Is this The Bad Place?

Do you watch The Good Place TV show?

If not, part of the basic premise is that there are multiple heavens (The Good Place) and multiple hells (The Bad Place), each kind of like it's own world, and each with an architect tasked with dreaming up ways of pleasuring or torturing its residents. It's a comedy. It's really entertaining.

I recently kicked off a new Intuitive Eating Mentorship Circle and as everyone introduced themselves I was reminded of how much trauma results from living in a world saturated by diet culture. Much of the work I do with people is helping them shift the anger they have been directing at their body or eating habits towards the real culprit: diet culture. I believe properly directed rage is essential for moving towards body acceptance and sovereignty.

Using the framework from The Good Place show I pointed out that if I were an architect of a bad place and I wanted to torture people I would replicate many parts of the world we live in. I then invited them to join in on designing a hellscape based on their reality. Here's what we collectively came up with:

• Inundate people with unrealistic, manipulated images of often starved bodies and tell them if they just try hard enough they too can achieve this ideal

• Normalize self-imposed food restriction and compulsive exercise

• Shame normal eating

• Make people mistrust their body and it's hunger cues

• Design airplane seats and seatbelts to comfortably accommodate a very small percentage of the population.

• Only offer clothing in brick and mortar stores in sizes that fit a small percentage of the population

• Take an entire food group and tell people to avoid it. Then, once people are on board, switch it up and make a different macronutrient the hero/villain.

• Tell women that after carrying and birthing a child they should return to their pre-pregnancy body, ideally, in a matter of weeks.

• The Kardashians

It was actually fun to popcorn ideas and realize that we're not crazy. It's not us. It's not our bodies. It's diet culture. Diet culture is hell. (as is/related: capitalistic white heteronormative patriarchy)

Yes, it is depressing that our world is a hellscape in many ways, but it's also liberating. Kind of like being on to someone trying to pull the wool over your eyes. If it's just some torturous for-profit scheme to get us to think there is something wrong with our body...or carbs...or emotional eating then maybe we can opt-out more often. Maybe we can de-normalize, disrupt, and divest from this farce.

Stay

The following piece was written on November 7th, 2016 after the results of the U.S. presidential election were announced. The words remain relevant today.

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Every cell of my body is screaming “leave!” this morning. There is no where I want to be less than here.

But I stay.

When I heard the news I ran to the toilet to throw up. I sat on the floor of the bathroom rocking back and forth, trembling, breath shallow, wanting so intensely to leave this moment, this world.

But I stay.

My mind grips and grasps for me to run away to the future. To the what ifs. To the terror. To the tracing of all the steps in history that lead me and us to this moment. To the search for blame. To the desperation for salvation. My mind implores and beckons me to leave.

But I stay.

As a woman, my body has rarely felt like home. For too long I didn’t live here. Here was not a place to trust. Here was not a place that I thought I could handle with my eyes open. But I found my way back and I stay.

Today the invitation I have for you may not be easy: stay.

Stay in your body. Stay with the tremors and the shaking. Stay with the pit in your stomach. Stay even as you notice yourself bobbing in and out. These feelings. This trauma. This fear and anger and sadness and confusion and despair cannot kill us. In fact staying is our salvation.

Stay in your body. Just sidle up next to whatever sensation is coursing through your flesh. Feel the pain. Notice the quality of your breath. Are you hungry? Cold? Perhaps the best way to describe here is ‘numb’?

That’s all welcome. Stay.

The body knows and it has evolved over millennia to process trauma like many of us are experiencing. These processes require little effort on our part other than loving presence…other than staying with kindness.

Stay.

In staying we can receive our bodies wise requests. Is it aching for companionship? Asking for quiet? Nudging us to put away the screens or put on a sweater? Now is the time to heed our body’s requests. Now is the time to stay.

There may not yet be answers to the questions in our mind but we can answer the requests of the body.

There will be a time in the near future that we act boldly, consistently, together and with steadfast determination but right now the impact has just happened, the car has just rolled, the fire just ravaged through, leaving our skin raw and our being bewildered. So right now our best action is to simply stay.

Stay and tend. Stay and feel. Stay and listen.

Here is my call: let our response to this moment be deeper embodiment.

Why embodiment? What can embodiment do in the face such real-life practical threats? Embodied people are resourced. Embodied people are awake. Embodied people are rooted.

If there were ever a time for people to be resourced, awake, and rooted this is it.

Let our commitment be to stay and to feel and then to act on behalf of those whose bodies are most threatened. And it’s all a threat to bodies isn’t it?

Marriage equality and LGBTQ rights? Human bodies.

Racial justice? Bodies.

Reproductive rights? Bodies.

War? ISIS? Bodies.

Affordable and accessible healthcare? Bodies.

Responsible gun control? Bodies.

Immigration? Bodies.

The disembodied cannot support and protect the physically vulnerable nearly as effectively as an army of the deeply embodied.

Don’t move to Canada. Don’t disappear. Don’t check out. Don’t give up. Don’t turn to your escape of choice. Stay. Just here. Just now. In this hurting, reeling body.

All you need to is stay and when you leave, come back as soon as you are aware. Stay.

When all you want to do is leave. When hopelessness nips at your toes. When you don’t know where to go or what to think or how to proceed. Just stay here in your powerful, vulnerable, sacred flesh.

The way forward will be found here and together, in our bodies, we will rise.

Participation Optional

Even though we in the developed world are relatively free, we’re still socialized to go along with the crowd. Today’s reminder is that participation is optional. Today I invite you to opt out when you don’t want to do something.

Opt out of being weighed at the doctor’s office. Did you know it’s optional? You can simply say “I pass” and if they pressure you, and you don’t feel you have a choice, you can step on the scale backwards and say “I don’t want to know the number, it’s not useful to me.”

Opt out of allowing your child to have their BMI measured at school. Seriously. Let’s stop this early weight stigmatization and use of this most meaningless measurement.

Opt of out the pervasive “I’m so bad, I ate a piece of bread” conversations. If the people around you are gib gabbing about their latest diet, weight loss success or failure you can: change the topic, explain that you don’t partake in ‘diet culture’, or even say “You know how some people don’t talk about religion or politics because it causes conflict, well, I don’t talk dieting.” And leave it at that. You do not have to participate in or respond to every conversation you’re invited to.

Opt out of "Operation Get Bikini Body Ready". You already have a bikini body, whether you want to wear one or not. This summer is not something to dread. The beach is not something to starve or slave for. Opt out.

Opt out of the hysteria over eating clean and of the diet fad (aka “lifestyle change”) of the moment. Just because “all the cool kinds are doing it” doesn’t mean it’s good for you (or them) and you have every right to opt out without any guilt.

Opt out of any yoga or exercise class that doesn’t feel welcoming to you and your body. As a wise friend of mine once said about bad yoga classes: “Treat them like a bad movie and walk out.”

On that note, opt out of the "free" body fat scan that comes with your new gym membership. When it comes to movement, you and your body deserve to feel welcomed, accepted, and met. Anything less is a great opportunity to opt out.

Opt out of seeing any medical practitioner who brings weight stigma into their practice. Increasingly you have choice and more and more there are medical professionals who understand the harm of weight-stigma and scientific validity of the Health at Every Size paradigm. Don’t like your doctor? Afraid to go see them because of the weight shaming comments they've made? Opt out.

Opt out of television shows (I’m looking at you Biggest Loser), magazines (I’m looking at you Shape Magazine), and other media that leave you feeling less than. Turn them off, unsubscribe, and go enjoy entertainment that respect you and everyone.

Bottom line: you are free. You can say “No” and “No Thank You” and “No Fucking Way.”

Even if you feel like the odd one out, no one ever regrets doing what feels right and true to them.

Participation is truly optional.