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5 Stages of Body Grief in Period Recovery · Nourished Fertility

0:00
Let me guess.
0:01
Is this you?
0:02
You're looking for a guilt free relationship with food, exercise in
0:05
your body so that you can have a monthly reliable period, but it's also about
0:10
being able to get pregnant on your own timeline, especially without being told.
0:15
Hey, birth control is your only option to regulating your period and IVF
0:21
is your only option for pregnancy.
0:24
What I wish I would have known 10 years ago when I was struggling is
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that it's much easier than you realize.
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The secret is healing from the inside out so that you have a monthly
0:34
reliable period that restores your fertility and a healthy, positive
0:39
relationship with food in your body.
0:42
And if you're looking to get your period back quickly without wasting
0:45
hours researching, DIYing your recovery and spending months, years winging
0:49
it, especially because you were trying to get pregnant this year in 2025.
0:54
This is exactly what we help you with in our High Touch 101 program,
0:58
Premier Period Recovery for Fertility.
1:01
Learn more at the end of today's episode.
1:04
Welcome back to the Nourishing Women podcast.
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You know, today I wanted to share this specific episode because it is
1:12
hands down the number one episode
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that I share time and time again with my clients.
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And that's because inevitably, as we're going through the process to
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get our periods back and regulate them, making sure that we're ovulating
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and cycling so that we can conceive and get pregnant, especially if
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you're trying to get pregnant here in 2025, inevitably, that's going to
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come along with some weight changes.
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And I'll be honest, we don't focus on weight gain as a means
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of getting people's periods back.
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We actually Don't focus on that as a barometer at all.
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We specifically focus on the actions and giving people the support to
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stay consistent in those actions.
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But as you can imagine, weight gain is a common experience for most people as they
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are working to restore their fertility.
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And because of that, Experiencing body grief is just an inevitable
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part of this experience.
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I'm going to guess that you likely have never heard the term body
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grief before, or even thought like, Hey, am I grieving right now?
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The loss of my ideal body or the loss of the fantasy of
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what an ideal body can give me.
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And for so many people who struggle with peer loss, you literally have What
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would be considered the quote unquote ideal body and coming to terms with
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the loss of that and really what's much much more deeper than that is
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the loss of validation praise and acceptance from others as people pleasing
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so intricately tied to body image.
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It's important that we recognize that in that we grieve that in that
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we allow those emotions to grow.
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To be so that we can get to this place of a positive relationship with our body.
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And most importantly, so that the fear of waking doesn't hold you
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back from the ultimate outcomes that you want for your life.
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Like if you want to hold that baby in your arms that you've been dreaming of.
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Letting the fear of waking hold you back.
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It's just not worth it.
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So allowing yourself to experience some grief and to feel these tough emotions
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is both inevitable and also I would argue necessary to meeting these goals.
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And yes, of course working through body grief with a peer recovery specialist and
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a dietician is going to be you know, very important and very supportive and helpful.
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But I want you listening Whether or not you work with this now or in the
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future or never, I just want you to know about this concept because I've
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never had a client not say, Oh my God, that like changes my life to recognize
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like, this is what I'm experiencing.
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I feel so seen and heard in my experience.
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And specifically what this episode will also do is walk you through the specific
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five stages of body grief so that you can see specifically where you are in your
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own journey right now and have actionable, tangible steps that you can do to help
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you process through those feelings.
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I so hope this episode resonates with you as much as it does with all of my clients.
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Without further ado, let's jump into this best of episode on
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the five stages of body grief.
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Welcome friends to today's podcast episode, all about the five stages
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of body grief so that you can clearly identify what stage you may be in.
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And I'm curious as we begin today's episode, do you relate to
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the idea of grieving your body?
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Have you ever heard this term before, this term of body grief?
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I ask because I know for so many of my clients, whenever I describe
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to them this idea of body grief, it like gives them a sigh of relief.
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It like finally offers a description for how they actually feel in their
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bodies and it offers language to the challenging emotions they feel
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probably that you feel about your body.
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I like to especially bring up body grief because I think since
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It's not a well known thing, or at least I don't think it is.
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Maybe if you, like, live deeply in the body image space like myself,
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you know this term and you, you know, you talk to your people about it
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and you relate to it, but for most people it's not a well known concept.
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I think a lot of people actually mistake body hatred for body grief
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because they are both like really challenging emotions, right?
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But they're actually quite different.
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So what I think would actually be helpful, we're actually going
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to define body grief before we go through the five stages of body grief.
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But before we even do that, I'm just going to quickly like
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introduce Like what is body image?
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What effects body image specifically?
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And we've done this quite a bit on the show, but I think anytime we talk about
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this big, big concept of body image, how you feel in and about your body.
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I just think it's helpful, right?
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To like review through definitions, give you like specific illustrations
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of what this may look like.
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And what I'll do too is put in the show notes, a lot of the past
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episodes we've done on body image.
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So if today's episode resonates with you, not only do we have a couple of episodes,
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at least on body grief already, but.
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We also have lots of conversations on body image, how to create healthy body
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image in your own life and so much more.
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And what I'm going to reference now is the four aspects of body image.
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Now I have learned a lot of these definitions in prior body image
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trainings I've done, but I think Brie Campos, who is a body image
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educator, a coach, a therapist, someone that I'm currently training under.
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Gosh, she just does like the best job of really articulating body image.
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And some of what I'm about to share pulls very specifically from
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some of her trainings that I'm currently in, as I just mentioned.
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And it's four aspects of body image that helps us define what is body
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image comes from confidentbody.
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net.
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It's the way you see yourself, perception.
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The way you feel about the way you look, affect.
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The thoughts and beliefs you have about your body, so that's cognition.
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And then finally, the things you do in relation to the way
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you look, so that's behavior.
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So for example, your perception of the way you see your body could
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be thinking something like, people must see my body like dot dot dot.
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Your affect about your body could be a thought or feeling
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or belief of I hate my body.
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Your cognition about your body could be believing I am a failure
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because of how my body looks.
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And finally, your behavior in relation to the way you think you look could
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be a thought, feeling, belief, or again, behavior that I must control
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my body to secure safety and love.
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What Brie shares in this training too is that body image is not letting parts of
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your body that grieve you Prevent you from living your life and really that's like
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one of the main key points that we always talk to our clients and talk To you our
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incredible community about is that healthy body image isn't like exclaiming your love
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for every part of your body I'm probably gonna mention that at least a couple
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times today Today, because I think that's one of the most common misconceptions
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about healthy body image, it's really more than anything, not allowing how
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you feel in your body that particular day to affect how you live your life is
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living your life, despite how you may feel in your body, because it is normal.
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It is to be expected because of the world we live in.
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You're not going to have perfect body image days.
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I would argue that it's going to be quite common for you to have a lot
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of negative thoughts about your body or maybe they're neutral, tolerant.
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Again, this idea of them being super positive, though, I don't
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think is always realistic to what it's really like living in a body.
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But again, it's more that you can live your life despite how you may
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feel in your body that particular day.
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So now that we've defined, given some examples of just body image as
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a whole, what exactly is body grief?
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You know, the first time I ever heard this term was actually in a training I did
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with Marcy Evans, and she described grief as a challenging and intricate emotion.
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Grief can be defined as emotional death, which if you've experienced
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grief, can probably feel very accurate to your actual experience.
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And just know that our emotions affect our ability to care for ourselves, and
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experiencing grief It is no different.
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Grief will affect how you care for your body.
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Without a doubt.
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This is why it's so important to talk about this concept of body
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grief, to allow ourselves to grieve and mourn what is lost.
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Even if that means grieving the idea of a body you never actually had.
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We can grieve the loss of our ideal body.
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We can grieve the loss of the fantasy of what a perfect body
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will give us in our lives.
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We can grieve our here and now bodies.
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Like there's so many reasons.
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Ways in which we may be grieving our bodies.
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And this is where I tell my clients the only way out.
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is through.
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Through the grief, through the pain, through the disappointment
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and frustration and all the feelings you're feeling about your body.
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Bree also teaches us that we cannot make it to body acceptance, which is
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such a big end goal for most people.
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You know, I actually recently did some poll questions on Instagram
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about like what your specific end goal with body image is.
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And I asked, you know, is it body respect, body appreciation, body
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acceptance, body peace, body confidence?
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Most people voted yes.
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either body acceptance, body peace, or body confidence.
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And whatever your three or other examples may be, like if it's more
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body respect for you or whatever it is, know that you probably won't be
10:24
able to get there without experiencing some level or amount of body grief.
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We can't skip the stages of grief.
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We have to move through them because suppressing any emotion,
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grief included, will make it grow stronger and will make it unbearable.
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So instead of fast forwarding through or ignoring the grief
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that we feel, what can we do?
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So body image work can be so similar to healing your relationship with food and
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the specifics of intuitive eating in that it's a process of continued learning.
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As long as you have a body, You're going to be doing body image work.
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Ideally, we like to start the change of the narrative you have around
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your body now, just so that we can, over time, create this new neural
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pathways to create more days, at least.
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Again, won't be every single day of your life, but more days
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overall of body acceptance.
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But I do want you to remember, especially as we start to dig in more
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now to the five stages of body grief.
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Working our way towards acceptance.
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It's not a stage that you arrive at.
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Remember, it's continued learning.
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It doesn't mean that you're necessarily going to like all parts of your
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body or even accept them with joy.
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There will be days when parts of your body grieves you, but the
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difference is that it no longer plays a part in how you accept yourself.
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Bri recently, one of our trainings shared this analogy and I thought
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as a parent myself, this was like the best way to describe body image.
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And she shared, you know, you always have If you're a parent, unconditional
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love for your child, right, like you would do anything for them, that never
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goes away, but there are certainly going to be days where you don't really like
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your kid very much, or they're getting on your nerves, or you are just feeling
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really frustrated and feeling a lot of intense negative emotions because
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parenting is It's freaking really hard.
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It is so hard.
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It's the hardest thing I've ever done in my entire life.
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So whether or not you're a parent, I think that can probably offer
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some like ideas or language or just like a concept of to how you're
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probably gonna feel about your body.
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Hopefully the idea is that we can help you establish unconditional love and
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just always being there for your body.
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But it doesn't mean you're always gonna like Or be, feel really
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happy with your body at all times.
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Similar to parenting.
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So now that we've talked about that, let's actually go through again,
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the five stages of body grief.
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This is just pulling straight from the five stages of grief as a whole.
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You've likely heard these shared before in terms of grief as in like
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a death grief or something like that.
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But again, I'm going to describe them very specifically from a body image lens,
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how it affects body grief specifically.
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So the first one we're going to talk about is denial.
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This likely looks like the desire to diet just one last time, or let me lose
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weight one more time, quote unquote, and then I'll make peace with my body.
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Or maybe it's the feeling or beliefs that, no, my body has changed, I
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need to get back on track, like those type of thought processes.
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Maybe you keep putting off even the practice of intuitive eating
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about acceptance or do not believe it is for you at all.
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You could be listening to this very podcast and be like, yeah,
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that's great for other people.
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But me, I could never do that.
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I'm never going to do that.
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And if you're at this stage, it may be helpful to read through books on this
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topic, listen to podcast episodes, draw on your feelings and familiarize
13:30
yourself with new education and a new perspective on bodies and health.
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I would especially recommend re listening to some previous episodes on body image
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to help you process through that denial.
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All right, next up is anger.
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This looks typically like anger at diet culture.
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This may be a stage where you want to convince everyone that diet culture
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is wrong and your way is right.
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Remember though, everyone's on their own journey.
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If they're not reachable and teachable, don't worry about them.
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It could also be anger at your own body, your own self, like this.
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Feeling or belief that like, gosh, I can't believe it's gone this bad.
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And if you're at this stage, there's a variety of ways to process through
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this anger that you're feeling.
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Remember, it's okay to feel tough feelings just like grief.
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You can feel angry.
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It's okay to be angry.
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Not allowing yourself to feel that anger is only going to bubble up to the
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surface in some way, shape, or form.
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It is okay to even feel anger at your body for a period of time.
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You could talk to a loved one, a friend who gets it, maybe even
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your own personal dietitian.
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If you don't have one, we would love to be that for you here
14:34
at Nourishing Minds Nutrition.
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I think too what may be helpful in this specific stage, if you've never done a
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body lineage charting exercise, I think this can be really helpful too in this
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specific stage because it can just help you find some level, some amount of
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compassion for what you've gone through.
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Remembering through a body lineage charting exercise that this is
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a way you've treated your body and been taught about bodies as
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a whole for your entire life.
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So again, I think it may help you allow yourself to process through
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some of that anger and feel.
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Experience some compassion for yourself to remember to, you're doing the best you
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could with the tools you had at the time.
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It's okay to be angry and also extend again, compassion towards yourself.
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You're doing the best you could with the tools you had at the time.
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If it feels beneficial, finally, you may find anger releasing activities such as
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screaming, shaking, dancing, exercising, and the like to be helpful here.
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I know for me personally, when I'm angry, nothing beats listening to some like
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old school Linkin Park, um, the use, my chemical romance, and the music from
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like my high school years, dancing it out, maybe doing a really intense form
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of exercising, screaming into a pillow.
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That can all be really, really helpful.
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Okay, up next, bargaining.
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Similar to denial, this can be a stage that makes you desire to
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go back to controlling your body or dieting just one last time.
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It may also be the thought of maybe I can still fix this.
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In this stage, I especially, especially think support through a support
16:05
group or talking to someone who gets it will be so incredibly helpful.
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Maybe in this specific stage too, you could write out a pros and cons list.
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right?
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Running out the pros to going back to dieting and the cons to going
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back to dieting to remind yourself of what you are reckoning with here.
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There may be some pros that you can identify, maybe short
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term temporary weight loss.
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Sure.
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Maybe a sense of feeling of control.
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Sure.
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But what are those cons and what are those long lasting cons?
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Another helpful exercise here is to write a letter to your body.
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If you've never done this before, it's like my favorite
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exercise ever to do with clients.
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And it's just very simple.
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To your body, write whatever it is you need to feel towards your body.
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An open letter to your body.
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If you could write an open letter.
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What would you say?
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Lastly, for providers that work in the body in a space similar to
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myself, know that this is typically where clients are coming to us.
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I'd already known this, but when Bree shared this, that like
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bargaining is where most of our clients come to us, like, maybe I
17:08
can still fix this type of mentality.
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It really resonated with me because I've definitely found that to be true.
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In my clinical experience with both with my own clients, my staff's clients, we
17:18
definitely find that that bargaining stage can be where a lot of people come
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to us and noticing that acknowledging that and helping them through that
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your own clients will be really, really important so that they don't
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stay stuck in the bargaining phase.
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All right.
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Depression is next.
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And in this stage, you may feel deep sadness for the time you've lost,
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the energy you've spent living your life, trying to change your body.
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It could also be a belief or feeling of.
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I can't believe this is my body.
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If you have not yet already, this is where writing a letter to your
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body will be especially helpful.
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And if you've already completed that exercise, maybe do it a second
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time, this time running back as if you are your own body back to you.
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If your body could speak to you, what would you say?
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Again, I want to emphasize here is a really important place
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to probably work with someone.
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If you're feeling really intense.
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And finally, where I think a lot of you are hoping to get to is acceptance.
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In this stage, you could still feel deep sorrow of body grief.
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But you can also feel hope in the freedom that intuitive eating
18:36
and body image healing offers.
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You can see the other side that you are ready for something different.
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At this point, you may not love or even like all parts of your
18:45
body or your body as a whole.
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You're just instead focused on caring for your body and respecting it as is.
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Again, it's this idea that you can just accept that this is more
18:54
about like living my life and I can appreciate, I can accept.
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All the ways that my body allows me to live the life that I have.
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It could be acceptance for like the way your body looks, but I would argue that
19:08
for most people, it's probably more so.
19:14
Now this could be a time to focus on the final principles of
19:17
intuitive eating if you have not already started to intern to them.
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I think a lot of times we do have to work through the tough emotions and
19:24
feelings and experiences the body image before we are ready for these last
19:28
principles, which is body respect, which obviously goes like hand in hand with
19:31
acceptance, but it's like specifically to practicing actions of body respect.
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Also joyful movement, gentle nutrition.
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This could too.
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Be a time where you want to focus way less on your body.
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You've done all this body image work, right?
19:44
You're more living your life.
19:45
So what could you do that you've been putting off?
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What have you always wanted to do?
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Is there a traveling experience you've wanted to do, but you haven't yet allowed
19:54
yourself to eat at a new restaurant, start dating, explore new forms of self
19:59
expression, like getting new clothes that fit your here and now body.
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What speaks to you?
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What would help you?
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Live in the stage of acceptance.
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Now, remember, grief is not a linear process.
20:10
You can go back and forth through the five stages of body grief.
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But I think as you arrive more in acceptance, you can probably lean
20:17
to more and stay in acceptance.
20:19
So at the end of this episode, I just really want to encourage you to reflect.
20:23
Where may you be in your own body grief journey?
20:27
I hope these recommendations and, you know, exploratory questions I've asked
20:31
you, activities for each stage, help you.
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It helps you to process through what you're feeling.
20:37
I want to finish off this episode by sharing a quote
20:39
from one of my favorite books.
20:41
If you have not read The Body Is Not an Apology by Sonya Renee Taylor,
20:44
promise me my friend he will do so.
20:46
It is such a good book.
20:48
Such a good book.
20:49
And in this book, she shares, quote, The act of giving yourself some
20:53
grace is the practice of loving the you that does not like your body.
20:56
On the days we feel the most deficient and the most chased down
20:59
by the dog of shame, what is being called forth from us is more love.
21:03
Not because we earned it, but because we never had to.
21:07
To give grace to oneself is to move beyond words like worthy
21:10
and deserving, terms that still imply qualification and quantity.
21:15
When we recognize ourselves as the embodiment of radical self love,
21:19
We stop trying to assess our worth.
21:21
We begin to understand that love is inherent and unquantifiable.
21:26
Love just is.
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We just are.
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Love.
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End quote.
21:29
Thank you so much for listening to today's episode on the five stages body grief.
21:33
I think you have a lot of wonderful homework to go work on in order to
21:37
help you process through whatever stage you're personally in right now.
21:40
And just knowing, Hey, how you feel is okay.
21:43
The only way out is to Through and you are allowed, even as you're working
21:48
towards healthy body image to feel tough feelings towards your body.
21:51
In fact, that's the very way that in the very path towards
21:55
having better body image.
21:57
I also want you to know at the end of today's episode
22:00
that getting your period back.
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back and restore my fertility, this was the 10 years ago in 2014, I had so
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23:12
They can achieve the exact goals that they have.
23:15
So if this sounds like exactly what you're looking for, so that you
23:19
yourself can get pregnant in 2025, even if you've had a missing period
23:24
for like 10 plus years, we got you, use the link in the show notes to apply.
23:30
Thank you so much as always for listening to today's podcast episode.
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And as always, we'll be back for another episode next week
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until then love to each of you.