.
Their messages were essentially the same:
- Your size doesnât determine your worth.
- People can take actions to be healthy at any size.
- Food isnât to be defined as âgoodâ and âbad.â
- Dieting doesnât work, and long-term weight loss from dieting is not sustainable.
- All bodies are good bodies.
- You can listen to and trust your body.
These are just a small handful of the variety of beautiful messages I got from these amazing body-positive activists. They brought me hope.
I also compared myself to them.
I imagined their lives being perfect. I believed they had totally overcome diet culture and were floating above the clouds in body acceptance land. I thought that in order for me to experience freedom, I had to completely rid myself of negative thoughts.
My backstage looked more like some body-accepting thoughts mixed in with a whole lot of self-loathing. Even today, I look down at my belly in disgust some moments. I guess the difference is that I have tools and messages to turn my thinking around these days.
Some horrible thoughts that actually go through my mind are:
- Youâre only worthwhile if youâre thin.
- No oneâs ever going to love you.
- Youâre a failure and pathetic.
- You ate terribly today.
- Tomorrow Iâll eat âbetter.â
Iâm not immune from these thoughts just because I strive for body acceptance. In fact, these thoughts infiltrate my thinking regularly.
Itâs not a matter of having negative thoughts or not, itâs what I do with them.
What I do with them these days is breathe through them. I turn them around and donât let them control my life. In turning them around, I tell myself things like:
- Youâre worthwhile at every size.
- Youâre incredibly lovable.
- The only thing thatâs failed is diet cultureâs promises.
- You were feeding your body the best you could.
- Thereâs no hope in a diet tomorrow.
I want others to remember this when they think that myself or any other body-positive person on social media has it all together. I have to remind myself, too, when I go to compare my insides to another personâs outsides.
Weâre all just trying to figure it out, perhaps fumbling in the process. Those of us who are lucky enough to be working toward body acceptance know that this journey isnât perfect. Changes arenât going to happen overnight. Even the changes that do happen arenât totally polished.Â
Just as others donât know all thatâs going on inside of us, we donât know whatâs going on inside of another person. They could be struggling just as we are. Attempts to mind-read only bring pain.
What if that person youâre admiring is thinking the same self-deprecating thoughts as you are about themselves? What if theyâre not happy with the way theyâre eating and their relationship with their body isnât nourishing?
You canât compare whatâs going on inside of you to whatâs going on outside for another person. All you can do is work to have the best relationship with yourself as possible.
Acceptance is difficult and a process. In no way am I saying that itâs easy breezy. We wouldnât all struggle so hard with accepting ourselves if it was easy.
By recognizing that the person in the picture is just a human being, we see that we can have acceptance for ourselves, too. So, stop measuring yourself up to someone else. Youâre your own person, flawed and beautiful. You deserve your own acceptance.
About Ginelle Testa
Ginelle Testa is a passionate wordsmith. She's a queer gal whose passions include recovery/sobriety, social justice, body positivity, and intersectional feminism. In the rare moments she isn't writing, you can find her doing yin yoga, thrifting eclectic attire, and imperfectly practicing Buddhism. She has a memoir coming out with She Writes Press in September 2024. You can find her on Instagram.