episode 130: the only way you need to get ready for summer
It’s Memorial Day and that means it’s the unofficial start of summer.
So by now if you haven’t heard that you can “still be bikini body ready by July 4” you’re probably living under a rock.
Today’s episode of The Diet Diaries is reframing the “get ready for summer” messaging we hear every year.
Because we do need to get ready for summer—just not by dieting, doing “shred” programs or buying 10 cover ups that we plan to not take off all summer.
We need to have skills in place to deal with all of the negative body image thoughts that come up, to feel more confident doing the activities we love and to find our self worth from something other than what our body looks like.
I talk through 5 specific skills you can start practicing now so that you don’t feel like you have to miss out on your own life because of your body image issues like cellulite, the way your thighs jiggle or how your belly rolls.
Focus on the experience
Normalize what bodies do
Speak kindly to yourself
Accept that its ok not to love how you look, to feel self conscious and know that EVERY other woman is feeling the same thing
Stop using your body to commiserate
Episode 127 of The Diet Diaries offers more resources around improving negative body image and this blog post is basically a body image 101 guide!
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[00:00:00] Hi friends. It's episode 130 of the Diet Diaries, and it is Monday, May 29th. It's Memorial Day in the United States. If you are listening and you live somewhere else, so it's a holiday. So, um, most companies are closed. Schools are closed. Um, it is kind of the unofficial start of summer. In America. Um, And it's so funny, as I planned this episode, I wasn't actually thinking of the day it would air, and now I'm like, wow, this is really timely.
[00:00:38] So no announcements to start today. Let's just get right into it. I'm really gonna try and keep this one on the shorter side one because it's warm today, I'm obviously in my attic office, um, recording and I turn the air conditioning off when I do this. And it's already getting a warm 76 degrees in here.
[00:00:56] So that's moving along people. Um, So with it being the unofficial start of summer, we're still a month away from the actual, uh, biological season turnover. I wanted to talk about today how to get ready for summer, but not the way. Oh wait, I forgot to shut the air conditioning off. Hang on. Be right back.
[00:01:24] Okay, I'm back. I probably will not even edit that out because hashtag real life. I thought I thought about turning it off and then forgot. Um, so the way we are usually conditioned to thinking about getting ready for summer is do a juice cleanse, deep bloat your belly, start a 30 day shred program. Right, so that your body can be summer ready.
[00:01:47] That messaging is gonna be out there. You're gonna see it is never gonna go away. So we need some tools to help us respond to all of that, to help us check in and get grounded. And take choices and or make choices in alignment with our values, which if you're listening to this podcast, means you're probably not someone who wants to be doing a 30 day shred and going on a juice cleanse so their body is somewhere ready.
[00:02:14] You've probably been there and done that many times and are like, yeah, this doesn't work. Doesn't mean it's easy to ignore. Doesn't mean you can just. Choose to not see that stuff. It's everywhere. So I wanna give you, I'm gonna talk through five specific skills today. This is gonna be a really specific, kind of skilled oriented episode to help you get ready for summer so that you can enjoy summer in the body that you are currently in.
[00:02:40] That's what I wanna help you get ready for. Um, I wanna help you have the skills in place to respond to this stuff that you're gonna see everywhere so that you can keep going so that you don't feel like your only options are to go on a juice cleanse or do a 30 day shred, or not take your cover up, all cover up off all summer and feel like you have to kind of sit on the sidelines of your life while you're watching your kids and your partner and your friends go off and do things, and you're like, yeah, I'm just gonna like sit on the chair.
[00:03:11] I'm gonna stay home, or, You know, being afraid to wear shorts or tank tops or all these things because of the, the feelings we have about how our bodies look. All right, so let's just get into it. I'm gonna talk through five skills. The first one is when you notice yourself having these thoughts, they're gonna come, right?
[00:03:33] You're gonna plan, let's say, a beach day with your family. And you're immediately gonna think, oh my God, what bathing suit am I gonna wear? We're gonna be with these friends. I don't wanna look gross. You're gonna think about your friend and probably think, oh my God, she always looks amazing in a bathing suit.
[00:03:46] She doesn't have anything to worry about. Trust me, that friend has her own stuff going on in her head. I think there's only a few unicorns of women out there who aren't deeply impacted and affected and, and, and dealing with and thinking about all of this. So you're gonna get really caught up in thinking about.
[00:04:05] Your appearance and how you look, and one skill that you can start practicing is around focusing on the experience. What is it that you are doing that day? Going to the beach, swimming, having lunch, going for a walk, looking for seashells, building a sandcastle, um, whatever it is, you wanna focus on that experience and how your body.
[00:04:29] Enables you and empowers you to do all of those things, right? Without a body, you can't do any of that. So this helps to draw your attention and your focus away from what your body looks like and from what people see into what are you doing with your body. How is that allowing you and helping you to experience these activities, these events, these ex, these whatever they are.
[00:04:53] With the people that you love, with your friends, with your family, with your kids. Um, this is work. This takes work, right? You're gonna have a thought around, oh my God, I look so disgusting in this bathing suit. And then you're gonna practice following that up with. When I put on this bathing suit, it means I can get in the ocean and go swimming with my kids.
[00:05:12] Or when I put on this bathing suit, I can sit in the sand and build sand castles. Or when I put on these shorts, because it's gonna be really hot out today, we're gonna be at the beach all day. Um, I'm gonna wear these shorts and we're gonna go eat lunch at this really cool place. So it's about acknowledging you.
[00:05:29] You're gonna have your feelings, you're gonna feel your feelings around how you feel about how your body looks, and then you're gonna follow them up with focusing on. How am I using my body today with the experiences that I'm going to having and how is that going to make me feel? Right? Joyful, happy, connected, um, appreciative, grateful, whatever it is.
[00:05:50] Your body is not just something to be looked at. It is the, it is the, the vessel in which you live your life and have all these experiences. Okay. Second skill, let's normalize what human bodies do. They bulge, they roll, they squish, they, um, dimple. They jiggle, they flap. I could go on. Human bodies do this.
[00:06:16] It is part of being human. Yes, there are some bodies that exist that appear to do none of those things. We think that's the norm because that's the only bodies that we've ever really seen represented. However, the vast majority of bodies, it is common and normal for your body to do. All of those things that we've been taught are gross and unattractive and that we're not supposed to do.
[00:06:40] So. This is a practice of having some acceptance around. I am a human being. I live in a human body. Human bodies have cellulite. They have belly rolls, they have dimple marks, they have stretch marks. When I sit, my thighs are going to spread. When I pick my arm up and I hit the lower it's going to flap.
[00:07:02] That is normal. That is a normal part of being human. We live in this world where we've been told those things aren't normal and aren't okay. And that's just not true. We've been conditioned to believe these things. So again, when you notice yourself looking at certain parts of your body, having feelings, having negative feelings, judging, pause and say, this is okay.
[00:07:26] I am a human. I live in a human bodies. It is normal for human bodies to move and have these features, right? Again, these are practices. These are skills over and over and over and over again. Skill Number three, can you practice speaking kindly to yourself? This is not gonna come first. I'm here to tell you that the negative thoughts and feelings you have about how your body looks are still gonna come.
[00:07:54] The objective is not to get rid of those. The objective is certainly not to ignore them or dismiss them. It's to notice them. And then respond to them in a productive way with one of these skills. I'm talking through five, or on number three, pick one that resonates with you that you want to work on. You don't need to practice all five right now.
[00:08:11] Just pick one so you notice yourself speaking cruelly and abusively to yourself in a way that you probably would never talk to your kids, your best friend, someone that you love, and can you kind of pull back on some of that language, notice that it's happening. And saying you can come up with something.
[00:08:33] It could be like, my body is a good body. I am strong. I feel capable. I am a loving person. I am a kind person. It can be some other attribute about yourself that isn't about your size or your shape or what you look like, some quality of who you are, and just say that yourself. Speak kindly to yourself again, negative thoughts are gonna come.
[00:08:55] You're gonna notice it. You're gonna pause and you're gonna follow that with a new thought. The idea behind this is that over time, as you do this over and over and over and over again, and I can't even repeat the number of times that you do have to do it over and over again before it starts to work.
[00:09:11] But if you do it consistently, it's actually less time than you think. That is how you start to shift your thoughts. Um, and by shift your thoughts. Sometimes some of these thoughts will start to go away. Not all of them, and not even. For some people that never happens. I've had some thoughts go away and I have many thoughts that are still there, but what happens is they come less frequently and the volume is lower.
[00:09:35] You can also think about that as the intensity gets turned down, right? The goal is not to get rid of the thoughts. So separately, a big part of this is accepting that those thoughts are always going to be there and that's normal. Just like having cellulite and rolls and jiggly skin is normal. Having these negative thoughts is normal cause it's what you're conditioned to and you've been thinking them your whole life.
[00:09:56] Since you were a very tiny little person and they were being taught to you and you didn't even know they were being taught to you, and then was you didn't know, you just accepted as normal. Sky is blue. Oh, cellulite is bad and gross and disgusting. I'm supposed to only have a flat stomach. I'm supposed to have a six pack.
[00:10:08] I'm gross and ugly if I don't have those things. That was all taught to you. Just through observation, because those were the only body types that were represented, right? This is not me criticizing people who have those bodies. That is not it at all because trust me, people who have bodies like that have their own thoughts and their own stuff.
[00:10:26] This is about representation. When you only see one thing over and over and over again, you inherently, naturally believe that that is the good right thing that you are supposed to do. It's just normal. So that's a bit of a sidebar, just me reinforcing that you have to practice these skills. The goal is not to get rid of the thoughts.
[00:10:46] The goal is to decrease the frequency and the volume skill. Number four, maybe one of the most important ones I talked about just a little bit is, except that it's okay not to love how you look or to feel self-conscious. The goal with all of this is not to go from hating how you look to loving how you look.
[00:11:12] The goal is neutrality to not derive happiness, value, and or self-worth strictly from your appearance or primarily from your appearance. Maybe that could have some role lower down on the list. And when I say appearance, I'm also gonna be a little bit more specific with this around like size and shape.
[00:11:33] Right, so that we're kind of getting really into like weight and body fat. Yes. There's lots of body image stuff around our faces. I've talked about that. And that is a hundred percent part of this. And especially we're talking about summer and cellulite and stretch marks and all of that. Um, But this is around accepting.
[00:11:53] You don't have to love those things. I'm not ever asking you to look at your body and see cellulite or stretch marks or see a roll of fat and say, oh my God, I love that. I love how it looks. That's not the goal. The goal is to feel neutral, is to see it and say, all right, I'm a human. Human body has, human bodies have that.
[00:12:12] It's there. I'm moving on. I'm going out to do what I wanna do. I'm putting on these shorts because I love them. I'm putting on this outfit because I love it. I like it. It fits, it's comfortable. Right? We've done separate episodes about that. It's another great skill. I didn't include it in this list cause I was trying to keep it to five, but there's an extra, extra one.
[00:12:32] Lucky Strike extra. Um, and I'm gonna go off and I'm going to give myself the opportunity to feel all these wonderful experiences and have these experiences of spending time with people and feeling this way, and not allowing the fact that I don't like how my cellulite looks to stop me from feeling and doing all of these things.
[00:12:54] Right? That's a choice. That is a choice that we are capable of making. We can't control how much cellulite we have. We can damn well control. How we allow that to dictate and con and impact our behavior and what we let ourselves do. And so kind of tangential to this, I mentioned this a little bit before, reminding yourself, knowing yourself, that every woman around you at that pool, on that vacation, at that beach is thinking the same thing.
[00:13:23] I know you think I'm crazy. I know you think you see some woman and she has a quote, perfect body, and you think, what could she puzzle? She doesn't think that. Guarantee you she has her own thoughts because she has grown up in the same culture and the same society that you have. Who knows what she has been through to get her body to look like that?
[00:13:40] Maybe extreme behaviors, maybe not. We don't know. All I'm saying is that you can never make a presumption about someone based on what they look like. Whether they are a person living in a bigger body or a person living in a smaller body, and we are all humans and it is fucking hard and messy to be a human.
[00:13:56] And just because someone has a body that looks like the body that's been represented to us, doesn't mean that their life is wonderful and perfect. I say this all to remind you that you are not alone. And I know this for a fact because I've worked with clients and. Who have been in bodies that are more, um, that look more like the bodies who seem represented.
[00:14:18] And there's still a ton of stuff that comes up. Okay? This is not me making assumptions or just guessing. Like, I know this for a fact, you are not alone. And so if we all just realized everyone is feeling this, we would just start to care less, right? Cuz it's like, if everyone's feeling this, it's like, all right, well fine, then it's normal, so I'm just gonna go off and do my thing.
[00:14:41] The last skill I want to,
[00:14:48] is this recording? Sorry, I got a little confused there. It's today's a little tech day. I'm like, I'm looking at the bottom of one of my screens. I'm like, I don't see the number ticking. It's ticking. We're all good. We have often, we've been taught. To use our bodies to commiserate and connect with other women.
[00:15:07] Right? How many times have you said, oh my God, look at my stretch marks. They're disgusting. And your friend says, I know mine too. I can't even wear these shorts. And then the third one goes, oh my God, you guys know mine are the worst. You look awesome. I have it the worst. Right? And it becomes like this competition of whose body is the worst.
[00:15:28] I understand. And I'm, I'm, I've done this too. Um, we use that as a way to connect and yes, in some ways it does get at like, look, I'm not the only one kind of thing. And also when we use it though, in that negative way that's using, and I'm not the only one in like a negative way of, look how bad this is, what do you wanna flip that and say, oh look, I'm not the only one so that's okay.
[00:15:51] Let's use it in a positive way. Competing for who has like the grossest cellulite. And using that as a way to like connect is ultimately not beneficial, right? We wanna connect with each other and knowing we're going through a shared experience and turn that into a positive. But sitting there and complaining with your friends about how disgusting your body is and everyone trying to be like, oh my God, I know.
[00:16:20] And like one upping, one upping each other. Is not helping anything, right? That's just continuing to like drill this in, that there's something wrong. These are problems that need to be fixed versus let's say, oh my God, I have so much cellulite and your friend, and goes, you know what I do too. We all have it.
[00:16:37] It's normal. Why are we spending so much time talking about it? Right? Use the fact that everyone has this thing to normalize it versus to continue to problematize it. That's kind of the difference. Um, And be aware of when you do this. This happens, I think, a lot more than we kind of realize. And so it's just something I wanted to bring your attention to so you can start to notice.
[00:17:01] So you're gonna pick one, I listed off five and there was a little bonus skill in there. Just gonna quick recap. Can you start to focus and pay more attention to the experience you're having in your body while wearing a bathing suit or shorts or something that exposes a part of your body that you're not as comfortable with?
[00:17:17] Can we start to normalize what all human bodies do and have cellulite roles? Bulges, squishing, stretch marks. Can you practice speaking kindly to yourself when you catch those negative thoughts and that abusive language happening? Practicing number four, accepting that it's okay to not love how you look.
[00:17:36] That is not the goal I, the body positivity thing, like, uh, it's not about being positive. It's just, can we be neutral? Like can we be neutral? Can we find self-worth and validation about ourselves from things other than what we look like? And as part of that, and kind of the last point, remembering that nearly every single woman.
[00:18:02] That you see around you is going through the same thing, and that we need to stop using our bodies to commiserate and problematize and start connecting and realizing we all share these frustrations, these feelings, and these physical qualities. So maybe it's kind of normal to like have these things and it's normal to feel these feelings and it sucks.
[00:18:25] So what can we do about it to start to feel better? And then the extra kind of bonus skill was around clothing, bathing suits, whatever you're, whatever you're dressing your body in. I like it. It fits, it's comfortable. Has to check all three boxes. If any one of those boxes is missing, it's a no-go. It's a hard no.
[00:18:45] Okay, that's it. That stay's episode. If you're getting Nourishing Notes Summer Edition, you're gonna hear some of these things over the course of the month. But literally these are the types of skills we need to hear so many times to help them sink in. So this is just another resource for you to have to, um, help support you reach out with questions.
[00:19:06] I'm always here and I will be back of course next week.