Sarah Herstich LCSW

‘Tis the season for health and wellness coaches to prey on vulnerabilities and equate weight loss to confidence, health, longevity, love... and anything else you’ve been struggling with. Eyes open y’all

My good friend and colleague, Eva, from Eva Haldis Nutrition and I have teamed together and have some fun offerings in the works! To start we've created this guide for folks who are done with diets figure out what's next. Grab the guide to uncover 5 ways dieting has kept you stuck and how to start to get unstuck now!

Gaslighting happens when someone manipulates you into questioning and second-guessing your reality. Diet culture makes you believe that you can’t trust the cues of your body and that you’re not capable of caring for it without *another* plan. That it’s your fault that you can’t do all the ‘right’ things to reach and maintain thinness.... That it’s not the systematic hierarchy of bodies that keeps so many oppressed, they’re simply not trying hard enough. It has an answer for everything. Hunger? There’s no way you can be hungry already... you must be thirsty. Tired? Be careful you can’t get complacent. Realized diets don’t work? But you can’t give up your health! Eyes open y’all. Diet culture will continue to tell you that you need to shrink to fit into the thin ideal by any means possible. Your body is not and never has been the problem. Externalize the shame you’re feeling. Show yourself some compassion and send the blame back to where it belongs- the gaslighting culture that’s behind it all.

My friend and colleague Eva Haldis Nutritionand I have been going live on Instagram every week answering questions and chatting about recovery from diet culture and being done with diets. We were finally able to save the videos to IGTV, so I’ll start posting here so you can access if you’d like!

We’ve been taught body image healing is learning to like the way you see your body. But continuing to focus on the image of the body falls short. Powerful healing is possible when we shift toward:... Grieving the loss of seeing the body as a project, and the power we were taught that project holds Acceptance of what is Body compassion Shame resilience Understandanding and untangling the roots and consequences of internalized oppression We weren’t born into the world hating our bodies. We learned it. Unlearning and healing is possible

Those parts of yourself that you’ve fought so hard to rid yourself of- yes, they’re deserving of care and compassion. Your anxiety, eating disorder, people pleasing, perfectionism. What if these parts of you stepped in because they thought you needed saving or protecting. If you knew that they were trying to shelter you from some sort of vulnerability or pain, would it be easier to take care of them like you would a young child crying and afraid?... You can have compassion for someone and not obey their orders. You can care for someone and disagree with their strategies of managing tough situations. It can feel like raging against the toughest parts of ourselves will fix them and make them go away. But these parts of you might just need to know that you hear them, you care about them and that you’re trying to understand how they’re trying to serve you. Maybe they need some reassure that you hear them and that you can handle things without them screaming and trying to take over. Notice what part of you is activated. What’s it saying? Breathe. How can you take care of that part instead of fighting against it?