Learn To Trust Your Body With These 5 Tips
Written by Isabel Vasquez, RD, LDN
Trusting your body can be a tough feat in today’s world. In a society that has told us that we need tips to dull our hunger, diet plans to control our eating, and exercise plans to manage our weight, it’s no wonder so many people don’t trust their bodies.
Having mutual trust with your body can be an empowering experience.
It means you learn to feel at peace in your body. You can trust that your body is here to protect you and do what it can to keep you safe.
So how do we learn to trust our bodies? In this article, I’ll share five tips to build trust with your body through improving your relationship with food and your body image. Let’s dive in!
Tips for rebuilding body trust
Break up with diet culture
Diet culture convinces us that in order to be attractive, happy, desirable, and successful, we have to be thin, able-bodied, heterosexual, and white. For those of us with marginalized identities, this messaging can become internalized, and we can really grow to resent our bodies or feel unsafe in them or insecure about them.
In a country where real body-based oppression exists, this is totally valid and it makes sense we’d try to control our bodies in an attempt to increase our safety or success.
That being said, diet culture sells us a lie. It convinces us we can all achieve some arbitrary beauty standard if we just do this one diet or this one exercise plan or buy this one product, but it’s never really that simple.
Diet culture’s latest “solution” never works–at least not in the long term–so it ends up being one diet after another until our full mental energy is centered around controlling our body shape or size. Many people spend decades of life trying different diets, all to end up back at square one, still discontent with their body.
And for that reason, breaking up with diet culture is key to building trust with your body. It’s key to being content with your body in the long-term.
Acknowledge the harm diet culture has caused you and so many others, and decide that it won’t get to rob you of your self-esteem, joy, and health any longer.
Diet culture disconnects us from our bodies, so breaking up with it allows us to find a renewed connection with our bodies, an essential part of building body trust.
Build awareness of your body’s cues
Do you trust your body to tell you when you need to eat?
Do you trust your body to tell you when you need to use the bathroom?
Do you trust your body to tell you when it needs rest?
Do you trust your body to tell you when it needs hydration?
Do you trust your body to tell you when you’re unsafe?
Our bodies are constantly communicating with us. They send us signals to tell us what they need, all to keep us safe. Some signals are generally received neutrally. For example, most people don’t feel one way or another about the urge to urinate. It is a neutral sensation.
However, many people have complicated relationships with hunger or fullness. Maybe you don’t even notice these cues. Maybe you use a restrictive meal plan to guide your eating rather than your body’s signals.
Many people also have complicated relationships with rest, given how productivity-oriented our society is.
That being said, starting to notice your body’s cues can be an invaluable piece of building body trust. For your body to trust you, it will need to know that you can honor its needs.
And for you to trust your body, you’ll have to understand that your body is here to protect you and take care of you as best as it can. The physical sensations exist for a reason.
Learning to connect with and honor these cues can start this process of building mutual trust.
Practice body neutrality
Let’s be real. Building a positive relationship with your body can be tough. We’re constantly bombarded by messages about the “ideal body”--a body type unachievable for the vast majority of us.
Diet culture has told us that our bodies are wrong. It has taught us that every little “imperfection” can and should be “fixed”. We’re sold creams to get rid of scars or stretch marks. We’re sold weight loss products. We’re told we need to have perfectly toned tummies and fat rolls aren’t allowed.
So it makes perfect sense that plenty of us have grown to hate our own bodies and harbor anger towards them for having these “imperfections”! But given that SO many of us have these “imperfections”, how could they be wrong? They’re natural!
We don’t have to achieve some arbitrary beauty ideal to be worthy, to be loved, to have value. We have value just for existing.
Body neutrality invites you to shift away from negative body thoughts. Since body positivity or body love can feel out of reach for many, at least initially, body neutrality is a way of working towards feeling more neutral about your body.
If you’re feeling stuck on this, check out our prior post with some affirmations for body neutrality.
When you build body neutrality, you can start to connect more with your body. You may become willing to notice parts of your body you previously shied away from. You may be able to ever-so-slowly shift away from negative body talk to neutral body talk. This can open the door to connect with your body and begin to trust it.
To start, you might simply dedicate a few minutes a day to this exploration. So, that cellulite? The rolls of fat? The stretch marks? The scars? Hyperpigmentation? Try to just notice these parts of your body. See what that feels like.
We’ve been taught these are bad, but that isn’t inherently true.
Recognize that that is a learned judgment and not an inherent truth.
It may very well be uncomfortable. You may have gotten in the habit of diverting attention from these parts of your body, so focusing attention on them can trigger discomfort.
Practice this with curiosity and not judgment. As this becomes more comfortable and your mindset begins to shift, body neutrality can become your norm.
Tend to your relationship with food
If you have a history of chronic dieting or disordered eating, it has probably harmed your relationship with food and with your body.
The yo-yo dieting, ups and downs in your weight, and constant attempts to control your body size or shape can cause your body to feel really insecure about whether it will have the energy it needs to protect you. It can also cause you to feel frustrated with your body if you haven’t been able to maintain weight loss.
That being said, as hard as it can be to hear this, diets just don’t work. There aren’t any diets out there at this moment that result in long-term, sustainable weight loss. Typically, diets lead to weight cycling–big shifts in weight up and down–that research shows have real health consequences.
That being said, ditching diets can be tough and bring up a lot of deep feelings and memories. It can include grieving the thin ideal and accepting your body as it is. But most people find it is SO worth it because it almost always results in a sense of freedom and body trust.
Improving your relationship with food is a journey that doesn’t happen overnight. Maybe you start by building awareness of your body’s hunger and fullness cues. Maybe you allow yourself to eat the foods you’ve previously avoided so you can find pleasure in food and reduce the power these foods have over you.
As you do more and more of this, your body will grow to trust you to fuel it properly, and you will learn to trust your body to communicate its needs.
Be on your body’s team
Many of us harbor hate and anger towards our bodies for their “imperfections”.
But what if that hate and anger was redirected away from your body and instead towards diet culture?
What if your body became your best friend and diet culture the enemy instead of the reverse?
What if you viewed your body with care and respect?
Instead of taking diet culture’s word for what is right for your body, what if you began to honor your body’s innate wisdom, in turn, protecting your physical and mental health?
Think of what that mental shift could do for you. For most, that shift in mindset can be incredibly powerful!
The good news is, it is totally possible. You can be your body’s best advocate, and becoming that connected to your body can be empowering.
Imagine if each time you saw an ad for a cream demonizing stretch marks and (falsely) claiming their product could solve your issues, your reaction was to send love to your stretch marks and think, “pssssch, cream to get rid of these? Body, I know diet culture wants me to want to change you, but you don't need to change to be worthy. I can respect and accept you just as you are.”
It may be easier to compare this to a relationship you have with another person. You probably want that person to have your back and appreciate you for who you are. If they kept degrading you, telling you you’re wrong and need to change, that probably wouldn’t sit well with you.
Your body deserves the same care you’d want from a good friend.
What if you could have your body’s back against the toxic messages from diet culture?
What if your response to diet culture’s messages was to remember that your body is not flawed, and to protect it from these harmful messaging saying otherwise?
Final Thoughts
There are many things that can wear away at our body trust. Dieting, disordered eating, and the thin ideal can cause us to have really tough relationships with our bodies. They foster a disconnection that damages our mutual trust with our bodies. This lack of trust can wear away at our physical and mental health.
Breaking up with diet culture, building awareness of your body’s cues, practicing body neutrality, improving your relationship with food, and being on your body’s team can all help you to build body trust.
This process won’t happen overnight, but over time it can have real benefits in your overall well-being. So be patient with yourself and your body and stay curious and not judgmental.
For more support, we offer a 3-part masterclass on intuitive eating to help you improve your relationship with food, your body, and movement.
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50 Positive Affirmations for Body Image
