How to Grieve the Thin Ideal Part I

You might be saying, “I don’t want to grieve!! Grief hurts!” Listen. Grief is a process, a catharsis, and a means to get to the other side. It’s there you will find the wisdom of your bodies and use that wisdom to guide physical and mental health. Freedom and joy are on the other side of diet culture. But to get there, you must grieve the loss of the thin ideal. Let me show you how.

In the Intuitive Eating journey, we cultivate body respect while learning to experience our inherent worth as a set of internal qualities separate from how we look. We decouple worth from body size.

But does our deep-rooted belief that at least part of our value comes from how we look ever totally disappear?

It does for some, but all humans can at least decrease the intensity of shame and self-loathing, resulting in the sense of relief or lightness that illuminates those spaces previously shadowed by chronic dieting.

It’s kind of like this:

Have you ever had a dirty windshield and put off cleaning it? Maybe you looked through the dirt for so long that eventually, you adjusted, ignoring how dirty it was. When you finally cleaned it, you thought, wow, I can see again! It’s just so much brighter.

It’s all clear, and you might wonder, “why didn’t I do this sooner?” It’s a totally different experience. (Metaphor from Evelyn Tribole).

That’s how it feels when we rediscover our connection to the wisdom of our bodies. We learn to trust that those intuitive messages guide us to mental and physical health.

So why are we talking about grief?

Setting aside the intention to control our body can be scary! Why? Because the diet served a purpose. Diets may have offered a way to cope. They offer hope. It’s understandable that, if we’re hurting in some way, when the diet says, “I’m here for you! I promise I’ll make your life better,” we want to believe it.

It might offer the illusion of control when we feel like our lives are out of control. It promises love, acceptance, adoration, sex appeal, and enoughness for some of us.

Disordered eating or dieting may have given us a way to navigate trauma when we didn’t know a better way. Shrinking our bodies may have been protective against ridicule, fatphobia, and painful stigmatizations.

Ask yourself now:

• What is shrinking my body going to give me?
• How do I hope my life will change if I’m smaller?

What if I told you it’s possible to get those things without going on a diet or new health plan?

Can you see that it’s at least possible? What if the diet is not a long-term fix for the pain? Truth bomb: Continuing to pursue shrinking your body will only take your energy from working with the source of your pain.

When I asked, “How do I hope my life will change if I’m smaller?” above if your answer was “I just want to be healthy!” Please read the next section. Otherwise, please skip forward.

Diet culture has made it easy to conflate health with size. It’s important to know that a considerable body of research shows that health is possible at any size. If it’s health you are looking for, instead of focusing on weight, focus on improving health behaviors.

Health is a dynamic interplay between physical and mental wellness. Psychosocial factors are just as important as the physical components of health. When evaluating your health, don’t forget to consider your level of self-esteem, body image, self-care practices, stress level, and general life satisfaction.

It’s helpful to know that a body of research suggests that interventions that focus on non-weight-centric numbers are far more effective at improving health (Bacon & Aphramor, 2011).

Now it’s time to learn the way through. Let’s talk about grieving the loss of the thin ideal.

Five Stages of Grief

Making Peace With Food and Body

Everyone grieves differently, so what follows is not an attempt to tidy up and make grieving fit into nice boxes. Grief is not linear.

Stage 1 — Denial

What I want you to know: Denial is protective. Sometimes we need it. It will lift when you’re ready. You can’t force it.

Denial looks like: Denial stays attached to the belief that diets are a practical path to losing weight or that shrinking the body equates to health. Denial isn’t ready to look at the underlying issues.

Denial says: “Just give me one more chance. I promise I will fix your ailments. I promise your life will be better if you come with me.

Stage 2 — Anger

What I want you to know: Anger is an emotion with a lot of energy, and it can be the force that prevents you from slipping back into denial or diet culture.

Anger looks like: Frustration for your “now” body, resentment towards others who have a body you want, irritation that you must fight this battle. The anger may also be toward diet culture and its constant and overwhelming messages.

It’s not so much about the object of the anger. It’s the experience of that intense, energetic emotion.

Stage 3 — Bargaining

Bargaining says: “Okay, I’ll do this, but not that.” “I’ll eat intuitively, but can I still pursue weight loss?” “I’ll do connect to the wisdom of my body unless I gain _____ pounds,” or “I’ll honor my hunger and fullness cues as long as I lose weight.”

What I want you to know: Bargaining is sort of like dipping your toes in the water before jumping into the lake. Before submerging yourself completely, it helps you feel safe, exploring from the dock.

• To bargain is to negotiate.
• The definition of negotiating is “finding a way over or through.”
• It’s the energy of “Okay, I’m going to figure this out.”
• It helps you see, very clearly, the object of your attachment.
• You start to see why that attachment is so painful.

Stage 4 — Depression

What I want you to know: The term “depression,” in terms of grieving the loss of the thin ideal, does not necessarily mean clinical depression. It’s more like the energy of exhaustion. It might force you to rest, slow down, and stop forcing your will. The fatigue may just be the thing that gives you the courage to surrender. And that’s a good thing! You start to relinquish your attachment to the diet as a coping mechanism, a means of healing, the promise of a better future, and all the other illusions attached to the hope of shrinking the body.

Depression says: “I’ll never have the thin body of my dreams.” “I’m so sick of this fight;” “I’m so tired of it.”

It may also be sadness for the loss of all the time spent focusing on being thin. It might be the grief of wondering how you might have channeled that energy for better if you hadn’t put it all toward shrinking your body.

Stage 5 — Acceptance

Throughout the process, we move back and forth between these stages. In the beginning, you might spend 5% of your time in acceptance. As you progress, you might be in acceptance 20% of the time, and maybe someday, 90% of your time.

Rearranging our existence in the absence of dieting or pursuit to shrink our body is a process of learning a “new normal.” Once we become familiar with what that new normal is, we gradually move into a space of accepting the new normal.

Here, we concede that we may not always love the way we look, but it just doesn’t take up as much space in our minds. We’re not as concerned with it. Not having a particular body no longer stops us from doing anything we love doing, like swimming, dancing, or being in a relationship. Because not so much of our energy is used on self-loathing and pursuits to shrink our bodies, we have more power to get on with living our lives in a truly meaningful way.

Disclaimer: Elizabeth Kubler-Ross created these five stages of grief. These are my observations during my grief process and those of several clients.