How to Navigate Body Changes with Compassion
Navigating body changes can be an emotionally charged experience, especially in a society that prioritizes appearance over well-being and conflates appearance with well-being. Body changes—whether they involve weight gain, weight loss, or other shifts—are a natural part of life. However, they can also be a source of distress due to societal pressures, fatphobia, and deeply ingrained beliefs about body image. This blog post explores how we can develop a kind and respectful relationship with our bodies as they change.
Author Positionality Statement
As a person with thin privilege, I recognize that my role in the fat positive movement is one of allyship. My experiences with body image are shaped by my privileges as well as the intersecting oppressions I face, and my journey with body acceptance is ongoing. I hope to offer perspectives that honor this complexity and help others find compassion and radical acceptance in their own journeys.
Types of Body Changes
Body changes can come in many forms, including weight fluctuations, aging, or changes in physical ability. Understanding the various types of body changes and the contexts in which they occur can help us navigate them with greater self-compassion.
Body Changes: Weight Gain
Weight gain is often viewed negatively in a fatphobic society that glorifies thinness and shames fatness, therefore, we can resist these harmful norms by striving to view weight gain from a more neutral or loving perspective. Weight gain may happen as part of a recovery process, such as weight restoration following an eating disorder. During recovery, the body needs to heal from the damage caused by restrictive eating, and weight gain is often a necessary and positive step in this process. It can help restore hormonal balance, improve cognitive function, and reduce anxiety and depression. Society often demonizes weight gain, associating it with negative stereotypes. For those in recovery, this societal stigma can fuel the fear of weight gain, making the process more daunting. It's important to challenge these societal messages and understand that weight gain, in this context, is about survival, health, and reclaiming your life from the constraints of an eating disorder. Below are some common concerns about weight restoration:
Target weight justifications: It’s normal to question why your target weight might be higher than what you’re used to or what feels comfortable. The goal is not aesthetic or achieving some ideal; it’s about finding a sustainable, healthy state where your body can thrive.
Weight restoration necessity: Eating disorders do not have a look; even if someone is perceived to be at a healthy weight, they may still be in need of weight restoration to support full mental and physical recovery.
Fears of weight restoration: Resistance to weight restoration often stems from deep-seated beliefs and fears. Understanding the root of this resistance and working through it with a therapist or support group is crucial for sustainable recovery.
In addition to weight gain following eating disorder recovery, gaining weight is a natural and arguably inevitable part of life. Weight gain can also occur for other reasons, such as changes in lifestyle, stress, medication side effects, pregnancy, or simply as the body moves through life, especially due to genetic factors (i.e., outside of one’s control). Weight gain can sometimes happen as someone is coping with an eating disorder like bulimia, or after following a restrictive diet. Understanding if weight gain is a symptom of a distressing situation (e.g., depression, binge eating, or stress) can give you more insight on how to move forward. This is a loaded sentiment where health can get conflated with size, and to be clear, healing and loving your body looks a million different ways. It is encouraged to focus on the mental and experiential benefits of taking care of oneself, not on the weight change – especially as one can engage in a variety of self-care behaviors and not lose weight, and perhaps gain weight. While weight gain might bring up difficult emotions like shame or fear, it is important to understand that our bodies are constantly changing, and no change is inherently good or bad. Approaching weight gain with compassion involves recognizing it as a part of life and honoring our bodies' needs.
Body Changes: Weight Loss
Weight loss, like weight gain, can be intentional or unintentional and can happen for various reasons:
Intentional weight loss
Intentional weight loss can occur in several contexts. Many may pursue weight loss through dieting or restrictive behaviors, which include disordered eating patterns or fit the criteria for an eating disorder like anorexia and bulimia. Unfortunately, disordered eating is normalized and often celebrated in our culture, which can distort people’s relationships to food and their bodies, prioritizing control and image over joy and well-being. Some people collaborate with a healthcare team to lose weight through surgery, nutrition, and movement. There is also a growing trend of using weight loss medications like Ozempic as part of a treatment plan; it is essential to approach these interventions with care, considering both physical and mental health impacts. It is up to each individual person to know what is kind, respectful, and loving towards their bodies, there is no universal right or wrong way to care for yourself. However, due to the severity of fatphobia in culture and healthcare, finding a fat-positive community of friends and working with a fat-positive or weight-neutral health care team can be important as you navigate these choices.
Unintentional weight loss
Unintentional weight loss can result from factors such as depression, grief, anxiety, or medication side effects. In these cases, weight loss is often a symptom of underlying emotional or physical distress. It is crucial to address the root causes and seek appropriate support, rather than focusing solely on the weight change itself. Additionally, in eating disorder recovery, some people with binge eating disorder (BED) may experience weight loss as they work toward stabilizing their eating patterns (key word is may - every body is different and responds differently to changes in routine). Weight loss can also happen as a result of innumerable factors, and is not necessarily a sign of concern. However, if you find yourself losing significant weight without explanation, it is recommended you connect with your doctor. Only you can know what is working for you, and having check-ins with your support network, including health care providers and friends, can help illuminate how you really feel.
Body Changes: Aging, Pregnancy, Disability, and Skin Changes
Although this blog post focuses primarily on weight, other body changes can be equally significant and deserve our attention and compassion:
Aging: Aging is a natural process that brings changes such as wrinkles, gray hair, or shifts in muscle tone. These changes are often stigmatized in a culture obsessed with youth, but embracing aging as a sign of a life well-lived can help us develop a more compassionate relationship with our bodies.
Pregnancy and postpartum: The body goes through a lot while building and supporting another human. The changes that happen to the body during pregnancy and postpartum are normal and often healthy, but insecurities or discomfort about these changes also commonly arise. Self compassion might involve showing your body appreciation for what it did/is doing, and embracing your “new normal” for a bit.
Disability/injury: Acquiring a disability or experiencing an injury can drastically change how we relate to our bodies. These changes can challenge our sense of self and often require a period of adjustment and grieving. Compassion involves accepting these changes and finding new ways to appreciate and care for our bodies as well as receiving necessary accommodations.
Skin or hair changes: Hair loss, changes in skin texture, or other aesthetic changes can also impact self-esteem. These changes are often out of our control, and practicing acceptance can help alleviate the distress that comes with trying to meet ever-shifting beauty standards.
The Impact of Culture and Socialization
Our understanding of body changes is heavily influenced by culture and socialization. Beauty standards are not just striving to be pretty enough; they are deeply intertwined with systems of oppression, including fatphobia, racism, ableism, ageism, classism, transphobia, Christian hegemony, sexism, and heteronormativity. These standards often marginalize those who do not fit into narrow, socially-constructed definitions of beauty, reinforcing harmful beliefs about worth and value.
Fatphobia, for example, is not just a personal bias but a systemic issue that affects everything from healthcare to social interactions. Liberation from fatphobia requires individuals with thin privilege to use this power to uplift fat people’s voices, challenge narratives and systemic discrimination, and unpack fatphobic beliefs. Although easier said than done, when we liberate ourselves from these oppressive beauty standards, we create space for a more authentic understanding of who we are, and this is contagious. This liberation allows us to focus on what truly matters—our passions, our relationships, and our well-being—rather than conforming to unrealistic and harmful ideals. Ultimately, one of the greatest gifts that accompanies nurturing a compassionate relationship with our bodies is the reduction of time and energy body image concerns require.
Fatness and Health
The Health at Every Size (HAES) movement challenges the notion that thinness is synonymous with health. HAES promotes body diversity and emphasizes health behaviors—like balanced eating, physical activity, and emotional well-being—rather than weight as the primary indicator of health. Understanding that bodies are naturally diverse and that health can look different for everyone is a crucial step in fostering self-compassion and acceptance.
Furthermore, healthism and fatphobia are interconnected ideologies that perpetuate discrimination and marginalization based on body size and health status. Healthism is the belief that health is a moral obligation and that individuals are responsible for achieving and maintaining it through personal choices, often without considering structural factors like socioeconomic status, access to healthcare, or systemic inequalities. This ideology often leads to fatphobia, a societal bias against people with larger bodies, where fatness is stigmatized and associated with negative character traits like laziness or lack of self-control; from a liberatory perspective centering disability justice, the concepts of laziness and will-power are harmful and maintain capitalistic perfectionistic ideals. Fatphobia manifests in various forms, including discrimination in healthcare, employment, and social settings, further reinforcing harmful stereotypes and contributing to the marginalization of those who do not conform to socially prescribed body ideals. Both healthism and fatphobia fail to recognize the diversity of human bodies and the complex factors that contribute to an individual's well-being. Finding fat-positive and size-inclusive healthcare providers is incredibly helpful in supporting your journey towards self-love.
Unfortunately, weight loss medications and the weight loss industry are fostering a rise in the hyperfixation of thinness. Research shows that weight, especially the BMI, is often used as a proxy for health, and is therefore not an accurate indicator of someone’s vitals or overall health. Similarly, it is a myth that thin people have less health problems than fat people; ultimately, fatness is not necessarily a health risk even though our fatphobic culture does everything to spread that harmful lie. Actually, medical discrimination against fat people has awful consequences, including doctors attributing health concerns to weight and ignoring or misdiagnosing symptoms. Furthermore, stigma may lead to fat people avoiding healthcare altogether. Research shows that weight stigma is objectively more harmful than BMI, and leads to negative mental health outcomes, which can relate to health behaviors. People of all sizes are affected by anti-fat bias, from confidence issues to mental illness to systemic oppression. Therefore, we would all benefit from challenging and dismantling fatphobia and advocating for change in the medical field, rather than placing pressure on fat people to change themselves.
Tips for Navigating Body Changes: Compassion and Radical Self-Acceptance
Navigating body changes with compassion means recognizing that all bodies change and that change is not good or bad. Here are some tips for approaching all types of body changes with kindness:
Mindfulness
Mindfulness can be a powerful tool for cultivating awareness of body-related behaviors and thoughts, such as body checking, body avoidance, and negative body image thoughts. By practicing mindfulness, individuals can learn to observe these behaviors and thoughts without judgment, creating a space between the stimulus (e.g., noticing a body part) and the response (e.g., engaging in body checking). This awareness allows individuals to recognize when they are engaging in habitual or automatic behaviors, such as frequently checking their appearance in mirrors or avoiding certain activities due to body dissatisfaction. Mindfulness tools can also help bring awareness to food noise, which refers to a constant thought stream about food, frequently associated with guilt or anxiety, and can significantly interfere with daily life. Through mindfulness, one can gently redirect attention to the present moment, noticing the physical sensations, emotions, and thoughts as they arise, and choosing to respond in a way that is more compassionate and aligned with their values. Mindfulness can often be the first step in recognizing deeper healing work you’d like to explore.
Learn more about fatphobia, and interrogate your internalized beliefs
Learning about fatphobia and critically examining your internalized beliefs can be a liberating process that enhances your ability to move through the world with greater awareness and inclusivity toward all fat people. By understanding the origins and impacts of fatphobia, you begin to see how deeply ingrained societal biases have shaped not only your perceptions of others but also your own self-worth. Bringing awareness to how prevalent anti-fat bias is can be overwhelming yet clarifying. This awareness allows you to challenge and dismantle these harmful beliefs, freeing yourself from the constraints of narrow beauty standards and the judgmental attitudes that accompany them. As you interrogate these beliefs, you become more empathetic and inclusive, recognizing the dignity and humanity of people of all sizes, including yourself.
Exposure work
Exposure therapy can be an effective method for improving your relationship with your body, particularly when dealing with body image distress or avoidance behaviors. This therapeutic approach involves gradually and systematically facing feared or avoided situations related to your body, such as looking in the mirror, wearing certain types of clothing, or being in social situations where body image concerns are heightened. By repeatedly exposing yourself to these situations in a controlled and supportive environment, you can begin to reduce the anxiety and negative emotions associated with them. Over time, this process helps to desensitize the emotional response, allowing you to develop a more neutral or even positive perception of your body. Exposure therapy encourages a shift away from avoidance and self-criticism towards acceptance and self-compassion, ultimately fostering a healthier and more balanced relationship with your body.
Use Internal Family Systems (IFS)
IFS therapy offers a powerful framework for understanding and healing the parts of yourself that are concerned about body image. In IFS, the mind is seen as composed of various "parts," each with its own perspectives, emotions, and motivations. Some parts may be critical of your body, driven by fears of judgment or rejection, while others may feel deep shame or anxiety about appearance. Through IFS, you can engage with these parts in a compassionate and non-judgmental way, exploring their origins and the protective roles they may have taken on. By getting to know these parts, you can begin to understand their concerns and work toward integrating them in a healthier way. This process allows you to move beyond self-criticism and negative body image, fostering self-acceptance and inner harmony. In sum, IFS helps you develop a more compassionate relationship with yourself, where all parts are heard, understood, and valued.
Learn about and practice intuitive eating
Learning about and practicing intuitive eating involves reconnecting with your body's natural hunger and fullness cues, rather than relying on external diets or restrictions. It's a journey toward trusting your own instincts and preferences, focusing on the pleasure and satisfaction of eating rather than rigid rules. Intuitive eating encourages you to reject the diet mentality, make peace with food, and embrace all foods without guilt. As you learn to listen to your body, you'll start to recognize which foods feel nourishing and satisfying, leading to a more balanced and joyful relationship with eating.
Understand the science behind weight maintenance
Understanding the science behind weight maintenance reveals that the body is biologically wired to resist weight loss, often leading to a slower metabolism and increased hunger signals when weight is lost. This makes it challenging to keep the weight off long-term, as the body tends to defend its set point, a weight range that it naturally gravitates toward, making sustained weight loss difficult for many people. This information supports the movement towards acceptance of your body just as it is.
Community and friendships
Surrounding yourself with a fat-positive community, joyful movement spaces, and friendships can significantly improve your relationship with your body and help reduce internalized fatphobia. Engaging with a supportive network that celebrates body diversity and challenges societal beauty standards allows you to see bodies of all sizes as valuable and worthy of respect. These communities often provide spaces where you can share experiences, affirm each other's worth, and dismantle harmful beliefs about fatness that have been ingrained by culture. Being part of a fat-positive environment encourages self-acceptance and helps you unlearn the negative messages about body size that contribute to internalized fatphobia. Over time, this collective support can empower you to embrace your body as it is, cultivate self-compassion, and advocate for body autonomy and respect, further reinforcing a positive and healthy body image.
Address your closet
You deserve to feel comfortable and confident in your wardrobe! It might be time to donate some clothes that no longer fit and spend energy finding clothes that embrace your size right now. Understandably so, no longer fitting in your clothes can bring about some grief and financial stress, particularly when most stores are not size inclusive. Allow yourself to process these feelings and connect resources to rediscover your style.
Establishing boundaries
Establishing boundaries with the people in your life regarding conversation topics, especially those related to body image, can profoundly improve your relationship with your body and reduce tendencies toward people-pleasing. By clearly communicating that certain discussions, such as weight, dieting, or appearance-related comments, are off-limits, you create a safe space for yourself where your worth is not tied to external validation or societal expectations. Setting these boundaries helps protect your mental and emotional well-being, allowing you to focus on cultivating self-acceptance rather than seeking approval from others. It also reduces the pressure to conform to others' expectations, empowering you to prioritize your needs and values over the desire to please. Over time, maintaining these boundaries reinforces your autonomy and self-respect, fostering a healthier, more confident relationship with your body and yourself.
Important Reminders
Do not comment on others’ weight, perceived health, or eating habits: People’s bodies are their own business, and unsolicited comments about weight—whether perceived as positive or negative—can be harmful.
Do not make assumptions about others based on their size: You cannot determine someone's health, habits, or worth based on their size. It’s essential to approach others (and yourself) without judgment.
Avoid words like obese, overweight, or underweight: Instead, use words like “fatness,” “fat bodies,” “large bodies,” “thin bodies,” or “midsize bodies” which are descriptive rather than valuative. However, always mirror the language people use to describe themselves.
You are the only person who gets to decide what is right for you: There is no universal truth when it comes to body size and related interventions. What feels loving and compassionate to one person might differ for another. Trust yourself to know what you need.
Fat people have always been here: Fat people have always existed, shaping cultures, histories, and communities throughout time, despite society's shifting standards of beauty and health.
In all, by embracing these practices and principles, we can navigate body changes with more compassion, fostering a deeper connection with ourselves. A compassionate approach allows us to challenge societal pressures, dismantle internalized biases, and prioritize our overall well-being over external validation. Ultimately, challenging fatphobia contributes to a safer, more joyful world.
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