Before you read any further, I have to be upfront. I hate the idea that your “summer body” has to be any different than the one you have in fall, winter, or spring.

If you have to restrict your food or drastically increase your exercise to change your body, you’re probably trying to force yourself to be a size you weren’t meant to be.

Don’t like that answer? It’s ok. I didn’t either. In fact, I used to feel like I was broken. It seemed like everywhere I looked people around me were losing weight. Every time I turned around it was:

“OMG did you lose weight? You look SO good!”

Except it wasn’t usually directed at me. It was my co-worker. The lady who took my yoga class every Friday. The girl next to me in dance class. My dance student’s mom. My own mom. It literally felt like everyone AND their mother. It felt unfair.

My JOB was working out FFS!

Why was it that other people could seemingly just give up pop and lose weight? Meanwhile I was over here doing all the things. Fighting with everything in me to even maintain my current shape and size. And if I ever managed to lose a few pounds, it wasn’t long before I gained it all back and then some. The truth that I didn’t want to face?

I didn’t actually need to lose weight in the first place.

I was not meant to be any smaller. If you know me, you know that I describe myself as a medium sized human, and that I am now well aware of my thin privilege. (If this word makes you uncomfortable, check out this blog post for some insight on the term.) But regardless of what size you are, the pressure to either achieve or maintain a certain level of thinness is real. So is body dysmorphia. Weight stigma hurts everyone to some degree.

Diet culture would have you believe that it’s all about calories in-calories out. That thin people eat lettuce and fat people eat cake. False.

We weren’t all meant to look the same. After I finally figured this out, I decided I better just start trying to accept myself. Enter body positivity. And I went through various iterations of this. It wasn’t until I worked with a body image coach who gave me some tough love and made me ditch all this stuff that I finally found freedom.

Spoiler alert: it was never about giving up sugar or carbs or gluten.

1. Clothes That Don’t Fit

I knowwwww. . .you’re gonna tell me that it’s “motivation”. That its #goals. Those pants were expensive and one day you might fit into them again. Nope. Sure, it might be motivating you. But from a place of shame. Do yourself a favor and donate them. Sell them on Poshmark. If you want me to be honest they aren’t even cute any more anyway. 😉 I know this is hard. But if you can manage to find a day to have a date with your closet an some garbage bags I promise you’ll feel so much better. Just like Marie Kondo promised. I know it might not be realistic to go out an buy a whole new wardrobe, but even just having a few items that fit well can be a game changer.

2. The scale

Do people really still use these things? Sometimes I get so caught up in my own anti-diet bubble that I forget that many people still get really hung up on this number. Not ready to smash your scale? Put it somewhere inconvenient to start. Maybe in the back of a closet that you haven’t cleaned out yet? Once you get it out of sight out of mind, you’ll get out of the habit of weighing yourself. Then getting rid of it entirely might seem less daunting. Did you already ditch the scale? Good job. Keep reading to make sure you’re not getting stuck anywhere else. . .

3. Your Tape Measure

At one point in my body acceptance journey, I decided that it was ok if I gained weight. But only if it was muscle. So it was cool if I weighed more as long as I wasn’t taking up any more space. Are you keeping tabs on your measurements too? This habit is only feeding your fat-phobia. Toss your tape measure. Pretty soon you’ll forget the circumference of your thighs. And realize that it never mattered all that much in the first place.

4. Before/after photos

There are so many reasons why I don’t like these in general. But in this case, I’m gonna give the most important one: They’re making you obsess over your body. Maybe it’s those side by shots that live on your phone from the last time you decided to “lose the weight once and for all”. Maybe it’s just those moments when you sit on Facebook late at night wondering how ever hated your body 10 years ago (you looked so great!). Stop. Just stop. Comparing your current self to pictures of your former self is never going to help you make peace with where you’re at right now.

5. People on social media who make you feel bad

I can’t say this enough. Stop and pay attention the next time you’re scrolling social media. You don’t have to follow people who make you feel bad about yourself. And I have a feeling that if you’re anything like me and have an interest in health and fitness (or worse, work in the industry), you have a lot of these people in you feed. They’re constantly posting their own transformation photos. And pictures of their salad while they talk about how “clean they eat” Whatever it is, if it makes you question your own worth, it’s gotta go. Get it out of your life. Unfollow. Mute. Byeee.

6. Food Tracking Apps

Truth: they’re making you obsess over your food. It’s hard to tune into your own hunger and fullness cues when an app is telling you that you’ll lose 2 lbs this week if you only eat xyz. Not only is is keeping you stuck in a perpetual cycle of deprivation and obsession, but it’s likely making you feel like you’re broken when you don’t meet the goal it suggests. Sure, there are all sorts of ways you can use the data. It may be useful if you have some sort of chronic illness. But many people have a hard time separating any kind of quantification from restriction. If it’s not medically necessary or paying your bills, stop it.

7. Your FITness Tracking Device

Go ahead. Fight me on this one. Tell me about all the cool features it has. How it tracks your sleep for you. How you find the data it gives you totally neutral. I’m not going to tell you you’re wrong. Maybe you do have a super chill relationship it. Do you really though?? I don’t know. But I do think it’s important to re-examine and re-evaluate our habits every now and then. If you’re letting this little piece of technology dictate how you move your body more than you’re paying attention to how YOU actually feel, you may be doing yourself a disservice.

This is a lot.

If you’re new to this work, you might feel overwhelmed. You might feel the need to send me a strongly worded email about how I’m wrong, and this doesn’t apply to you.

It’s ok. Sit with that.

It’s true. There may be things here that don’t apply to you here. But I have a feeling that if you’re here you probably need a little bit of help feeling confident in your “summer body”. If what you’re doing isn’t working for you, might be worth trying something new right? It’s ok to start small. Build on those wins. Add more when you’re ready. Body acceptance is hard. And you can do hard things. 🙂

Wanna get better at push-ups? Whether you’re trying to get your first one without using your knees, training to beat the entire patriarchy in a push-up contest, or just create better memories around push-ups than 5th grade gym class gave you, this program will help get you there.