Body Positivity vs Real Life

The body-positive movement, while well-intentioned, has left me feeling conflicted and shamed at times.

I wholeheartedly believe in the movement's mission to challenge society's beauty standards and promote acceptance of all bodies. Witnessing the empowerment and confidence that radiates from individuals embracing their curves and unique features is beautiful.

However, along the way, it seems that a new set of beauty standards has emerged, inadvertently creating pressure to fit into a different mold.

It's important to acknowledge that self-love and acceptance are not linear journeys. The mirror reflects our struggles and insecurities, and having moments of vulnerability is okay. We shouldn't be silenced or afraid to express our thoughts, even if they don't align with the mainstream narrative.

Remember to share this episode if this helped you today and tag me on Instagram at @simplyhealthykacey!

• Apply for Simply Healthy Academy
• Free Simply Nurtured Hormones Guide
• Ways to work with us
• Follow on Instagram @simplyhealthykacey or Facebook Simply Healthy Kacey

Transcript

[00:10] Kacey K: Welcome to the Simply Healthy You podcast, your place for overcoming overwhelm with your health to reach your fullest potential. I'm your host, Casey Kane and I am so pumped to have you here. I'm a recovering, burnt out high achiever who is diagnosed with an autoimmune thyroid, a condition by my early thirty s.

[00:27] Kacey K: I didn't realize that running myself ragged.

[00:29] Kacey K: In the name of being superwoman and determined to achieve all the things in life was killing my body. I created this podcast so that you don't have to continue the struggle like I did for over a decade. I sat down, studied the data, and simplified what it means to prioritize your own health needs so that you can be the best for all the things on your to do.

[00:50] Kacey K: List.

[00:50] Kacey K: Everything you hear on this podcast I have tested and implemented in my own super pact, Life with my family to bring you the tips, tools and strategies that will keep your life simply healthy.

[01:06] Kacey K: Hey, hey. Welcome to another episode of the simply healthy you podcast. I am so grateful to be infiltrating your brain with today's topic. My name is Casey Kane. I'm an integrative Health practitioner and certified Holistic Nutritionist with a Master's in Psychology and I'm here to bring you science based conversations to help you live a healthier and happier life. You could probably tell from the title of this episode we're not really going into a lot of science here. I mean, I could go into the psychology of things today, but I posted a reel the other day on Instagram and a similar message that I've shared before, but every single time that I share it, it always generates conversations with those in my audience and I completely understand why. So today I want to open up about something that always weighs on my heart and it's regarding the body positivity movement, the body positive movement, whatever you want to call it. While very well intentioned, don't get me wrong, I think it has left me and many of us feeling very conflicted and shamed at times. I wholeheartedly believe in this movement's mission to challenge society's beauty standards and promote acceptance of all bodies. We all come in different shapes and sizes and it really is a beautiful thing to witness the empowerment and confidence that radiates from individuals who are embracing their curves and unique features. However, I do think along the way it seems like it has set out a new set of beauty standards, if you will, and it has inadvertently created this pressure to fit in just a different type of mold that if you are not fully accepting and loving your body exactly the way that it is today and not wanting to change something about it, then you don't fit into the body positive movement. Then you still must be living in some kind of good diet culture world or one of those things, right? And I just think that's complete and utter bullshit, right? I think that I have found myself comparing my body to those that are celebrated more, right? And the same way that the people in the body positive movement will say that only thin bodies are celebrated and you only see thin bodies on magazine covers and billboards and models and all this kind of stuff. Well, now we have the opposite which is needed and welcomed. I mean, diversity is always helpful here, but just like any other diversity initiative, we have to be careful here with what we are pushing because are we actually promoting diversity or are we just trying to fill the gaps to check off the checkbox, right? To just say, well, hey, I've got some larger bodies on my stage now or I've got a larger body on my magazine cover. But only certain kinds of larger bodies. Only certain kinds of curvy bodies, right? I do think that it's hard to encompass every single kind of person out there. We are all snowflakes. We are all completely unique and different and that is what makes the world a beautiful place. So I think we just really need to be careful here when we are promoting the body positive movement and making sure that we're not also just stuffing down another narrative. And I think that I've seen this a lot in my audience, at least for the women that I have talked to, where many of us actually fall somewhere in the middle. We are grateful and appreciative of everything that our body has given us and the many years on earth that it has carried us. But we still want to change things about our body. And yes, some of it might be for an aesthetic reason. Maybe some of it is weight loss because we just don't like the way that we look right now. Maybe some of it is weight loss because we don't like the way that we feel right now. Maybe some of it is weight loss because it's hard to maneuver in our body. Maybe some of it is strength and muscles that we want to build because we like the way those look. We are all attracted to different things and if we want to be attracted to our own body, yes, we should have flexibility and a healthy mental picture there. I think there are obviously situations where mentally we can have a very distorted view, right. When we're talking about eating disorders and things like that, people have a very distorted view of what their body looks like. Not talking about from a mental health perspective in that way. There's obviously layers of where this needs to be treated. But I love the way that muscle looks. I'm not trying to become a bodybuilder, I'm not trying to be like ridiculous and I'm not following unhealthy means to gain as much muscle as possible and not consider my health in that equation. But I like the way that looks. I also like feeling strong. I like to be able to lift my kids without having to put in a ton of effort. I like to be able to play with them and keep up with them and not be winded just from running around the yard with them or playing on the trampoline. I think that there are very good reasons for all of us to want to change things about our body, and even if it is for a purely aesthetic reason. What I mentioned in my reel, we put on makeup, we change our hair color, or get a haircut, or we go and paint our nails, or get our eyebrows done, right? Or get our lashes done. I got my lashes done. I got my lashes tinted because they're really light in color without mascara on them, and it makes it look like I hardly have any eyelashes. We do all these other things for aesthetic reasons. We get facials, right? Why are we not allowed to do things that are going to change from the neck down? Right. Why are we not allowed to change and lose some weight if we want to? Because that's what makes us feel good. Or tone up, because that's what makes us feel good. Get stronger. Because that's what makes us feel good. I think that the body positive movement has kind of set out this new set of beauty standards that is directly in opposition of diet culture, but then makes some of us in the middle here kind of feel like, well, I don't hate my body just because I want to change it. It's important to acknowledge that self love and acceptance are not linear journeys, right? The mirror. When we look in the mirror, it reflects our struggles, our insecurities, and it's okay to have moments of vulnerability. Most of us have been dealing with diet culture since we were children, since we were teenagers, right? And we're now in our thirty s, forty s, fifty s, sixty s. And we are still grappling with some of that bitchy mindset no matter how much we have worked on it. Still, for me, there are times where in this postpartum body that I am currently living in, and I am two years now, postpartum for my last child, I still have the diet culture kind of pop up in my head sometimes that I'm battling. So we need to acknowledge that for ourselves that that also is a big role in it. And I can still be really positive about my body, but also not fully accept where I am right now. I don't really like it right now. I have a very unique kind of situation going on in my abdomen because I have a C section scar. I also have AB separation that makes it very hard for my core to basically hold in my organs and everything else. Like my muscles are physically separated in the middle of my abdomen, which makes it hard to actually keep everything in alignment. That also has some digestive issue, things that can have an impact on and whatnot. But from a physical standpoint, my body changes size throughout the day because in the morning, when I don't have any food in my stomach, everything seems pretty okay, right? And by the end of the day, when I am more full in digesting food from my day and all of that, I look bigger. And while there is not anything inherently wrong with that, it's extremely difficult to function in a body like that. It is extremely difficult to find clothes. And my C section scar is very tight. I work with a physical therapist, and she helps with loosening up that scar tissue and all that kind of thing. But, I mean, it doesn't change the fact that I have this weird indentation in my lower abdomen and then a very loose abdomen from about right below my belly button up until the bottom of my rib cage, and it just kind of creates this kangaroo pouch on me. It's very hard to get dressed in the morning, and of course, for aesthetic reasons, like, I want to change that. It's so lumpy. It's so hard to fit into things. And I don't think that there's anything wrong with me saying it's not like I'm saying I want six pack ABS and I'm about to starve myself at all costs to get six pack ABS, right? And I think that's the thing. I think that's the key to it at least, is the intention behind why you want to make these changes to your body. We should not be silenced or afraid to express our thoughts about our own body, even if they don't align with the Main Street narrative. I really do envision a world where body positivity embraces the diversity of all bodies for sure without creating these hierarchies or judgment, right? And I think that's what the original intention of the body positive movement was. But like everything fucking else in the world right now, everybody's got to take everything to the extreme. And the people who yell the loudest are like the ones who fucking win. I mean, I don't know. I hate the people who yell the loudest on all sides of everything. The extremists in this world just need to go because they really do make up such a small percentage of people. I think for most of us, body positivity really does just mean trying to love your body as best you can for where you are today and trying to accept some of the things about it, but also being able to say, you know what? I am wanting to change my body because I love it. Not because I hate it, not because I'm mad about it, not because I feel shame about it, but because I love it enough to want it to be its best. I mean, we talk about wanting to be our best all the time. Why is that different for our own body, right? I think that if we all kind of band together here, we can really foster a community where self love can thrive and people can feel comfortable to be authentic in that and not be filling my DMs. I mean, I'm happy to talk with you about it, of course, but how many women fill my DMs to talk to me about this when I post that reel? Because they're like, oh gosh, thank you for putting into words what I'm too afraid to say, what I'm too afraid to talk about. And I just think that we're creating an increasingly toxic environment on the other side of things. Diet culture has made it very hard for people to understand what is healthy and what is not. And body positivity is now making it hard for people to understand what is healthy and what is not. So as I continue to navigate this journey for myself, I always tell my clients this there are unhealthy ways to do everything. There are unhealthy ways to do your diet, to do your exercise, to do your lifestyle. And all of it, I think, comes down to what you are choosing in the name of loving yourself and in the name of health, right? I can lose weight. Healthfully and lose weight to a point where my body is not underweight. When you are fueling your body properly, and something I tell my clients all the time, when you're fueling your body properly, giving it everything that it needs, you will release what you don't need. So if you are meant to be a smaller size, if you are carrying around extra adipose tissue that we know can contribute to health issues, then your body will feel safe to release that when you are giving it. What it needs, when it is not stressed out, when it has all of the nutrition that it needs, and it's not going to drop below to an unhealthy point for your specific body and size for its own needs. Our bodies are smart. The reason why we hold on to these things is because things are out of place. I know the reason why I am still holding on to postpartum weight is because my body is too stressed the fuck out and been getting depleted. And as much as I have tried to combat that, life has other plans for us sometimes and throws those curveballs in there and just stress is beyond what we can control all the time. And so we have to figure out how to bounce back from these things, right? And so I think it's all about intention, the intention behind what it is that you're doing. If you are doing it from a place of love for yourself, I'm all for it. And I'm here to support you in doing that. And I do that with every single one of my clients. They know, like weight loss in particular not something that we are ever going to set a goal for, right? They talk about it all the time. Well, not I shouldn't even say all the time. In the beginning, they talk about it. They say, this is something that I'm hoping for. But they know that we're not setting that as a goal. One, because you can't set weight loss as a goal. You don't know when your body is going to feel safe enough to start releasing that weight in a healthful way. Yes, there are a million different ways that we can unhealthily lose weight and unhealthily unhealthily. I'm not sure if that's a word. And we've all done that before, right? Been there, done that. Thank you. Fad diets. That's not the way to do it. Right. And that's not the way that we do it in my programs. So they know that's not a goal because we can't control when our body is going to be ready for it and we can't put a deadline on when our body is going to be ready for it if we're doing it in a healthful way. And I really do believe we are all works in progress like that. And finding our own version of Body Positivity is going to take time and it's going to look different for every single one of us. So we need to be compassionate and kind and patient with ourselves. And I just really wanted to record this episode. I don't even really have notes for this. This is just kind of a ramble of my thoughts after posting that reel and having more conversations where people feel like if they say out loud, I want to lose weight or I want to work out because I want to gain muscle or change some of the aesthetics about my body, that they are going to be shamed for it. Because we are supposed to be in an age where we're loving and accepting of our body at all stages and I just think it's not mutually exclusive. I can love my body and still want to change it. It can be both. So I hope this message has helped serve you in some way today. It's okay to not be comfortable in your body. It's okay to want to change it. And I support you and I'm here for you and I give you permission to want to change. Just lead with health first, all right? Thanks as always for listening and I'll catch you next time. Thank you so much for listening to.

[16:05] Kacey K: The Simply Healthy You podcast. If these episodes are resonating with you, go ahead and click that subscribe button and leave a review with all the great nuggets that you're taking away from today's episode. I promise you I read every single one of them as your feedback is really valuable to me in creating future episodes. As your host, I look forward to having you join me for the next episode. But in the meantime, remember, keep it simple and eat more plants.