Personally, this month so far, I have been focussed on de-escalating all the pressure around the new year.
I love to use this time of year to rest, restore, vision and make my intentions soulful with a slow and steady pace.
That said, beware: Dieting is the number one New Year's resolution and diet culture loves promoting all the reasons you should diet.
You may notice yourself succumbing to thinking you need to fix your body, fix your eating, or fix your entire life.
It is so easy to find ourselves linking our personal worth and value in the world to our body size, our eating, and how we compare the the “perfect” version of womanhood.
We can find ourselves in a guilt ridden puddle after indulging and being out of our normal day to day routine over the holidays.
I’m here to remind you to be gentle with yourself.
Making peace with your plate is not about guilt, restriction, body shaming, or attaching your personal value in the world to impossible food and body standards.
Making peace with your plate is much more about learning to eat to feel how you want to feel, to being able to track into the intelligence of your body (including hunger and fullness), to find pleasure with food that makes you feel good, and loving and nourishing yourself with your eating.
Peace begins with peace.
Self compassion starts with small compassionate moments, thoughts, and gestures.
Healing happens with love and kindness.
What if we ring in the new year by appreciating our body and rejecting diet culture?
If you are looking for some ways to take this even deeper, be sure to listen to this weeks podcast episode where my guest, Athina Crilley, shares what can happen when we give into diet culture (including her personal story and all the damage that ensued) rather than learning to eat to feel how we want to feel, be present with our feelings, and create capacity to hold it all.
Listen and Hear:
What years of eating disorder recovery, therapy and personal transformation taught Athina about herself, her eating, and her happiness
The practices Athina used in healing her mindset –– her primary approach to healing her eating disorder
What inspired her to write her book: Diary Of An Anorexic ~ A Recovery Journey
How she uses her robust social media platform to promote healing our relationship to food and our bodies.
Meet Athina Crilley:
Athina Crilley is a podcaster, an author and writer, and a social media manager.
She started her podcast: Finding My Fit because she is super passionate about helping people to lead happy and healthy lives.
For years, she suffered with her mental health and eating. She shares how she spent so long hating herself and punishing her body, thinking that she didn’t deserve to feel happy!
Unfortunately, her story is not rare, and millions of individuals suffer with their physical and/or mental health today
That is why she is dedicated to sharing her story and experiences with others to inspire them, and show them that being happy and healthy IS 100% possible.
Diaries of an Anorexic is a powerful and intimate recovery story detailing Athina’s seven-year rollercoaster battle with Anorexia Nervosa, a devastating eating disorder. In this heart-wrenching memoir she shares private diary entries from her darkest times and shows how Anorexia took hold of her during her teenage years and kept her tightly in its clutches until early adulthood.
Read this emotional story about Athina’s recovery from an eating disorder, an illness from which she never thought she would never be free. Remember that blue skies are coming… the dark clouds will soon disappear, leaving a clear, blue sky.
Follow her incredible Instagram account HERE
I hope you enjoy this important conversation.
All love,
