Have you ever wondered if it is possible to have a healthy relationship with food and your body and be able to pursue strength, weight, physique, or health goals?

*Trigger warning: This post discusses weight loss. If that is not a topic that is beneficial for you at this time, this post is likely not for you but feel free to check out many of the other blog posts available on this site*

This article is a brief outline from a podcast episode, to hear more detail about each topic/point, listen to the full episode here.

To preface this article, you absolutely do not need to have strength, weight, or physique goals. However, many people would like to pursue health and fitness-related goals without negatively impacting their physical, mental, or emotional health and are not sure how to go about that process with diet culture being so pervasive. 

At the beginning of the episode version of this blog post, I opened up by discussing self-acceptance and why it is okay to have goals....

Your relationship with yourself is the most important relationship you will ever have. It is the one relationship that is inescapable and the one relationship that can affect all other relationships in your life. 

So it is important to evaluate whether you operate primarily from self-acceptance or self-abandonment... 

(Listen to the full podcast episode here)

What is self-abandonment/rejection? 

Essentially, it is rejecting or abandoning one's needs and feelings.

Self-abandonment can look like some or all of the following:

•  Rejection of own needs, thoughts, and feelings
•  Always putting others' needs above our own
•  Hiding parts of yourself you feel ashamed of
•  Ignoring our need for self-soothing and relying on food or other substances to shift our state
•  People pleasing- being who you think you need to be in order to be accepted and loved
•  Frustration for not being "motivated" enough or sticking to healthy habits
•  Ignoring our...