Seeing Your Body as a person, not an object

Wellness Wisdom

Holly is a Certified Master Level Coach through Health Coach Institute and helps highly driven women build resilience to toxic beauty and diet messages. She uses an intuitive and spiritual approach that guides her clients towards self trust, confidence and Sovereignty over their entire being; body, mind and soul. From this place, her clients are able to make self guided decisions and finally live the life they desire in the body they live in today.
In this episode Holly shares her personal journey with her body image beginning with dieting at the age of 8 years old to try to change her body. Holly talks about cultural messages that condition us as women with a message that you need to "stay pretty, stay conventionally attractive, stay small." The 70 billion dollar beauty industry promotes women being dissatisfied with their looks. Holly shares how she chose a career in fashion a highly "image centered" industry and found herself struggling with disordered eating and dissatisfaction with her body that led to digestive issues, hair loss, and anxiety.
Holly describes her obsession with eating healthy and struggling with orthorexia and constant worries and fears about what she ate. She talks about how it influenced her quality of life, relationships, and mood.
Holly loves to help people transform beliefs and teaches her clients "Intuitive Eating" which focuses on a healthy sustainable relationship with food. Holly shares how she helps women see their bodies as a "person" and treating it as a friend and rejecting cultural messages of being "not enough."
Holly believes if we get out of the way of our body (stop trying to manipulate and change it) the body can self-regulate weight and health. Our body is our greatest teacher, our partner instead of our enemy. Holly began identifying her body as a person and felt less "hate" for her body. Holly helps her clients personify their body and honor it, naming the body, and exploring where body dissatisfaction comes from. She says hating our bodies is about conditioning and culture. We have been literally fed (pun intended) a system of beliefs (diet culture) that values weight, size, and physical characteristics above health and wellness. Holly shares her 4 part framework for loving the body we are in from 1) awareness 2) nourishment 3) resilience 4) sovereignty/freedom.
It is possible to make peace with food and accept your body just as it is. Find community, support, and education through as Holly calls it a "homecoming" to who you truly are.
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/holly_toronto_coaching/
Facebook Group: https://www.facebook.com/groups/143221746427796/
Website: http://www.loveyourbodyhc.com/homecoming.html
Books:
Fearing The Black Body by Dr. Sabrina Strings
Intuitive Eating by Evelyn Tribole & Elyse Resch
Health At Every Size by Lindo Bacon
Body Respect by Lindo Bacon & Lucy Aphramor