Self-Love and Health

by Brooke on August 20, 2014

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I heard this statement during a presentation called, “Body Respect, For All Bodies” at the Critical Dietetics Conference.  What a powerful thought.  In order for us to take care of ourselves, we must begin with self-love and self-respect.

{ 3 comments… read them below or add one }

Dagny Kight August 20, 2014 at 1:12 am

I have to admit I’ve always really hated this. To me, the message is that you made yourself fat because you hate yourself and you could “fix” yourself if you’d just conjure up a shred of self-respect. Considering that the rallying cry of fat activists is that being fat is not a character flaw, I consider the “love yourself” message to be a contradiction. It’s particularly ironic now that HAES has taken an intractable stand against “healthism,” the definition of anything as healthy or unhealthy.

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Brooke August 24, 2014 at 10:45 pm

Hi Dagny,

As always, I really appreciate and love to hear your viewpoint on various health messages. I found the HAES message to be a challenge on the nutrition end of things too, because I do believe that there are many versions of “healthy.” However, research shows that certain weight ranges for both males and females are more prevalent to chronic diseases and I can’t pretend that those studies don’t exist when speaking out health as it is related to nutrition.

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Lauren September 2, 2014 at 11:15 pm

So interesting. For other reasons I have trouble wrapping my head around “love yourself” that just seems sort of steep but this “like yourself” I find pretty encouraging. I do think positive change (whether that’s cooking or exercising or eating more greens) comes from a more positive place versus a punitive one.

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