How do we let go 100%, recover, and get to a place of intuitive eating and food freedom when we live in a world that judges and reduces people to beauty standards around their appearance and body size?
This was a question Kelly, a listener from our community, wrote in to be answered on The Recovery Warrior Shows.
In our mission to help you learn from the best, we connected with Amanda Crew. She’s an actress, activist, and eating disorder survivor. She also sits on the board of Project Heal and is passionate about using her voice to campaign for equity and accessibility in eating disorder care.
Her answer to Kelly’s question? Rebellion.
Redefine Beauty Through Rebellion
It’s common to reach a certain place of reckoning in your eating disorder recovery journey. A place where you’ve done your own inner healing around weight and beauty. You’ve learned that beauty doesn’t define your worth, and weight doesn’t define your health. But, the outside world is telling you otherwise.
How do you reconcile this?
Something in you is screaming that this is not the way. Honor that side of you.
Amanda first suggests using self-compassion for the situation you’re in. Recognize that beauty standards and diet culture are burned into our psyche from the world around us at a young age. It takes time to unlearn.
In the meantime, Amanda suggests leaning into the joy of rebellion. Keep questioning and challenging the standards of beauty that you know have caused harm. There is something to celebrate about rebelling against the status quo to build a better life for yourself.
Ask Questions to Reclaim Your Power
Focus inward. Instead of succumbing to oppressive standards of beauty from the outside world, ask yourself, what does beauty mean to you?
Define beauty for yourself, not what others are telling you. This is how you reclaim your power.
Question all of it. Redefine it, reclaim it, burn it all down. Live your life. Go.
Amanda’s suggestion of rebellion goes beyond efforts to redefine beauty. She also suggests rebelling against what the system is telling you is recovery, health, and where your worth and value lies.
Dig Deep to Fight Beauty Standards
It’s not easy to reject and rebel against these messages in society. It can feel like you’re a grain of sand fighting a tidal wave.
Amanda suggests taking a moment to dig deep and focus inward to find the part of you that is untarnished from these messages. She believes we all have a pure, wise, all knowing self that hasn’t been affected by these systems. We can call on it to guide us.
Make space to connect with that untarnished part of you. It will never steer you wrong.
Practice getting in connection with with that part of yourself.
Amanda does acknowledge that it’s not always a smooth ride. It doesn’t always steer you in a fun direction. But it will always lead you to your truest, most liberated self.
Click here to learn more about Equip.
Connect with Amanda Crew & Equip
- Equip Website
- Amanda Crew Official Website
- Amanda Crew on Instagram
- Equip on Instagram
