All dieters have experienced the pain of body shame,  

either through having been body-shamed themselves—or through having borne witness to the shaming of other human beings,

both experiences of which are deeply imprinting and deeply traumatic. 

In a frantic attempt to avoid this pain (whether in our conscious memory or not), we become hypervigilant around food—

we obsess, we hang on for dear life, we do everything in our power to remain “in control” of our bodies, leading to ever-increasing anxiety and stress when “control” becomes more and more difficult to maintain.

Over time we become exhausted: completely unable to rest around food or panic-stricken when our bodies force us into rest (usually through the process of binge eating).

Having experienced this “craziness” around food, many eventually get to the point where they wish they could “let go,” but struggle to overcome their deeply embedded fear. 

Struggling with this body-image-related “post-trauma stress” (which is continually triggered by our fatphobic culture) many live paralyzed by fear despite longing to relax around food—unwilling to revisit and resolve the pain that triggered their obsession to begin with.

For many, resolving body-shame-related trauma will mean grieving—will mean deeply feeling and holding space for our pain—rather than recoiling from it.