People Pleasing and Body Trust: How People Pleasing Gets in the Way of Healing Our Relationships with Food and Our Bodies
“Oh, they must be right!”
That used to be my brain’s default thought whenever anyone said something critical about me.
For most of my life, I hadn’t really learned how to actually feel OK with the things I knew, felt, and wanted for myself. I’d always worry about what others thought about my choices, because if other people approved of what I was doing, that would be an indication that I was on the right path.
In other words – I’d never really learned how to trust myself!
That showed up in many different areas of my life, but perhaps nowhere as strongly as in my relationship with my own body and, by extension, my relationship with food.
From a very young age, I learned from TV shows, ads, magazines, and the comments I heard around me IRL that it’s up to other people to determine: 1) whether I looked good, 2) how I needed to be feeding myself (mostly in service of staying as thin as possible), and 3) how I needed to be moving my body (also mostly in service of staying as thin as possible).
What brought me joy, motivation or excitement was much lower on the priority list, way behind the ultimate goal – conform to patriarchal, diet culture body and beauty standards.
So of course, I learned to ignore my own preferences, disconnect from my body, and try to follow the ever expanding and changing list of rules that would help me fit that mold.
It took me many, many years to learn that all of this did not bring me fulfilment, did not help me like myself more, did not make me healthier, and did not make me feel better. Instead, what I got were: 1) an eating disorder, 2) body dysmorphia, 3) a life centered around controlling my body size over everything else, and 4) a life centered around what others thought was right for me over what I felt/wanted for myself.
To put it simply – a life steeped in people pleasing!
Negative Body Image & Food Noise ~ The hidden side of people pleasing:
In my current work, where I coach people on how to recover from people pleasing, we work a lot on setting boundaries, saying “no” when you want to, and not experiencing crushing guilt or fear when you do. Those are usually the things that come to mind when we think about people pleasing.
However, there is also a hidden and more insidious side to people pleasing that we often do not think of. And that manifests as defaulting to other people’s opinions over what you want and value. Trusting others to be the authority over what you deep down know and need for yourself.
Who are the “others” in that picture? It could be your parents, it could be your colleagues, it could be the neighbors (that particular group is VERY important in Bulgaria, where I grew up). Or it could literally be strangers on the internet, and society at large.
When it comes to body image and food, that type of people pleasing means defaulting to our patriarchal beauty standards to evaluate whether we look good (here is a good opportunity to remind you that those beauty standards were created to be impossible with the precise goal of keeping women exhausted, preoccupied, and away from power and decision-making).
It also means defaulting to diet culture’s definition of what healthy means (just thin, nothing else), what disciplined means (also just thin), what it means to take care of yourself (you guessed it – it means being thin).
And when we default to those external rules and standards, we lose trust in ourselves. In our own bodies’ hunger and fullness cues. In our own cravings. In the messages from our own bodies about when we need movement (and what kind) and when we need rest.
Getting back to ourselves:
So how do we find our way back to ourselves and start cultivating some self-trust again? By challenging each of those erroneous beliefs and things that patriarchy and diet culture taught us, and cultivating new beliefs, with patience and one small step at a time.
I have some examples of more constructive beliefs and actions to get you started. If you want to go deeper into this work and get personalized support, reach out to me at info@restovergrind.com
1.Love and compassion are WAY MORE effective as motivators than fear, control and discipline:
Despite what so many of us have been taught, the best way to take care of yourself is NOT though fear or control. Those things just end up putting us in a high stress state which is not great for us on its own, but it also prevents us from actually taking constructive action and keeping up with it over time.
The truth is that the best way to take care of yourself is through love and compassion. Taking gentle actions while listening to your body and what it needs. That is simply how human brains work. They thrive on positive reinforcement and care and shrink under the pressures of panic and constant disapproval.
If your immediate fear as you are reading this is: “OK, but if I just start being OK with my how my body looks or with how much I want to rest, then I’ll never do anything ever again” I want you to think of some instances in your life where you love something AND that love motivates you to take care of it.
Here is one example for me. I love my apartment! I find it cozy, and cute, and lovely. And I take great care of it, out of love. I’ve never felt like I needed to hate my living space or use discipline to motivate myself to keep it cozy, clean and tidy. In fact, the more I find joy in it, the more I have the desire to take care of it.
If that is true for an apartment, why can’t it be true for my living and breathing body too?
The answer is – it can!
Over the past few years, I have done the work to unlearn a lot of the toxic diet culture and patriarchy lessons (the work is never done, of course, but I have made tremendous progress from where I used to be). And I have greatly changed the relationship I have with my body, the things I eat, or the way I move. Here is what I have found on the other side:
I no longer look at my body as an object that needs to look a certain way for the sake of others. I look at it as my home and an intricate and wonderful part of who I am. And that is not something that can be altered when the size of my body changes. I also dress myself in a way that feels and looks great to me, and in a way that supports the life I want to live.
I eat intuitively, focusing on what my body wants in any given moment. If I want to add any particular nutrients to my food, I do just that – I think of easy and sustainable ways to ADD them, rather than focusing on things I need to replace or remove.
I move my body with SO much joy, doing things that make me feel strong, flexible, and excited! I never thought I would be able to go jogging or go lift weights because it feels fun and joyful, but I reached that stage and now both of those things are true! It took some time to get there, though, and I had to go through a phase of only doing way gentler types of movement, because anything more intense only triggered thoughts of changing my body size. Until I rewired those connections in my brain, I took walks, biked, and just did things that I did not immediately associate with manipulating my body size.
So yes, I have proof that loving your body does NOT make you abandon and not take care of it. It takes you to a place where you actually take care of its needs a lot more thoughtfully and deliberately, rather than based on made up, external rules.
2. After an initial period of rest and refeeding, you will start naturally craving variety:
Another important thing I want you to consider. If you imagine allowing yourself to eat anything you want without any physical or mental restrictions and you brain jumps to – I will end up only eating a few specific types of food forever – that is because you are currently restricting those foods! That restriction could look like physical restriction (you are physically trying to limit them) or it could be mental restriction (you are eating them but thinking “oh, I need to limit this, this is bad.”)
Both types of restriction make your brain crave the foods a lot more intensely than it would if they were fully allowed. So that fantasy of eating only those foods if you were “allowed to” is coming from restriction.
If you truly allow yourself to actually eat those and all other foods, freely and without any guilt or internal yelling – sure, there will be a period of refeeding where you might focus on the foods you are currently restricting (physically or mentally). And then, there will come a point at which you start craving other stuff. That is a 100% guarantee. Because we humans crave variety. And our bodies, which by the way are incredibly smart, regularly tell us what we need. We just need to learn how to listen to them.
I see this a lot in my practice when it comes to rest as well. Folks are routinely worried that if they just allowed rest unconditionally, they would never get off the couch again. That, to me, just means they have been restricting rest for too long and their bodies and nervous systems are exhausted.
You might tell me – no, I actually already spend too much time on the couch, I’m not restricting. That sentence alone shows that you are 😊 Because “too much” shows me you are judging your time on the couch. And when you are judging yourself, you are not truly allowing rest and relaxation, even if you are outwardly performing the action.
If you actually just let yourself rest, there will be a period of recovery when you need to do it a lot more. And then, there will come a time when you’ll crave doing other things. You’d crave going for a walk. You’d crave meeting up with a friend. You’d crave going for a run or a bike ride. Because, again, we humans crave variety. And only craving one thing just means you have been depriving yourself of that thing for a long time and need to fully allow it before you can get to a place where other things seem naturally appealing too.
3. You can learn how to support yourself AND build connections with others outside of diet culture:
For a lot of us, the container of diet culture had some aspects that seemed outwardly positive – namely, the feeling of bonding and community with others. Bonding over how insecure you feel in your body. Over how much you “overate” at dinner or over the holidays. Over the new diet or wellness journey you are about to embark on. Over panicking that there are certain snacks in the office kitchen.
So when we embark on our healing journey, it can feel quite isolating at first, because all of these same conversations are now activating and can be huge setbacks, especially early on in our recovery.
At the same time, forming bonds with people at the expense of your own healing and wellbeing is not pleasant, sustainable, or effective.
So what can you do instead?
Find community with other folks who are on a similar healing journey. When I was actively recovering, I made connections with so many amazing people who were doing the same work (the Side by Side community was one of the main ones). It may not seem like it in the midst of all the diet culture chatter, but there are many others out there who are also trying to heal.
Find new ways to bond with the folks in your life. That would require some uncomfortable conversations at first but, trust me, there are people around you who would be willing to hear you out when you say: “hey, do you mind if we don’t discuss body sizes or criticize certain foods when we are together?” There are people who would be curious to hear about your journey and may even get inspired to examine their own beliefs around food and bodies in the process!
4. You can re-wire even the most deeply embedded beliefs. And you deserve to not struggle with it alone:
I promise that even the most deep and stubborn beliefs can be changed and shifted with the right support! Our brains are very adaptable and capable of change!
I like to give the recent example of the pandemic as evidence for that. One year into the pandemic, a lot of us felt like it was second nature to wear a mask or practice social distancing. Those were both things most of us were not at all used to doing prior to 2020. But our brains quickly adapted with the circumstances and learned new ways of functioning in only a few months.
Rewiring our diet culture thoughts is similarly doable, even if it feels very distant right now! I have seen it for myself, I have seen it in my clients, and I have seen it in my community.
Doing it alone, though, can be extra challenging! I was certainly not alone while doing this work. I had the Side by Side Nutrition community, and I also worked with a coach to specifically help me through the process of rewiring my brain!
Because it is a specific process, and it is not linear or straightforward. So having someone there to guide you through it is invaluable!
I would love to be that person for you!
If you intellectually understand that those diet culture lessons are BS (e.g., you know that thin is not better, healthier or more “together”), but you have a hard time communicating it to yourself emotionally, that’s the gap that I can help you bridge! So you can actually start feeling like all of those things apply to you too and are not just theoretical!
When you are ready, book a free 30-min consult call with me at restovergrind.com/work-with-me.
If you want to skip the consult and go straight to scheduling a coaching session, you can also just email me at info@restovergrind.com.
Because you deserve more for yourself than spending your life mistrusting your own wants and needs while trying to conform to society’s absurd (and oppressive) standards!