Is Being Anti-Diet Culture Stopping You From Moving Your Body?

In this solo episode, Rebecca dives into a common barrier to moving your body and exercising that often goes unnoticed. (Hint: It’s connected to diet culture!) Join her as she shares the coaching she gave one of her clients, helping them start moving more from a place of self-love.

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Transcript

Rebecca Sigala: 0:00

Hey, beautiful. Welcome to the solo episode of The Body Image Revolution. I love doing these because I just have so much to share with you and I think about you all the time and I feel so connected to you and all of my listeners, because I know that if you're here, you are on your own unique path towards loving yourself and your body more deeply. And in this world, that is so fucking bad ass. Unfortunately, it's not the norm. But to know that there are so many women who I see are listening from not only Israel or the United States, but from 78 different countries so far. Wow. That's just amazing and inspiring and so humbling. I just take it as a great honor and privilege to be a part of your journey. Today, I'm going to talk about something that affects so many of us as we go on this journey toward radically loving our bodies. Despite what diet culture has taught us about Being thin, having to look a certain way or fit into a beauty standard. We're out here really getting to know ourselves and finding ways to love ourselves and speak kinder to ourselves and see our bodies as beautiful, even though we were never taught how to do that. This topic comes in when we want to start to take care of ourselves from a place of self love, like physically take care of ourselves, but then moving our bodies and exercising, eating nourishing foods, reminds us so much of that mentality that we used to be in, and we don't know how to balance that or deal with it or make sure that it's truly coming from a place of love and not from a place of simply wanting to lose weight or change or control our bodies. This came up in The New Sexy recently, which is my 12 week program that I launch a few times per year. Right now I have an incredible group of women that I'm guiding. We're about halfway through and it's always amazing to see how far these women have come in such a short period of time. They have literally transformed from when we began just a couple months ago. They're listening to their bodies and taking care of themselves more than ever, feeling comfortable and confident in their clothing, like knowing how to respond to diet culture comments and conversations with so much confidence. It's really special you guys. each week we have a group coaching call and I give time for women to be coached by me inside of the group. This gives them one on one attention in a way, but then everybody else gets to listen in and apply that specific coaching to their own life as well. And it's so transformative and healing and it's just such a safe and supportive sisterhood. One of my clients came to that coaching opportunity and she told me that she was feeling resistance to working out as much as she would like to. And when she began the new sexy, she started with this self care checklist that everybody receives. And she was able to get into more of a routine, but after. some weeks of dealing with specific challenges that she had going on in her life with health challenges and the war and other things going on. She realized that she was not getting in her daily movement consistently and she felt like this, energetic block towards it. And so we spoke for a little bit and she told me about her situation and how she was feeling. And so I asked her, I was like, okay, Tell me if this resonates with you, but I'm just getting this intuitive feeling that you do have this block Because for so many years of your life You were taught that exercise was about a specific thing about losing weight about looking a certain way And at that point you had an entirely different relationship with exercise than you do now. And now that you deeply desire to move your body and take care of yourself without the punishment and the guilt and only focusing on weight loss or the pressure of diet culture, it just feels scary as hell because what if you get sucked into all of that again, like being obsessive and weighing yourself and only liking your body, if you lose weight. And she's like, yep, I think that's a huge part of it. We also uncovered some other things that were holding her back, but this was the major block and this is so important to recognize because I think firstly, there's this fear. That so many women have that if you love yourself totally, that you're just going to let yourself go and you're not going to do anything. But the truth about self love and body love is that it's actually not about just letting yourself do the easy thing. It's actually about creating a relationship, a dialogue with yourself and learning how to tune in and listen to what you really need. Being able to decipher when and how and what you need to do for your body on a day to day and moment to moment basis, which is exactly what I help my clients with. And what I've seen over and over again, is that the more that you love your body, not only care for it or have this idea that it's important, but even love the way it looks and continually invest in creating a deeper relationship with your body. The more you just naturally desire to take care of it. And yeah, that means moving your body and eating nourishing food, but I can totally understand how it's challenging to make that shift because it's been so ingrained in us that doing that, working out and eating nourishing food, is just a means to an end, meaning that at the end, we'd be quote unquote healthier but actually, in terms of what diet culture has taught us, is thinner, and that's always been our mindset and one of the main motivations for us. so then the question is How do we let go of the guilt and the punishment and the downright shame that we have had for so many years and just work out because we love our bodies, because we want to take care of ourselves because it's joyful for us. Well, the good news is that it's totally possible. And the bad news, which is not even bad news, is that it might just take a little bit of time. And it can be a really beautiful journey. Especially when you have a good support system in place. So what I help my clients do, Is silence the chatter in their brain and all the voices of everybody else around them and tune into their own inner voice, their own intuitive, knowing their body's wisdom, because our bodies are smart as hell so that they can make these choices confidently about how and when they take care of their bodies. And what I helped this particular client realize was that she could totally trust herself. I love helping women trust themselves because it's really the foundation of everything. Even before self love, that's how we get to self love and body love. She realized how far she's come on this journey. She's in this beautiful place of self acceptance and Together through the new sexy, we're moving towards radical body love. And this is all a part of it. Right now she deeply understands how diet culture has shaped her earlier perspective about her body and about herself. And she's super aware of when and how it pops up in her life. She speaks kindly to herself. She helps her friends and her family love their bodies more. She sees the beauty in all different body types. Like she is solid. She knows who she is. And at the same time, of course, she lives in this world. And as much as she curates her social media, she's careful about what she's exposed to. She still sees things, commercials, hears opinions of other people, has weight loss ads pop up on YouTube. And that makes so much sense that it reminds her of the way she used to feel about herself. I definitely relate to that. But through this coaching, she was able to lean into the fact that it's actually really normal and okay that these thoughts and feelings come up. They don't need to define us. So even if you're on your journey and once in a while, these thoughts come up, like, maybe I should go on a diet or I need to lose weight or let's start working out so that I can X, Y, and Z. Maybe this body love shit is just delusional. I want you to know that all of that is normal. You are normal. You're not broken. You have not gone backwards in you're healing. If these thoughts come up, I want you to firstly recognize them. That they're coming up and try to give yourself some love and compassion and just gently return and shift back to what you know is true. I reminded my client that she did not transform her relationship with her body and completely shift her mindset in order to deny herself exercise, which is something that she knows is so good for her and something that she needs. I want you to realize that, that you're not loving your body. You're not going through this whole process in order to stop taking care of yourself. It's actually the opposite. what I want to reiterate and recommend for you guys is that when these thoughts come up, Please be kind and compassionate to yourself. Know that it's normal that you're thinking about whatever you're thinking about, and it doesn't mean that you've gone backwards or that you should just start another diet because you're never going to be able to fully accept your body. It doesn't need to mean anything. It's just a part of living in this world. And secondly, I want you to remind yourself what your deeper reasons are for movement and for exercise and what you really want to gain from it, how it's going to positively affect your life, what your life would look like if you decide not to move, like actually write that all down. At that point, you're going to realize that there's so much more to why you want to move than weight loss or controlling your body or any other diet culture BS. And then thirdly, I want you to ask yourself, right now, and multiple times a day if you can, I want you to take a deep breath, and ask your body, what do you need right now? Just get out of your head, and into your body, and your body is going to talk to you. Listen to it, and give it what it needs. And then another thing that we uncovered during this coaching together was that it wasn't only this thought of, Oh no, am I going to spiral back into this diet culture mentality? But there was also another mentality that was holding her back. And that was perfectionism. Perfectionism is this all or nothing mentality that actually I blame largely on diet culture because we've been told that. We have to do and look and be a certain way. Otherwise we'll never be enough. And when it comes to working out, we think we have to do certain things, or we have to go for a certain amount of time, or we have to be wearing a specific thing. And if we don't do it, then we just. Don't feel good enough or we don't feel like we can actually get our brains on board with doing the thing instead of just like, okay, let me move my body for five minutes. And so by the end of the call, I was just like, I think you just need to fucking move your body. And I know that sounds funny coming from someone who is a, Self love advocate and who is so into being kind and compassionate to yourself. But sometimes, sometimes that's the most compassionate thing you can do. It's the most loving thing you can do is really understand where your blocks are and when you need to rest and when you need to push yourself when you need to do something completely different outside of what other people or what society tells you to do. that brain of yours. It's amazing and it protects you, but it can also block you from really doing what we're talking about, tuning into your body and moving through things that are stopping you from becoming that woman that you want to be. sometimes it's just about getting into your body and moving. But then, as you do that, I want you to take a step back and see the full picture. You can watch yourself without judgment. Just witness, witness yourself. You can be aware of your actions and what's going on for you as you start to move. Like, of course, if you start weighing yourself or falling back into patterns that you know are not loving or kind to your body, then of course, be aware of that and reach out to someone, lean on your support system. Journal, like reach out to me. And of course don't do that, but more likely than not. That's not going to happen. Moving your body with loving awareness and being connected to what your body really needs. That's going to create more love and compassion, not less. That is what I have for you today. Know that you're not alone. You're normal. You've got this babe. And if you relate to this, I want you to stay on for just an extra minute or two, because I've got something special that I want to share with you. I have some openings for healing boudoir experiences and an offer that I've never offered before. Every single woman who books their experience before November 12th, is going to receive additional gifts valued at over 3,000 shekels. Okay, this is what you're going to receive and they are designed to completely deepen and accelerate your journey and they are so much fun. The first thing is a 600 shekel gift card to a gorgeous lingerie store called Miss Massimore in Tel Aviv. It's where I recommend all of my clients go to because they've had such incredible experiences leaving feeling positive about their bodies and finding things that they really, really love. So you're going to receive 600 shekels to Miss massimore. You're also going to receive an additional one on one call with me that is going to focus on bringing more joy and sexuality into your body and into your everyday life. Which is going to continue to deepen your relationship with your body and yourself. And the next thing is very appropriate for this episode, which I did not plan, but you're going to receive a prerecorded workshop Straight from the modules in the new sexy. This is a workshop on self trust and intuition so that you can do exactly what we spoke about today, quiet the brain chatter and tune into what you really want and need so that you can have more body confidence and energy and feel sexy as fuck every single day. Healing boudoir experiences, if you don't know about them yet, they are one on one, just you and me, baby. We go on a journey together for about three months, blending both coaching and boudoir, which is intimate photography, to really help you see yourself and your body in a completely new way, and literally just fall in love with the woman you see in the mirror. They are really unique and special experiences. And if this is something that you've been thinking about or now you're thinking about it because I'm sharing it out with you and You live in Israel or you will be here at some point in the future. Do not hesitate to reach out I'm offering free discovery calls for women who crave this kind of support and Who want to be seen and they want to see themselves fully and step into that confident sexy Anything is possible era of their lives that they've just been waiting for and that you deserve So feel free to head to the show notes and book a free call so we can connect and see if we're a good Fit. and if you won't be in Israel anytime in the future, or you're not planning on it, you can definitely still reach out to me and get on my wait list for the new sexy, which can be taken virtually from anywhere in the world. All right, ladies, I hope you enjoyed this episode and we will talk soon.