Ep 55 - Grieving The Idea of Your Ultra Thin Body

February 27,2025

Missing the body you used to have in the past? Or from being on a restrictive diet?

Maybe you’re holding onto a fantasy of what you wish your body would look like.

In this episode, we’re diving deep into body grief—the mourning of unrealistic body standards—and how to let go of the pressure to look a certain way.

I cover…

• Why the ultra-thin ideal is unrealistic and rooted in diet culture

• How body grief shows up

• Why a smaller body doesn’t actually make your life better

• How to find true confidence at any size

TRANSCRIPT:

  Hello, confident eaters. Today we are talking about grieving the idea of your ultra thin body. So what I mean by this is this unrealistic idea of what your body will look like.

So this is not saying that we can never want to be more fit or toned or lose weight. This is really this idea that we have this unrealistic expectation for our bodies that is a lot of times put on us and given to us by society that sometimes we need to let go of in order to heal, in order to get rid of the restrictive diets, in order to stop putting all this pressure on ourselves, to look a certain way, and so that way we can actually feel confident.

So, this can look like a couple different things. This might be grieving that version of you that was on that extremely restrictive diet. So maybe you cut your calories a ton or you did a full elimination of all sugar and maybe you did lose weight and you maintained this body for a little and then you gained it all back.

I see this come up for a lot of people when they see old pictures of themselves at a smaller size and they think about, Wow, my life was so nice then when I had this smaller body, although we'll talk about maybe it's not. Or maybe you are a mom and you had a different body before you got pregnant and you had babies.

Or you've just gotten older over time and your body doesn't look the same because bodies change. So it can be grieving that true version of this body that we did experience at one point in time. But this can also look like grieving this idea of the body. So this can look like grieving a fantasy version of herself in a different size.

So maybe this idea that if we had different genetics that idea that we could have ultra thin thighs or arms or a different shape and size of belly, that something is totally made up in our head, but we still have this idea of maybe we could reach it one day. Maybe we could be a hundred pounds or whatever crazy idea we have for ourself.

So we first want to look at what's the story that we are creating about what it'd look like to be in an ultra thin body, what our life would look like, and get really specific with this.

I personally imagine that if I was in this ultra thin body, I'd never be rejected by a man I wanted again. That all of my problems would be gone. That thinness would be enough to prove my worth, make anyone obsessed with me, and make sure that I got exactly what I want all the time. That I wouldn't have to deal with any emotions that were negative, and my life would just be happy. Right?

That is a fantasy that probably will not happen for me.  So what you're in love with is often the idea of being in the smaller body, not the actual reality of having it. You're grieving that dream, not the actual number on the scale. The number on the scale can't give you that dream. Right? That's something you create with your thoughts, feelings, and actions.

Your life is not better on that restrictive diet. Call your brain out on that BS. If it's telling you, wow, when I was back then, at least I was happy because I was in a smaller body, that is probably not true. This idea has been implanted in our mind from our diet and thin obsessed culture. That is not actually real.

Our brains tend to hyper focus on all of the good times during grief and loss. And this is the same thing that happens in a break up, where people only think about all the good things that happened in the relationship instead of all the dysfunctions of it and why things didn't work out.

So our brains will usually hyper focus on, Wow, remember when I was X size or X pounds? It ignores all the things and difficulties that were required to get to that shape and size. So I want you to zoom out of that scene a bit in your mind. Where you were in this different body and ask yourself what else might have been going on then?

Were you in the middle of a horrible divorce? Were you depressed and you couldn't get out of bed? Did you have no energy? Were you obsessing over food?

Now, if that body was truly a healthy size for you, I want you to trust that you'll be able to get back to it with listening to your hunger and fullness, for the most part.

Again, our bodies change over time, so it might not look exactly the same, but if it was truly like, yes, this was a healthy weight and size for me, you can get back there and do it in a healthy way.

Again, this is not about letting go of your health and fitness goals, but of the super unrealistic standard that we often place on our bodies.

We actually can't really ever know for sure what's a healthy body weight for us. There's no magic formula or equation that can tell us that number. I personally have been much lighter than I am right now. And even on my food freedom journey where I felt really good around food and I've stopped binge eating, I've been at a lighter weight at times.

And I know that my weight is not permanent. I know I can gain and lose weight. I can gain and lose muscle. Sometimes that's just part of life and part of being a human in this world.

But all I do know is that I am for sure at the perfect body weight because I listen to my hunger and fullness 90 percent of the time, I don't stress about food, I don't think about food all day.

I eat majority of whole foods with some of the pleasure foods and I feel really good in my body. I feel energized. I feel light. I feel like I can focus all day. And this is where my body has ended up. So that is great for me. I love where my body is now because I love the eating habits that I can have while I'm at this shape and size.

Sometimes we think that our smaller bodies are healthier or that we were having better eating habits then. Maybe that's true, but again I want you to question this. Because stressing over eating habits also isn't healthy. Being anxious and thinking about food 24 7 isn't healthy. Severely under eating consistently has its own negative health consequences and health is so much more than just how we eat.

Health is also things like how we sleep, and if we're not eating properly and nourishing our body, we don't sleep good. Health is also our social life, and if we're so anxious every single time we go out to eat with our friends. We're not being present for that experience and connecting with them in a way that can deepen those connections.

So why we want to let go of this idea of our ultrathin body and grieve it is because when we do this we can find peace and true confidence within ourselves. We can actually find this love and this appreciation for ourself, where we can go out into the world, and we can wear that cute dress just because we think it's cute, not because we think we need to do it to make our body look slimmer.

And you'll stop getting into these all or nothing thinking thoughts, because you'll remove this extreme pressure on yourself for your body needing to look a certain way. When we tell ourselves, we got spring break coming up, or we got a summer vacation coming up, and we need to look this way, we need to be in this ultra thin body so we can be loved and accepted and worthy, That creates so much additional stress on our eating habits.

And all of this pressure of, I have to figure this out right now, and this creates all or nothing thinking of, let me eat good now so I can be bad later. I just have to eat good for a few more months, and then I'll let it all go. And that creates a really unhealthy cycle around food.

But really, I want you to remember that this truth is that your body will continue to change for the rest of your life.

So by learning how to eat healthfully for your body right now, giving it good food that feels nourishing, but also giving yourself pleasure food and not overeating, by doing that and learning how to speak kindly to yourself now, accepting your body where it is now, you are building a skill that will be useful forever.

Whether you gain weight, lose weight, have a baby,  get more toned, less toned. All of these situations we want to bring compassion to. So this is a skill you can start practicing now. Every single human body is going to change over their life. You are not exempt from that. So decide the experience you want to create for yourself throughout those body changes.

The key to allowing this grief to pass by about these past versions or fantasy versions of your body is just like any emotion. Allow space for it. Allow it to be there and get curious about it. Make friends with this emotion. Ask yourself how you are feeling and where that feeling came from,  or what triggered that emotion to come up.  And the good news is you don't actually need to give up what you want from that thin body. You don't need to grieve the entire story of what your life could be like in this thin body, most of the times. You just need to grieve that the thin body is the vehicle to help you get there.

The thin body is not going to actually be the thing that gives you that. So from this story that you've created about what it will look like to be in a thin body, I want you to separate What parts are fantasy and what parts could you actually recreate in your life right now?

For example, a fantasy thought is that if I lose weight or if I get to 100 pounds, whatever that is, everyone will love me then, which is not true. Unfortunately, not everyone will love you. You will still face rejection.

Then this is not the magic gate to a Remove yourself from all negative emotions. There are plenty of thin people out there who don't get what they want. There are plenty of thin people who get cheated on. There are plenty of thin people who have shitty best friends. There are plenty of thin people who don't get the job they want.

Another example of this is for me, like, I will never have super stick thin thighs. That's just not in my genetics. That's how I've always had a little chunkier thighs. I've always had a little more muscular thighs. That's just how they are for me.

So I know I would have to grieve the idea of having these stick thin model thighs, because that's just not something that's ever genetically going to be very possible for me. So maybe you have something like that for you too.

All right, then we can think about what parts of the story can we recreate from this thin version ideal fantasy land of us.

For example, maybe you imagine that in this thin body you would have unshakeable confidence, which is part reality, but the truth is no one's ever going to be 100 percent confident 24 7. We're all going to have a human experience of sometimes feeling unconfident and insecure. But maybe we can think about how can we increase your confidence now?

What thoughts would you have at that ideal body that you can bring in to your body now. They're just thoughts. None of them are actually true or not. You get to decide to believe them now if you want to. So that might look like believing. I am hot. I'm sexy. I love how I look. Or I love who I am. You can switch away from your body too.

I have a great personality. I've accomplished so much in my life. Maybe you imagine that at this ultra thin ideal, you'll do more things that you love. Maybe you'll make that bold move. You'll ask for the raise. You'll ask someone to go on a date with you. You'll go out more. You'll be more social. Those are all things that you can implement now.

You don't have to wait till you get to that body to start that. So take all of those aspects from the dream of what it would be like to be at that thin body and start implementing it now.

So it's normal to have these impulses to go back on that diet, to hate our body, to beat herself up, to pinch that side and to take drastic action to fix our body. Because that's how our brain has been trained by our diet obsessed society.

But having these impulses to do these things does not signal you needing to do them. You can just sit with these thoughts. Sometimes I call it like my never ending thin brain. Where my brain's like, you should lose weight, you should lose weight, you should lose weight, you should lose weight.

And I know that's just because of what society has told me for a long time. And I just don't even give those thoughts value anymore. Because I know what's true is that I don't really want to lose weight. Because what would be required in order for me to lose weight right now, is I'd have to be really strict around my food.

And I don't want to be strict around my food. I like having boundaries around my food, because that helps me feel my best. And so I do have boundaries. But I don't want to go into this extreme restrictive place, because  I know that's not what's going to truly make me happy.  So my challenge for you this week is I want you to decide, for this one week, I'm going to show up as if I was in that body, as if I was in this unltra thin, or that past version of my body that I had.

And ask yourself, how would I think about my body? What would I feel? How would I act differently?

And start doing that now  because ironically, when you start showing up at that person, you'll actually get to where you want to be faster.