A World Where Women Love Their Bodies

Squeezed into a dressing room, my friend Caroline tossed out a simple question to Kelly and me.

Her eyes glued to the full-length mirror, checking out the pair of jeans from all different angles. Front, back, left side, ride side.

“Do these jeans make me look fat?

We quickly responded…

No, of course not!

They look great!!

Definitely buy them!!

Without realizing it, I was being schooled in the language of body shame. In the mall, with my high school friends.

I learned that I was supposed to be self-conscious about how my clothes fit me.

My thinner friends thought they looked fat. What did that say about my athletic body? I drew the conclusion I must have been really fat.

I learned to ask for other people’s opinions of how my clothes fit. More out of courtesy than necessity. Because it never mattered what they said.

I learned to never trust the words they shared. If they thought something looked good on me, they were just being nice. They wouldn’t tell me the truth.

No matter how our clothes fit, body shame, sadly, fits us like a glove. The conversations we have in our minds comparing and criticizing our bodies are just too comfortable and too frequent.

The schooling continued and body shame was something that just became the norm.

This is why I’m holding a very important vision.

I see a world where all women are loving their bodies. And not needing to only love a perfect version of their body.

They are loving their body just as it is- no matter their age, size, shape, ability, sexual orientation or preference. I see a world where all women love their here and now body.

We know our body is our best friend. We know our body is a source of wisdom and valuable information. We trust our body and we let it guide us.

In a world that tells us our body needs to be different, defying these messages takes a revolution. We need to see these messages for what they are; lies that hurt us.

We need to recognize how precious our bodies are, simply because they are here on this planet.

Loving your body is your birthright.

Can you see it for yourself?

Trying to Think Positive Thoughts When You’re Calling Yourself Fat Doesn’t Work. Try This Instead.

“Think Lovely Thoughts”. This sweet little plaque hangs in my kitchen. Right next to the coffee maker.

I bought it at the gift shop at Kripalu, a yoga retreat center in Western Massachusetts. I remember thinking, I want lovely thoughts. Maybe this small plaque would serve as the reminder I needed.

Early in my transformational journey, I “worked” on my thoughts. Thanks to Dr. Wayne Dyer, I embraced the notion that if I changed my thoughts, I would change my life. And when it came to emotional eating and overeating, I wanted change. Lots of change.

The Broken Promise of the Thin and Perfect

Somewhere along the way, you learned something is wrong with your body.

The teaching may have come in the form of a sly comment from a friend at summer camp when she pointed to another girl and said “that girl should NOT be wearing that bathing suit”.

The teaching may have come in what you observed. Your mother eating special meals at dinner, not eating cake or ice cream and counting calories.

Imagine singing in front of a live audience...

Back in the late 90's, I was the controller for a consulting firm that had all company meetings on Friday mornings. Once a month, I had to stand in front of 50 or so employees and share with them some key financial and operating metrics.

Days before, I'd get a pit in the bottom of my belly. I would prepare by memorizing exactly what I would say. That never helped. I felt like a robot, stiff and rigid, and had little awareness of what I said and how I sounded.

The fear of being in front of a group of people, mostly men, where I was suppose to the expert and authority, left me paralyzed. My mouth would get dry and I'd get sweaty.

When Did You First Hear That You Needed To Lose Weight?

You need to lose weight.

When was the first time you heard those words?

Were you at summer camp when you were 11 and compared yourself in your bathing suit to your skinnier and more popular friend?

When it was time to get uniforms for your basketball team, were you horrified when they were too small for your body and the coach needed to order a larger size, just for you?

What I See in the Peloton Commercials That You May Not

Peloton, a high-end spin bike company, has some interesting commercials this holiday season. So interesting that major news channels are weighing in and Peloton’s share price is feeling it.

In one commercial, a woman was gifted a Peloton by her husband. She vlogs her year long journey with her Peloton, which includes rise and shine 6am workouts and her ‘come hell or high water’ determination to ride 5 days in a row.

In another, a few men and women are riding their Peloton right after Santa paid his visit on Christmas morning, while their families are nestled in their beds. Peloton claims “our kind of joy feels different”.

Twitter is blowing up. Youtube parodies are getting massive views. Daytime talk shows are having a field day with this.

I’ll toss my own two cents in, as a transformational coach who guides women to create freedom around food and trust their own bodies. And as someone who has owned her own spin bike for over 15 years. I have a few of my old “Spinerval” workouts memorized when they played in the DVD player so often. I was doing my own version of Peloton back in the day.

Peloton is doing what all companies do: market their products so they can increase sales. I’m suspecting that Peloton is targeting the fitness freak (and I say this with love as I have fitness freak running through my blood). Fitness freaks don’t need to be coaxed to go to the gym. We happily set our alarm for 4:30am to get to an early morning workout class. When training for a marathon, we know that our running shoes don’t recognize holidays as a day off.

There is a very important unspoken undercurrent to Peloton’s ads that’s extremely impactful. Peloton is showing us a persona, likely their ideal customer. Someone who can afford their $2,000 plus price tag, who have supportive families that don’t mind them working out at any hour of the day or night, spend their days in a corporate office, and live in nice homes in very comfortable suburban neighborhoods.

Peloton riders appear healthy, committed, disciplined, and focused. Each with a big smile on their face. We see successful, attractive, and happy.

There is also a common denominator with each rider. They are thin.

Before you say, “Of course. They have a Peloton! They are working at it. They deserve to be thin. What’s wrong with that?”

Consider what Peloton is really selling us. It’s not a workout bike. It’s a way to get fit. It’s convenience. It’s variety and intensity. They are also selling us financial comfort, loving families and happiness. Based on what we see in Peloton commercials, this comes with thinness.

This is diet culture and its EVERYWHERE. It’s like a gas we can’t see, smell or taste. It often goes undetected.

Christy Harrison describes diet culture as “a system of beliefs that… worships thinness..., promotes weight loss as a means of attaining higher status..., and demonizes certain ways of eating while elevating others....”. See her blog post for more.

For years, I didn’t even know that diet culture was a thing. What I did know was that I needed to have a smaller body. Which meant I needed to lose weight. Being thin and my happiness was both dependent and interdependent. Meaning, I thought I’d be happier if I was thinner AND I couldn’t truly be happy and content if I wasn’t as thin as I could be. In my mind, happiness = thinness.

I lived with this belief for a long time without realizing that a cultural mechanism instilled it into my being. I never questioned the belief that thin people are successful, happier and more attractive until I learned about diet culture.

Have you been able to recognize diet culture for yourself?

When I did recognize that it was “them, not me”, I slowly started to break up with diet culture. I wish I could say that it was abrupt and immediate. It wasn’t. It took me a while to recognize all of the deception. I held onto a false hope that diets could still work for me. I held on to a small amount of naivete that wanted to believe in the good intentions of companies over the profits they wanted to make.

Sadly, Peloton is in very good company when it sends us the message that thinness is superior. Billions of dollars are being made by companies like them every year that send a similar message.

If you are hearing about diet culture for the first time, I invite you to continue to watch your social feed, notice TV ads, and listen to conversations with a new perspective. The messages are subtle and sneaky.

You have to become aware of a belief before you can change it. When you realize that you’ve been holding your own assumptions around how we value ourselves based on the size of our body, it’s time to question those beliefs.

Is that belief true?

And, when you believe it, what impact does it have on how you feel, the choices you make and how you see the world?

Peloton can go ahead and market it’s a$$ off by slinking in during half time when our favorite football team is playing. You may also have a Peloton or something like it and, like me, love to get your fitness fix in on the daily.

Even so, we need to recognize that our happiness and success in life has nothing to do with the size of our body.

Thank you Peloton, for this reminder!

Why the Body Image Crisis is a BFD


A research study of over 5,000 women of various body weights between 25 and 89 years old concluded that body dissatisfaction in the United States is omnipresent. Omnipresent is a pretty fancy word for simply saying every woman everywhere.

91% of the women in the study wished for a slimmer and smaller figure. Take a moment to let that sink in.

When I consider my daughter, her friends and teammates, my heart breaks. This study didn’t even include her social media generation. Yet, I think we both know the results would be the same.

It’s really hard to listen and care for something you dislike. I treat my beloved car now completely differently than the minivan, filled with goldfish cracker crumbs and empty sippy cups, I drove when the kids were toddlers.

Our body holds important information that’s worth listening to and it’s important that we respect it. When it comes to your relationship with food, your body knows when you’re hungry and when you’re full. Your body holds sadness, frustration, stress, overwhelm or anger.

When it comes to your relationship with food, changing your relationship to your body is key.

By disliking our body, without realizing it, we’ve turned away from this vital source. Our body offers us wisdom and intuition. It’s our way of knowing what we feel, what lights us up and what drags us down. Our body offers us warning signals when situations may be unsafe and it’s remarkable at keeping itself in balance.

Our body is our connection to something bigger than our individual selves.

We’ve been given a body so we can navigate our way through life. Our body is so eager to guide us. We need to appreciate what it offers us.

If something doesn’t change, I don’t think our young girls stand a chance to appreciate and respect their own source of power.

We need to model for them a different way. For them and for ourselves. Don't you agree?

Interested in changing how you feel about your body? Here is ONE thing you can do right now:

Get curious around the sensations in your body. Notice lightness, heaviness and tension. Spend a few moments every day becoming aware of these sensations and notice how they change. Maybe they become more intense, move or eventually dissolve. You don’t need to try to change the sensations, just observe them.

Practice connecting to what's happening on the inside and eventually, your view of your whole body will change.