Sometimes dieting is necessary for health reasons. But other than that, right on. I like #6. That's why I won't shop in stores that shove their plus size sections way in the back corner like they're trying to hide us. Or places like Old Navy that only let us fat people shop online.

oh this just made me so happy.

and i think i have mentioned this before but read "the beauty myth" by naomi wolf. it literally changed my life and i go back and read the last page everytime i feel that the unfair standards of beauty are getting to my head...it ALWAYS makes me feel better.

Awesome, awesome, awesome. I really needed this right now - thank you!

And as I wrote awhile back on your other blog, I have read your book cover to cover and LOVED it. I even approached my mother about some of the issues in it, holding back tears as I was doing so. I think that conversation has started some kind of healing in one area of our relationship. We have a great relationship in general, but there is a lot of unsaid stuff about body, and now a little bit has been said. :)

Love ya work Courtney!

Liza - dieting and eating healthily are two very different things. One involves buying into an evil industry, and the other is completely the opposite - a demonstration of how much you love and appreciate your body.

fatima - I'm also a huge fan of The Beauty Myth - and if you read Courtney's book, it cites Wolf extensively, along with many other must-read feminist body texts.

Thanks for that, Courtney. I'm a big fan of #4. Even if the exercise that makes me happy changes every couple months, I try not to beat myself up for not "sticking" with anything, but just keep moving!

If anyone knows of good body image resources for girls, I would love to hear about them. My buddy's 2nd grader is starting to have body issues. My heart aches for the kid.

#6 is good, but probably the hardest on the list. Is there any product out there that doesn't try to make me feel inadequate? Seems like everyone's marketing strategy. However, I can not let the attempt get to my self-image, which is the most important part.

2. You can diet without any help from the diet industry.

Seriously, was anybody thinking when they wrote this?

Dieting is stupid period. A diet implies a start and stop point, and that's just a recipe for disaster. It's bad for you body and it doesn't work. Eating healthy and in moderation is the best, and no, that's not the same thing as going on a diet.

Counting down to angry comments from dudes who perceive this as a direct attack on the size of their pool of potential fuckees.

Peanutcat, I think the "no dieting" was about don't crash diet, don't go on atkins or all the other fads that are unhealthy and you gain the weight back when you go off, and don't go on dangerous diet pills. However, you can rethink your normal diet by reducing fat intake and junk food. I think the message was don't go on commercialized diet which feeds into the beauty industry which makes money off of women who are trying to starve themselves and/or partaking in negative behavior to fit an unrealistic mold.

Adding to what Liza said: stores also make short people shop online, and it drives me CRAZY. Every time I go into Gap, a salesperson comes up to me and asks what size I wear. I tell them that I wear an "A" (for "ankle", aka: short) size, they go to "see if they have it in the back", and then they tell me that they only carry it online.

How come they always have the "long and lean" and "tall" sizes right there in the store, but the short and petite sizes are nowhere to be seen? Ugh!

Right on RiotGrrl. Though sometimes I still have to remind my friends about this - changing one's diet for the better, even when it involves restriction, is not "going on a diet." When it comes to women, though, people tend to assume that dietary choices are made for the end goal of slimness rather than health. I haven't found the same assumption when my male friends cut out certain foods - but when folks find out that I avoid sugar (it gives me mood swings), I always end up accused of doing it for weight-loss reasons.

Dieting in itself isn't stupid, and it's not necessarily bad for you. Some people do need to lose weight. The only way to lose a significant amount of weight effectively and systematically is to diet. You don't have to join one of the big corporate diet plans. I lost over 125 pounds six years ago by inventing a diet that worked for me. It included eating more healthfully, but it was definitely a "diet." And I've kept it off, so I guess I'm part of the 5%.

As far as #4 is concerned, many, or even most people need to adhere to strict fitness regimes, or they slack off and stop exercising. They're also likely not going to get enough exercise by only doing things that are "fun." Real exercise that will strengthen your body is difficult, and it's a chore. Sometimes it can be fun, but not all the time. If you want real results, you have to do the work. I'm a runner, and I love it. But it's not "fun" most of the time. If all you're interested in is fun, then go ahead, but most likely you're not going to be very fit. I want more than that. It doesn't mean there's anything wrong with my "relationship" with my body.

"Peanutcat, I think the 'no dieting' was about don't crash diet, don't go on atkins or all the other fads that are unhealthy and you gain the weight back when you go off, and don't go on dangerous diet pills. However, you can rethink your normal diet by reducing fat intake and junk food. I think the message was don't go on commercialized diet which feeds into the beauty industry which makes money off of women who are trying to starve themselves and/or partaking in negative behavior to fit an unrealistic mold."

That's the impression I got too.

I mean, if I'm pretty sick and my doctor recommends a few days of the BRAT diet to let my gut rest, should I go "dIeTz r bAd!!!" and send some more spicy food down the aching hatch right away? ;)

Likewise, I don't think Courtney was suggesting that observant and/or vegan Jews and Muslims eat bacon cheeseburgers in order to love their bodies.

BluePencils, may I ask if you changed your eating habits back after losing the weight? If you didn't, it wasn't a diet. If you did, then yes, you would be part of the 5%.

I just wrote a Love Your Body post about taking up #4 in your list: N.I.A. classes. So happy!

So much love to all the beautiful women out there!!!!

what an amazing list...can I repost it on my blog, with proper attribution of course?

What a very nice list!! It made me feel happy just reading it. :)

But then I read some of the comments and I felt bad again; you know, that usual tight knot in your stomach that's always there and makes you feel a little bit sick all the time? The knot that seems to get worse when you see all those sexist ads on TV, for example? Yeah, that feeling.

Perhaps I will go back and read the list again to try to get that happy feeling back; that particular flavour of "happy" is a rare one for me. (But it sure feels good!)

Sex and yoga: my fitness vices.
I've never felt happier.

Sex and yoga: my fitness vices.
I've never felt happier.

Completely OT, but a few minutes ago Fox News was interviewing Joe Francis, who was crying about how he's in jail even though he "didn't do anything wrong." Oh, the injustice. Cry me a fucking river, Joe.

It was a little disconcerting to be reading this positive list and have the image of idealized female torso 2 inches to the right. The cover of Full Frontal Feminism has always struck me as odd, but never more so than today.

Gosh darwin, what a unique and novel thing to say. Amazingly, no one has ever commented on the cover of Jessica's book before. Thank goodness we have observant people like you around to point these things out to us!

May I suggest a #11?

Taking the focus OFF of yourself and directing it towards others goes miles in repairing fragile self-esteem. When you do volunteer work, help a friend, anything that puts other people first, you become more beautiful. The way you perceive yourself on the outside definitely improves when you hold yourself in high regard INTERNALLY.

Can I add another?

If you don't like exercising, you can stop. If you want to. Not everybody has to be thin, not everybody has to be "toned" (whatever that means), and nobody has to care about your resting pulse rate. If you like taking long walks, take them, but if you don't, if you'd rather curl up on the couch and take a nap, make the time to do it.

Actually, I want to add that I think that sleep deprivation is an area in which people are horrible to themselves and their bodies that gets too little attention. Every so often, a study comes out that says that not getting enough sleep is the equivalent of being drunk (or whatever) when it comes to getting things done, and yet people continue to starve themselves of sleep.

Vervain- ignore him. He's made that comment at least 40 times.

Incredible Kate-that's weird, is it possible that that's just the store you shop in? The Long and Lean line isn't necessarily referring to size, that's just the name of the pant. Anytime I've shopped in the Gap, though, I find ankle-length pants.

EG- I agree that no one should be forcing themselves to do shit they absolutely hate, but shouldn't health be a motivator in exercising? I mean, being completely sedentary isn't going to be good for your cardiovascular health. Isn't it recommended that you take 1000 steps a day (or something) just for health reasons?

I agree with the sentiment that "diet" implies something temporary, and if you want to be healthy, you should just be changing the way you eat permanently. Amazingly, I was able to get over 23 years worth of body image issues 2 months ago when I got Glamour's body issue, in which they had a spread where they put pictures of a ton of different women, and said that you should be happy with your body as long as you're not treating it badly.

I completely agree, EG. I can't eat right or exercise if I'm not getting enough sleep. If I try to work out when sleep-deprived, I always get sick. I also heard somewhere that you retain more fat even if you have a healthy diet and exercise if you are sleep deprived.
That said, I copied and pasted this list to my documents, just to read later when I'm depressed and need a pick-me-up!

What I meant, RockStar, was that if you really, really hate physical activity, it might well be worth it to you just not to do it, regardless of health. I just get sick of the idea of finding something you "like" to do. I don't like exercising. Any kind. I've never liked it. Any kind. I do a lot of walking and climbing up and down stairs just because I live a 15-minute walk from the subway station in a fourth-floor walk-up, so I do the kind of physical activity that I need to do to get through the day, but I sure as hell am not going to do anything else. I mean, "healthy" isn't something everybody gets to in the same way, and the idea that I'm going to metmorphose from the 6-year-old who'd rather sit in a corner and read than run around the playgorund into an adult who enjoys African dance or running or yoga...eh. Not so much.

I just think it's important to emphasize that if you like exercise, fine. But part of taking care of your body is paying attention to your need for rest, and if you don't want to do any activities, there might be a reason for that.

But more realistically, I'm just being a cranky weirdo. Don't mind me--I mean, I mean it about the sleep thing, people really don't get enough and it does bad thing to your body and mind, but the rest of it is really not a big deal. I'm overtired and being unnecessarily grouchy.

It's a really nice list, and I completely agree with Fatima. I stopped dieting in high school the day I read The Beauty Myth. It changed my life. At one point I xeroxed and enlarged one of the paragraphs so I could pin it over my desk to look at it whenever I needed support or inspiration. However Wolf has gone since then, that was an amazing, transformative book.

EG: "Every so often, a study comes out that says that not getting enough sleep is the equivalent of being drunk (or whatever) when it comes to getting things done, and yet people continue to starve themselves of sleep."

Sounds like someone has been grading lots of midterms and papers :-)? I know I'm a zombie right now.

Just to add to the love your body list, here is a great site with lots of ideas on how to feel comfortable in your own skin.

http://www.nationaleatingdisorders.org/p.asp?WebPage_ID=320&Profile_ID=41160

EG, thank you for pointing that out. Seriously. I'm doing an internship at a women's shelter, working full-time as a supervisor at Starbucks, and trying to finish my graduate degree. I have, like, seven hours that I'm not at work or in class, and I'm getting ready to move in January to be with my boyfriend. He's been doing trail maintenance, so he hikes all the time and is getting really buff. I started to feel bad about never exercising, b/c I'm not going to be able to keep up with him when I get out there, but I'm just so tired all the time! Luckily, he says he likes me soft, so at least I have a body-image supporter there.

I LOVE this list. And I love #2. Do not diet. Eat less if you feel the need to lose pounds, but eat WELL. Give your body real food, real nutrients, healthy fats, fruits and vegetables, whole grains. Spend the extra dollar or two on organics and spare yourself the toxins. And recognize that most of the fast foods and processed foods that are being thrown at us are just slow-acting poisons that we do not need to take.

OK, I know I'm missing the point but this is a personal bug bear. "Diet" is WHAT YOU EAT.

Dieting is stupid period. A diet implies a start and stop point, and that's just a recipe for disaster. It's bad for you body and it doesn't work. Eating healthy and in moderation is the best, and no, that's not the same thing as going on a diet.

It should not mean crash dieting, and it should not mean a start and stop point - the fact that to many people it does imply a start and stop point is the reason why most people don't maintain weight loss.

It frustrates me no end that women cannot talk about diet/ing without people reading that as "eating less/weird shit". That is not what it means. *frustrationg*

OK, I know I'm missing the point but this is a personal bug bear. "Diet" is WHAT YOU EAT.

Thank fuck for that. Someone who knows what words mean, rather than what they'd like them to mean.

Thank you for posting this. I'll try your suggestions, but I doubt their success. As a teenage girl living in America, I know all too well that loving your body is easier said than done. Much easier.

Weird no one has mentioned eating disorders yet. Disordered eating is said to affect at least 25% of women and full blown eating disorders around 5%. They are 18%-20% fatal. Loving your body is not only emotionally healthy and politically radical, it is also life saving:)

Ooh, I love suggestion #4, "Move in ways (African dance, yoga, running, sex...) that make you feel happy instead of adhering to strict fitness regimens."

In the city I live in, I always see hordes of earnest young women out pounding the pavement jogging. None of them look like they're having any fun. It's like they're doing it as a penance or because they think it will lead to their eternal salvation. You can almost see the anxiety dripping off them.

Not that there's anything wrong with jogging if you like it. And I do recognize that exercise isn't always fun. But there's just something so sad about the utterly alienated forms of "workouts" that young women force themselves into, with little joy. Don't even get me started about the rat race on the treadmills and elliptical trainers in those dark, depressing gyms...

OK, I know I'm missing the point but this is a personal bug bear. "Diet" is WHAT YOU EAT.

Perfect timing. I came in for work and was grabbing a bagel, and someone started talking to me about how much weight I'm going to lose after the baby comes, and how it was the skinniest she'd ever been in her life. I said that I've known a lot of women who've lost all the baby weight while they were breastfeeding, and I've known women who really struggled to loose the weight, and that I thought it probably just depended on the individual's body chemistry. She said, "Oh, I don't know about that. If you put your mind to it ..." I told her that I really didn't think losing weight was going to be my priority once the baby came, and she backed off and said "Oh no, it wasn't for me either, it just happened, because I drank so much water and had to eat really healthy meals for the baby." I finally snapped "My mother had a hard time loosing weight after we were born, so I don't really want to set myself up to think I'm going to loose a lot of weight right away." For fuck's sake!! Getting rid of the baby weight is not a priority for me. Making sure my baby and myself are healthy is. That's going to include staying hydrated, eating well and for me, going back to yoga as soon as I can. If I lose weight doing that, awesome. If I don't--well, it took me 29 years to get to the point where I love and am delighted by my body. For the first time in my life, I feel like my body is performing perfectly, and I don't intend on giving that feeling up just because I'm not loosing all the weight I've gained with this pregnancy by a set date.

Wow, sorry. Didn't mean to write a novel, but I guess that was bothering me more than I thought.

The best think I did to love my body lately was to stop filling it with toxic foods and animal products. It's a lot easier to love your body when you know it didn't cause the death of countless animals.

Might I also add that taking some alone time with a toy might be a great way to love your body ;)

I agree with a lot of this but I'd say never diet isn't exactly correct.

Strictly speaking everyone has a diet unless they are fasting. I'd say just follow a diet that is consistent with mainstream medical beliefs, i.e. eat several times a day, avoid sweets, eat vegetables every day.

But I agree that fad diets and extreme caloric restriction are very bad.

Number four is very good because everyone needs exercise, but you have to find something that you want to do and then you'll stay with your routine.

I think the point Courtney was trying to make was that "dieting", as it is commonly understood and commonly advertised, isn't the way to love your body. I think we can all get on board with that without being nit-picky about the wording. The $31 billion industry she's referring to isn't the one supporting meaningful life/health changes.

Also, I didn't get the impression that Courtney was suggesting that it was bad to exercise in the traditional sense, I think she was saying that women should not exercise as a way to punish their bodies or to try to meet some stupid idealized idea of what a woman "should" look like. She was saying that women should use their bodies and exercise for pleasure and maybe to chase that endorphine high without buying into the notion that one has to do it in order to mold thier body into anything other than what it is, naturally.

It just didn't seem to me that she was advocating sloth or gluttony, she was saying not to use the avoidance of these things as a reason to hate your body.

That's my take, anyways!

African dance is amazing. It's a killer aerobic workout, so it's great for your heart, and at the same time it works just about every muscle group you could ever think to complain about. But most importantly, it's fun, and will leave you with a huge smile on your face.

It's a lot easier to love your body when you know it didn't cause the death of countless animals.

Each to her own. If I don't eat meat regularly, I become so hungry that I get dizzy and light-headed, which makes it hard for me to love anything.

And kmp, you are a better woman than I. I salute you and hope you get good sleep this weekend!

Yay! Sleep! I finally found someone who loves sleep as much as I do - my cat. I was never one of those people who stayed up all night, not even in college. When I go back to grad school next year, I'm quittin' the job - I just know I'll die if I have to do both at the same time.

Hats off to those who can, but I certainly can't.

Oh, and having muscles and eating greens everyday is the BEST. For me anyway. I feel like I can move my body in any way I want. Having a 12 inch vertical leap has always been a dream....running a 6 minute mile. I know I don't look like a beauty queen when I do those things - hell people probably think I'm in a boatload of pain (sometimes I am) but I am in control of my movements, my every muscle. I lurv it.

Regarding "DIET"

Diet can mean either the type of food you eat (e.g., kosher diet) or eating less to lose weight, or eating healthier (e.g., no cake in my diet).

Soooo... Alot of people in my field use terms like "restrained eating", "dietary restraint", "eating restraint", etc., to convey that they specifically mean restraining the number of calories you eat. Sometimes "crash dieting" for specific 1-7 day eating restraint episodes.

See what happens when even with the best of intentions we offer "Rules" for others to live by. :)

I think it's amazing the mostly good vibes coming through this comment thread as we share with one another our strategies for taking care of ourselves. I think that the essence of "love your body" is to do what's right for you.

I'm still working on accepting what my body needs, which is a healthier diet, filled with leafy greens and less alcohol. I am definitely a social eater, which leads to office-birthday-cake-style binging, and my gut and psyche cannot take it. As I mentioned upthread, I have found a N.I.A. class near my apartment which is a style of movement and exercise that I adore. Looking in the mirror for an hour per day, combined with the inspiration from the feminist blogosphere, combined with the encouragement of the class instructor, I am appreciating my body much more quickly than I expected (given I've been searching for a class because I feel so disgustingly out of shape and thus expected to be torturing myself for awhile in the class).

Truthfully, I'm very vain, and know I'm considered, accd'ing to conventional norms, good looking. I believe I have above average confidence for a woman, and have been amazed when I see myself on candid video how self-assured I appear.

Nonetheless, I am in a constant, self-critical dialogue with myself, and beat myself up routinely over my body image. It's mostly related to how my body is changing as I age and become busier and have shifting commitments and priorities (serious boyfriend, for instance, heavy travel schedule, for example) and have not been willing to make the time to keep up the exercise regimen I had when I was single and less busy. Ironically, even though I equate my thinnest periods with my most depressed periods in my life (skinny due to major back injury, skinning due to moving to new city and entering PhD program and having no friends), I still longed for that body as I perceived myself in the last 2 years getting "fat" (I'm not actually fat, except by H'wood standards) and happy. Happier than I've ever been.

Except for the too-frequent loathing as I try to stay at 8/10 and not back up to 10/12 as in periods past.

Honestly, I've been more or less the same weight for the last 10 years, that's pretty much been a healthy, normal size. But I was a chubby kid with a big appetite who comes from an obese family on one side, so what I believe is often sharply divergent from reality. No shocker there.

What's helped me in this process of making peace with my body has a lot to do with loved one's positive feedback. My stepmom was impressed that 7 years later I can still fit into the same bathing suit. I guess that means, more than anything, that my weight is pretty consistent. So perhaps I should stop abusing my body by not putting I stuff I know is going to irritate my digestive system, not overeat as often, etc. etc.

For me, this is all about accepting what my needs are vs. what I wish/think they should be (Sometimes I act like I am that cool skinny chick who can eat anything she wants and not gain weight; that's not true. Sometimes I drink because I think that's what I'm supposed to do, when I'm not in the mood for a drink. I am a terrible sleeper and long to be a good sleeper like my boyfriend, yet I think he's somehow "weaker" than me for "succumbing" to sleep more easily. NY mag just ran an article on sleep in which they mentioned this Amer. tendency to think needing sleep makes us weak. The list goes on.)

I have totally rambled here, and maybe everyone has moved on. I think my original point, before I ran away with my own biography here, was that this is about image, perception and inner peace/silencing the inner demons, vs. the particulars of diets and exercise regimens.

Happy Friday everyone!!

PS: As a Brandeis alum, I quickly learned diet has all kinds of connotations - kosher, vegetarian, for health/religious/weight loss, etc. purposes!

I can't help but to laugh when I read the diet arguments in these comments because it reminds me of what my friend, who is an elementary and middle school music teacher, said to me last night. She has both "average" and "gifted" children, and I asked her what the differences between them were as far as discipline. She said the gifted kids tend to listen more, but they'll get you on semantics. For example, she has a Nerf ball in the classroom, and she has a sign posted that says "do not THROW the ball indoors," and she caught the gifted kids playing catch, and their excuse was, "But we're not THROWING the ball, we're TOSSING the ball. There's no rule against that." :)

"She's talking about "DIETING," not a "DIET!" Ya'll are like a bunch of precocious gifted kids. (Which I'm sure most of you were at some point anyway.)

"Strictly speaking everyone has a diet unless they are fasting."

Hey, lots of people are on halal diets and fast during Ramadan at the same time. That time of year some people are even on the halal diet and fasting for Ramadan and on some weight loss diet at the same time because they heard that a bunch of other people manage to gain weight while fasting for Ramadan:

www.egypttoday.com/article.aspx?ArticleID=7666

"Don’t end up looking like you’ve spent the whole month eating kunafa and basboussa, which you probably did. Ramadan is no excuse for gaining weight, and no, the goal is not to cram massive amounts of delicacies at night to keep you going the next day...Always start with soup and salad then take a 15-minute break; you will be surprised how much less hungry you’ll feel..."

BTW, speaking of Ramadan and fasting, now there's one more go-ahead-and-have-lunch exception:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/10/10/AR2007101001511.html

"If he follows the guidelines, Sheikh Muszaphar can forgo fasting in space and make up for it when he returns to Earth. He can pray three times a day instead of five, facing any direction, and he can do without the ritual washing."

"Diet is what you eat, dieting or being 'on a diet' is usually used in the context of eating less for the purpose of weight loss. The two definitions do get kinda confusing. I've heard people use the term weight loss diet(ing), or WLD, and that clears up the confusion."

Yeah, that's also why I say "I'm on the BRAT diet" instead of just "I'm on a diet" when I'm in that situation.

"For example, she has a Nerf ball in the classroom, and she has a sign posted that says 'do not THROW the ball indoors,' and she caught the gifted kids playing catch, and their excuse was, 'But we're not THROWING the ball, we're TOSSING the ball. There's no rule against that.' :)"

Heh. ;)

Courtney, love love love! I am going to put this on the cork board above my desk. Thank you.

And now I really really want your book (it's been on my Amazon list for a while.)

:)

Also, nerdalert: heh. :)

Soooo... Alot of people in my field use terms like "restrained eating", "dietary restraint", "eating restraint", etc., to convey that they specifically mean restraining the number of calories you eat. Sometimes "crash dieting" for specific 1-7 day eating restraint episodes.

I know, I'm being a geek, it's just frustrating as someone who was heavily into (ameture competitive) kickboxing for a few years I am very interested in weight, body type, and diet. Yet I cannot discuss it without people presuming I want to eat less/weigh less/etc. *SIGH*

I'm not even against "dieting" - this can be to lose weight for a fight, or bulk up for a weightlifting competition. It can be unhealthy, but it needn't be.

But yeah, I know we're talking about crash/fad dieting and the obsession with women needing to WEIGH LESS eternally. :(

I also agree strongly with the take someone had (that I can't find dammit!) of these rules basically meaning to do what is best for your body and you.

To whoever said they've never found exercise they like, I'm sure there's something. ;) And walking to work counts!

Spend the extra dollar or two on organics and spare yourself the toxins.

Tell that to a poor person. They don't *have* an extra dollar or two to spend on organics. Their neighborhoods don't have any stores where they can get *any* fresh fruit or vegetables or non-spoiled meat, and can't afford to travel to find such a store, so McDonald's and cat food become their only alternatives.

There's more than a little class privilege going on here.

I'm not really a fan of this list. Of course I am a total fan of 'healing' the female psyche, but this is pretty preachy. When you put "Duh" after anything, you look like a smartass, it's perceived (by me at least) as hostility. But I TOTALLY agree with who I think was Mehitabel before who suggested some volunteer time. I may be biased because I personally put a lot more importance into empowering others (future social worker speaking here), and I don't mean to diminish the importance of loving yourself, but it's so typical American to be all about me me me. If we were all about volunteering, and kindness, and giving, and less "pull yourself up by your boostraps goddamnit!", I can't help thinking we'd have achieved a lot more. And these shameless plugs are getting old.