For a long time, conversations about body image have focused on changing how people feel about their bodies. We’re often told, learn to love your body, improve your self-esteem, stop comparing yourself to other people. There can be value in some of that, but at Little Seed Wellness, we think body image therapy needs to ask a bigger question: What if your body isn't actually the problem? The relationship we have with our body does not develop in isolation. It is shaped by our families, the healthcare systems, media, culture, gender expectations, racism, ableism, fatphobia, poverty, access to food and green spaces, and countless messages about what kinds of bodies are considered healthy, attractive, disciplined, or worthy. Those messages affect how we feel when we look in the mirror. They also shape how we eat, how we move, how we care for ourselves, how other people respond to our bodies, and even what gets recognized as a problem in the first place.
Eating disorders are a good example. One of the most persistent myths about eating disorders is that you can see them. You can't. People across the weight spectrum can experience restriction, malnutrition, obsessive thoughts about food, fear around eating, and serious physical consequences. However, when thinness is associated with health or discipline and eating disorders are associated with a particular body type, harmful behaviors in larger bodies can be missed, dismissed, or even encouraged. That is why our approach to body image and eating disorder counseling looks beyond weight. If we only focus on changing how you think about your body without examining the messages, systems, and experiences that shaped that relationship, we miss a pretty important part of the story.
We Don't Treat Health as a Moral Achievement
Our culture tends to talk about health as though it is something you earn by making the “right” choices. Eat the right foods. Move the right amount. Maintain the right weight. Have the right numbers at the doctor's office. Health is multifaceted, and it may mean different things to different people. Physical health is only one part of our well-being, alongside mental, emotional, social, relational, and other dimensions of health that may, or may not, matter to us. What it means to be healthy, or to pursue health, is not going to look the same for everyone. Health is also influenced by far more than individual behavior. Genetics, disability, chronic stress, discrimination, access to healthcare, financial resources, food access, environment, and many other factors shape our health. Health is, in many ways, a privilege, and not everyone has equal access to it. Some people also live with illnesses, disabilities, or conditions that cannot simply be changed through individual behavior. Most importantly, health is not a prerequisite for dignity. You do not have to demonstrate that you are healthy to deserve respectful healthcare, adequate food, comfortable clothing, movement that feels good to you, or a life that isn't organized around trying to make your body smaller.
Sometimes the Problem Is Bigger Than Body Image
Therapy can help us examine the beliefs we've internalized about ourselves, but it shouldn't become a place where we simply learn to tolerate mistreatment more gracefully. When someone experiences weight stigma in healthcare, developing better self-esteem doesn't address the discrimination they've encountered. Similarly, positive thinking cannot undo the cultural messages that tell people their gender expression makes their bodies wrong, just as learning to love shopping won't address the lack of accessible clothing options for people in larger bodies. Individual healing is important, but we also need to recognize the social and cultural conditions that contribute to body dissatisfaction and shame. Healing can involve examining these experiences in therapy, challenging the systems that perpetuate them, and building connections with others who share similar experiences.
Community plays an important role in this process by creating opportunities for connection, shared understanding, and collective support. Fat communities, queer and trans communities, disability communities, mutual aid networks, and activist spaces can offer belonging and opportunities to challenge the systems that marginalize certain bodies. Organizations like Denver Fatties and Big Bodied Baddies in Chicago are examples of communities intentionally creating these spaces. At Little Seed Wellness, our approach to body image therapy and eating disorder therapy recognizes the importance of both individual experiences and the broader systems that shape them. We explore relationships with food and our bodies while also questioning the cultural expectations surrounding health, weight, gender, beauty, and worth.
Rather than treating your body as a problem that needs to be solved, therapy can become a space to examine why it was treated as one in the first place.