{Ep. 014} Summer Innanen on Giving Up Dieting to Improve Your Self Worth
As a Body Image Coach, Summer has an amazing perspective on body love and body acceptance. However, she hasn’t always had the privilege of being at peace with her own body. As a child she never felt comfortable in her body and grew up with the belief that thinner was better. This belief spiraled into an obsession with dieting, exercising and numerous weight loss attempts.
At the time, Summer didn’t realize that she was struggling with exercise bulimia, a condition where you use exercise to compensate for eating, and described her obsession with exercises as an addiction. After struggling for years she sought professional help because ultimately her obsession was taking a physical and emotional toll on her body. Summer clarifies that it wasn’t necessarily the quantity of exercise that was the problem, but her relationship to exercise. For this reason disordered behavior in our society is so often overlooked. People do not realize it is more about the individual's thoughts rather than how that person looks.
Summer also talks about what we lose when we diet, mainly, our self worth. She explains that most people enter into dieting because they lack self worth. As a society we do not believe we are good enough just as we are, and so we diet in an attempt to improve our self worth. Through her own experience as well as the experiences she has shared with her clients, Summer has come to realize that attempting to change your body size only further diminished self worth. It is only when you truly know yourself, that you can know just how worthy you actually are.
Today Summer helps women improve their body image and self worth and to overall feel better about themselves. Loving our bodies does not mean we look in the mirror and think we are “attractive”. Instead, body love is about being more neutral with your body and cultivating respect, trust, compassion and kindness towards it. To learn more about body love and how Summer helps clients with self worth and feeling comfortable in their bodies listen to the full episode!
