Today we are talking about wellness without the obsession.

You can grab your free 33 page workbook to go with this episode at bit.ly/wwworkbook

This is the end goal of our work for the people that we work with. NOTE: This doesn’t mean we think that everyone needs this goal or should want this. This simply means this is our outlook and for anyone looking for a life that still has some attention to wellness but in an entirely new way with a new way of thinking - we can help!

One vital part of attaining wellness without the obsession is separating weight and wellness.

Why? Because if we still link health and weight in our minds it will be almost impossible to practice wellness while not focusing on weight which is a central pillar of wellness without the obsession.

There are 3 key ways you can unlink weight and wellness:

1. Learn the science and research behind weight and health.

Much of what we were taught is not based in science. For instance, BMI, which I’m sure we all know by now is not a reliable tool to determine health, is actually completely random. The numbers that tell us we are underweight, normal weight, overweight or obese were chosen at random. There is no scientific reason for a person to be called overweight when they hit “25” on the BMI, body mass index. Not to mention the many other issues such as :

• BMI was not created by a medical professional and the mathematician who did create it said that it was not meant to calculate the health of individuals
• The BMI was only created with white men as the subjects
• BMI does not consider fat, muscle, bone density etc

There are a lot of other studies that show that the assumptions we have societally that those in larger bodies don’t live as long as those in smaller bodies is not true! There’s a lot to unpack on the scientific side of things but we will share more on how you can learn a bit more about this shortly.

1. Diving into your personal wellness and how it is affected by the focus on weight. We are our own greatest teachers if we actually sit with these ideas for a while and see how it relates to our own personal experience.

Take the time to contemplate - how has my focus on weight affected me? What actions do I take when I try to pursue weight loss? What results does this give me?

If I have been focusing on weight for 20 years and it hasn’t given me what I want - should I start thinking maybe the focus on weight is the problem not ME?!?

Wellness without the obsession has to start in your imagination, because it’s likely no one in your life lives this way.

So imagine -- what would your life look like without the thought I need to lose weight/ can’t gain weight? If thoughts about weight weren’t possible. What would happen?

Think about it. How would you move your body? What would you want to eat? How would you want to feel? What would your thoughts be about?

This is something we want you to give real time and energy to, and we’ll share how you can do this at the end of the episode.

1. Lastly - this may seem like a separate topic but identifying beauty from health and weight is also an important part of the process because our society has tangled the 3 concepts so tightly that if we cannot see which is which, it can be difficult to move forward.

The way we look has been tied to health for so long so it makes sense that we want to keep appearing a certain way so people see us as healthy, as trying our best and not judge us. But this keeps us stuck!

This doesn’t mean we need to stop caring what we look like, that is highly unlikely to happen in the society we live in, and honestly that’s fine.

Certain elements of “beauty” can be enjoyable, so how do we decide what elements of beauty are appropriate for ourselves and what fits into our lives of wellness without the obsession?

There is never any judgement here - it is solely about having a deeper look at what is serving you and what might not be.

For instance, is makeup and hair care enjoyable for you? Lovely!

Is going under the knife ever okay?

How can we know if something is being used to heal wounds (body image etc) or if it is adding joy into our lives?

We advise you to do a cost/ benefit analysis.

The cost of a beauty treatment of product includes:

Time

Money

Risks

The message it sends and the message it feeds into

Bypass for emotional work?

The benefits are whatever you perceive the treatment to give you: time to yourself, feels good, like the way it looks etc.

It’s then YOUR personal choice to decide if something is worth it or not.

We invite you to go through these 3 areas of separating weight and wellness in our new free 33 page workbook called Separating Weight and Wellness. It’ll walk you through this untangling in detail so you can give it the time and attention it deserves. Remember this is necessary in order to get to that goal of wellness without the obsession. You can grab your workbook at bit.ly/wwworkbook

You can always send us a DM on Instagram or email us at hello@thebodylovesociety.com if you need more support, or want to share how it goes for you! We love to interact with you and help you in every way we can.