Latest / Unlearning Beautiful / Ep. 21 "But I Feel Better Thinner!" Addressing One of the Biggest "Yeah-Buts" to Body Peace
Transcript
- Kristina Bruce: I gotta lose weight because when I was thinner, I felt great. And now that I'm bigger, I don't. Is that something you've thought before? It feels like a cold hard fact. Smaller body equals feeling better. But what if feeling great in your body has less to do with the weight itself than you may think? Today, we're going to deconstruct the belief that you can only feel good in your body if it's small. We're gonna talk about why trying to control and manipulate your body into a smaller size might work for a while, but can actually create many of the issues that you're hoping a smaller body will fix. Now, I'm not saying that your body can't change or that you'll never live in a smaller body again, but I am asking, is weight loss really the requirement to feel better in your body? And what is it costing you now to keep feeling like you need to have that happen before you can relax? So if you're tired of waiting for permission from a gene size in order to feel good, this episode is for you. Welcome to Unlearning Beautiful, a podcast for women tired of trying to look good enough and ready to feel good from within. I'm your host, Christina Bruce, here to help you let go of the pressure to look right or do it all right. and reconnect with your inner guidance, your natural worth, and what truly makes you feel fulfilled. Because the freedom you're craving was never in how you look. I want to begin by jumping straight into the physical aspect of feeling better in a smaller body. And the first one I want to start out with is talking about joint pain in the body. I need to lose weight because now that I'm bigger, my joints hurt. I just don't feel as good in my body. And my doctor's telling me to lose weight. This is what I need to do. Except let's look at this more closely. People in smaller bodies also have joint pain. There's a really good example in the book, Health at Every Size, where the author, Lyndo Bacon, is talking about how her and somebody else were going into the doctor for a very similar complaint. It was structural, related to feeling pain in the body. The other person was in the larger body, and so the doctor had recommended weight loss to the person in the larger body, but to the person in the smaller body, they recommended physical therapy and certain exercises that they could do to relieve the joint pain. Now, why is that the case? you know, if the person in the smaller body has the joint pain too, why are they getting a different recommendation? Well, because we know that when there is weight loss, the pain lessens. So you would draw the conclusion that says, well, obviously it's the weight that needs to be lost, except why is it then that the person in the smaller body is also experiencing joint pain? Could it be that the underlying cause of why the person in the larger body is experiencing joint pain could be similar to what the smaller person is? When my husband was in massage therapy school, and no, case you're wondering, he's no longer a massage therapist and I do not get free massages. Too bad for me, but that's the way that it goes. When he was learning anatomy, he said, you know, it doesn't make sense that weight is going to cause pain in your joints because joints are designed to get stronger to be able to carry a heavier load. He said, except for when somebody rapidly gains weight in a short period of time, the weight can cause joint pain and issues. He says, there's got to be some underlying issues, structural issue, alignment issue, something else like arthritis. weakness in surrounding muscles that are causing an instability and pain within the joint. And so that would make sense then why the person in the thinner body would receive the instruction to do physical therapy because it's dealing at the root cause. Whereas this is an analogy I like to use. If you have a pin that is pressing against your skin, if you push harder on that pin, it's going to hurt more. If you take pressure off that pin, it's going to hurt less. But it's not pressing on the pin that's causing the problem. It's the fact that there's a pin there to begin with. So what do you need to do? Well, two options. You can stop putting the pressure on it. That will relieve the pain. But it doesn't get rid of the pin. When you have joint pain and weight loss is recommended, it's not really dealing with the root of the issue. And so a question that you can always ask a practitioner if they're just recommending weight loss is to say, if I was in a thin body showing up with the same symptom, what would you tell them to do? And then you're likely gonna get a different answer. You don't necessarily need to lose weight in order to relieve your joint pain. You need to look at what actually is causing the joint pain to begin with and focus on that. Let's look at the second common physical factor. about being in a smaller body. And that is around movement, that you can move better when you're in a smaller body. And I can understand this. had a personal experience with this after I gained weight. When I was teaching yoga and I was at my thinnest, I could do a side bend really easily. I can bend in my body and have more range when I didn't have fat that was getting in the way of me bending. After I gained weight, my mobility decreased in that respect. Now that was upsetting to me, but it wasn't upsetting to me because all of a sudden I couldn't bend as forward. It was upsetting because of what I was making that mean. And so there's, sort of two different aspects to this here. There's the one that we do just want to be able to move throughout our life to have a good functional mobility and to be able to do the things that we would like to do. Yes, that's one side of it. but the other side is there's an emotional mental piece to it. There's often these beliefs underneath that will say, I should be able to do this. I want to be able to do this. Well, why? If it's not required or necessary. So in the example of me in yoga, it was not required or necessary for me to bend as far forward as I used to. I was still getting the same benefit out of the posture and the practice by just bending over a little bit less. I can understand though, if the weight gain is actually preventing you from being able to do something like tie your shoe easily. But there's other things that you can do in order to increase mobility and you can also adjust. So maybe you don't bend over all the way to the ground to tie up your shoe like you used to, but you bring the floor closer to you by putting your foot on a chair. But what's the commentary in your mind that's going on in that process? that this means I'm less than, I don't like doing it, I shouldn't have to do it this way. There is all of these beliefs and thoughts that are going on in the background because if you didn't have any idea that it was bad, well, you just put your foot on a chair and tie your shoe and that would be the end of it. But it's because we often have a story around it. We're resisting what is. Now. Let's also remember smaller bodies can also be restricted to movement too. So it doesn't guarantee anything. But if you really want to improve your movement, there are many things that you can do. We're often focusing on reducing the weight, but we're not focused on increasing mobility. Something that I think is really great is I've been seeing some movement programs that are coming out, advertised online these days, that are focused purely on functional mobility. You can do movement not for weight loss, but to just live more easily in your body. If that is your focus, that will increase your strength, your mobility, reduce pain, all of the things that you're hoping weight loss will give you, but you're getting more to the root cause of it. So there's those two pieces. There's the limitation, but then there's also the story that gets added on to the limitation. And the negative story that our mind is telling about it, is actually what's creating our mental and emotional suffering. Otherwise, you would just move on with your day and adjust the limitation. But we're unhappy with that. We're resisting that. But we can do things that increase mobility. So focus on that. There's also another piece of this, and this is feeling lighter in the body. And the thing is, is you can experience that lighter feeling no matter what body size you're in. I've had personal experience with this too. When I was in my smallest body and I was working out really hard every day, there were days that I felt really light in my body and there were days that I felt heavy and I could have sworn when I felt heavy that I gained weight, but I didn't. So there's something else that's going on in our internal experience of our body that's not directly related to our body size. So much of how we're actually feeling in our body is mental and emotional. but it's running underneath the surface. We have beliefs, we're resisting what is. We're in opposition to it and that creates suffering. Meanwhile, if we came into a place of more acceptance, that we could let go of the negative story and thought that we have about it, we would feel a lot better in our body. And then if it occurred to us to take action to make a change, we would do it. But it wouldn't come from a place of me and my body to lose weight in order for me to feel good in my body, we would just do the thing that would help us feel better. And we wouldn't feel bad in the process of it. Something that we really don't realize is that the negative commentary in the beliefs that are running in the background of our thinking is what is actually causing us to feel most uncomfortable in our body. It's a perception. We often just take it as a fact. ⁓ yeah, this is just how it is. But it's not. It's a perception. It's a lens that we're looking through. And any time you are feeling negativity, there is some resistance at play. And the resistance is what actually on the most fundamental level creates our suffering in the moment. Because if we didn't have these negative beliefs or this resistance to how we think things should be, well, they would just be and we would be okay. But we have such a host of thinking in our minds that we don't know what it's like to not be thinking that. We don't know what it's like to have an experience when those aren't at play. There's an exercise that I have in my mini course, the body piece video series. I'll link to it in the description if you're interested. And I bring people through this experience of what would it be like to be in your body right now if you didn't have those stories going on in your mind, if you had a different perception. And any time I've ever brought somebody through that experience without fail, they feel better. Because how we're feeling mentally and emotionally is a perception issue. And it's just that we don't question it. We think that it's fact. So if we have this belief, I can't be happy unless I lose weight, well, then you're not going to be happy because the belief is what's preventing you from being happy. If you didn't have that belief there, if you could just say, actually, I'm gonna be okay as I am right now, then you'd feel a lot happier. And you would still notice if you wanna be able to do things to feel better in your body. So it's a shift between trying to change your body out of a place of resistance and dislike and negativity versus following the cues of your body and focusing on, notice when I do this, I feel better and allowing that to be the cue. comes from a very different place. And the result is that you get to be happy now instead of waiting until the body changes. The funny thing is that often when we stop trying to change, change happens. It's our resistance to what is that keeps that thing in place. We're giving energy to the thing that we don't want when we're resisting it. If you think about it, if two people are pushing their hands together and they're pressing, they stay in place. It's not until somebody lets go and movement happens. It's the same with this idea and belief that I can't be happy unless. That's resistance to what is. And when we finally are able to move into a place of peace and acceptance, then things can start to change on their own. But the beauty is, is we don't need the thing anymore. We don't need the body to be exactly how we want it to be in order to feel okay, because that resistance has gone. And then weight loss can happen on its own if it's in the best interest of the body to do it. But even if it doesn't, you're already feeling better. So that's the benefit. We have to look at the internal dialogue that is going on when you're in a larger body. In my previous episode, the other F word, I talk about how deeply we have been conditioned to hate fat. Well, if you're going to see yourself in a larger body, there's a very good chance you're having negative thoughts about it. How would it feel to be in your own body if everything you're hearing in your mind says something bad about it? You're not going to feel very good. So of course it makes sense that you're going to feel better in a smaller body when everything that you have learned says that being in a smaller body means that you're better. So what are the stories that's going on in your head about your larger body? I've let myself go, I'm ugly, I'm not good enough. You need to examine those. If those weren't there in your mind, I guarantee you're gonna be feeling better in your larger body automatically. And those thoughts matter because they create stress on the body. If you could imagine that we lived in a culture where everybody thought positive about larger bodies, I'm gonna guess you're gonna feel pretty okay in your larger body. So much of it has to do with the mental emotional story that is going on in our minds about our body right now. It's hard to feel comfortable and good and confident in your body when the only thing that's happening is negative. And then the other piece of this too that we really have to look at is the social validation. You're gonna feel so much better in a smaller body because everybody's complimenting you on it. Everybody's telling you how good you look. If our mind is registering, this means I'm better. This means I'm good enough. And we start to relax a little bit more. And if you gain weight, all of a sudden the compliments stop, you're going to feel worse again. How we're feeling in our body has so much to do with the chatter and the beliefs and the story that are running, often not in our conscious awareness. And as I always say, if a thought hurts, it's not. true, not on the fundamental level. That is actually the thing that is getting in the way of us feeling okay and peaceful in our bodies right now is the contractive, negative, resistant thought that we are listening to. And the irony is, that when we're feeling this negativity and we're constantly stressed and we're resisting and we're at war, it creates unease in our body. We're more likely to get sick. We're more likely to have aches and pains on our body. when we're constantly living in the hormones of survival, when we're living in this stressful state because our body can't function optimally when we're constantly feeling this contraction, the energy can't flow as easily. When we are not relaxed, the irony is that we're going to be healthier too. When we're at war with our body and we're trying to make it smaller and force it to be a different size, We're out of harmony with it. We're not listening to it. We're over-exercising. We're eating in a way that can be nutritionally lacking, but also can just suck the enjoyment out of our life. We're not really taught in our culture that the feeling of how we're feeling in our body matters. We're so used to living in stress, some level of anxiety or worry. It's normal. Almost everybody's experiencing it. But if we look around, We're a society that's pretty sick. You know, we have a high rate of physical illness and also mental emotional illness. And it's because we're caught up in our mind listening to these stories that aren't actually true and it compounds over time. Doesn't seem like much in the beginning, but when we've been carrying it and thinking it over and over for 30, 40, 50 years, that's going to accumulate by trying to make our bodies smaller and force it into the submission, we're often creating a lot of the problems we are told that weight loss is supposed to fix. So we need to do the opposite. And that can feel hard to do, but it means we need to let go and relax and allow ourselves to be okay in this moment, to accept ourselves, to come into peace. And from that place, naturally we'll start to... harmonize with our body and do things that feel good and we're gonna then feel better in our body but without needing the body to lose a certain amount of weight or look a certain way first. And if you're in a larger body now and you used to be smaller, it's so common to have selective memory about those days when we were feeling better because so often we just remember, when I was thin and we look back at photos and say I wish I could be that thin again, but How were you feeling about yourself at that time? Really and truly on a day-to-day level? Did you think you looked amazing? Did you feel totally at peace and relaxed in your body? Or was there a lot of stress too? Were you overworking yourself? Were you constantly fixated on your food? We often romanticize that and we forget that actually that wasn't very good either. We know on some level that that's not the answer. It's just that we don't know what to do now. and that's the work I do working one-to-one with clients comes in, is we go to the mental emotional piece. We look at these beliefs and these ideas of how they are blocking the natural peace and ease that is within you now and to come back into alignment with that. I'll put a link in the description below if you want to check out more about that work that I do. I want to end this episode by saying start with the self-talk and judgment first. when you're frustrated about something or you think if only I was to lose this weight, then I would feel better. Start paying attention to what is the narrative that's going on in your mind. And then notice, how would I feel if this negative thought that I'm having right now wasn't there? How would I feel if I didn't have this thought, it should be different, I should look different, I'm bad that I look this way, if that just disappeared? And see how you feel. And notice how that already makes a change in how you feel in your body. And then if there is a desire to make some kind of change, to start a training program that's going to help you feel better in your body physically and increase mobility. If you notice that you're eating in a way right now that doesn't actually feel good, you're emotionally eating at night or eating foods that don't sit well in your stomach, then you make the change. But it's coming from a place that just makes obvious sense. ⁓ yeah, that doesn't make me feel good. rather than making decisions because I feel like I need to force or change my body to be a certain way. And when we end this resistance, we come into more calm, more ease, more balance. And that's when we open up the body's natural healing ability. That's when headaches might start to disappear. We might notice less aches and pains in our body when we're feeling more consistently, more at peace, and we're dropping the negativity that's been running in the background for so long. And lastly, one more thing you can ask yourself. When you notice that thought that comes up that says, if only I was thinner, I would feel better, ask yourself, what is it that I'm really wanting the weight loss to make me feel? Am I wanting to feel more ease? Am I wanting to feel more confidence? Am I wanting to feel happy? Am I wanting to feel at peace? Because those feelings are actually, really and truly available to you right now. It's just, there's a lot of thinking that's clouding it over. The very thought of resistance, it's what's keeping that feeling away. If you didn't have that resistant thought, you would automatically start to feel more ease, more peace and feel better. So start to practice that and see what happens. I hope you got a night or two out of this episode and maybe just a little bit of permission to shift how you're viewing your body right now. Maybe you truly can feel better. without having to be in a smaller body. Check it out for yourself. And look forward to seeing you in the next episode. Thanks for listening to Unlearning Beautiful. If this episode resonated with you, follow the show and share it with another woman who's ready to see beauty and herself in a new way. And if you feel moved, leave a rating and review. It will help the show reach more women who need to hear it. Remember, you're already everything you've been trying to become. enough worthy and free. I'm Christina Bruce. Until next time.