Guest Article
Suzanne Carver is a writer, group facilitator, and trauma survivor passionate about helping others reconnect with their truest selves. Her journey of self-discovery involves peeling back layers of conditioning, unhealed trauma, and societal expectations to uncover the light within. Rooted in compassion and resilience, Suzanne is dedicated to the imperfect process of liberation—seeking freedom, fulfillment, and authenticity. She envisions a world where everyone embraces their unique gifts and lives fully awake and alive. Check out her website HERE.
I look in the mirror and spontaneously smile at my body. You are mine, I think, and I love you.
The first thousand times this happened, I was shocked. The way one might be waking up in a palace after spending their life in a tar paper shack.
I used to hate my body. Now I love it.
As you might imagine, there is a story in there.
The Cost of Control
One day, I sat beside two women in Starbucks griping about their bodies. They did not discuss their dreams or triumphs; they lamented all that was wrong with their bodies and their eating.
I wanted to weep. They showed me what I had not seen in myself: the amount of energy I spent obsessing about food and my body. The amount of life I wasn’t living. The vast parts of myself
that had gone dormant.
Fear around food and my body size were the drumbeat of my life, pounding down every beautiful moment, hammering flat my authentic self. And I believed this fear was good, that without it I would be swallowed by my lawless appetite and lose control of my weight.
And everywhere I turned, I saw proof that this was “true.” Nearly every woman I knew was locked in a daily struggle for control over their bodies.
It’s an unwinnable game – every meal mired by either guilt or deprivation, every period of control followed by a wildfire rebellion. All of it proof I could not trust myself or my body.
Then came a gift, the disguised kind that seem like the end of the world but is the path to everything you want. My suffering hit a tipping point and for the first time I wanted to be free more than I wanted to be thin.
I was in that beautiful, terrifying moment when the old way dies but the new way isn’t yet born.
It’s where possibility lives.
I Stopped Trying to Lose Weight
I was walking in the woods when the idea came. What if I stopped trying to lose weight?
A month was all I could handle. For thirty days, I would let go of all attempts to change my body and see what happened.
The relief I felt astonished me, as though I hadn’t realized the heft of the rock in my hands until I set it down. I felt deeply peaceful, more creative and more joyful. I felt light.
So I did another month and then another. My mind began to quiet, and my body began to speak.
What if it was body acceptance, not thinness, that was the key to my happiness? What if it wasn’t weight I needed to lose but shame?
What if I could define the truth about my body for myself?
The Truth About Hunger
There is no part of this process that was perfect or instantaneous. I got triggered often. I slid back. I doubted myself. I felt like I was making up the rules, living in a delusion of self-permission, and someone was going to along and say you can’t do that.
But I wanted a new reality with my body, and no one was going to give it to me; I had to create it for myself.
So I kept going.
Yoga, breathwork, embodied movement, Intuitive Eating and scripting were my tools.
I practiced living inside my body instead of just viewing it from the outside. I listened to what my body was saying. I ignored all talk of trendy fitness or diet crazes. I bought myself clothes that fit comfortably. I scripted the new narrative I wanted. I decided I was worth this kind of devotion.
And as I started eating according to my body’s signals instead of for emotional regulation, I realized I had misunderstood this decades-long war.
The fight wasn’t with body, it was with my hunger.
I was hungry for something food and thinness could never satiate. What I hungered for, what I had always hungered for, was myself. For my real self, the self that was buried under shame and conditioning.
Food and body obsession weren’t the problem. They were the symptoms. The real problem was my alienation from myself.
Transformation
Understanding the root of my hunger blew body love wide open for me. As I started to feed myself what I truly hungered for – self-connection – I could finally see how I was overfeeding myself.
Slowly, I began to transform – first in my mind and then in my behavior.
I used to choose food based on calories, points or fat content. Now I choose based on desire.
I used to fear I would eat everything. Now I’m “allowed” to eat everything, and I no longer want to.
I used to eat chocolate cake, be riddled with shame and eat seconds. Now I eat chocolate cake, feel pleasure and leave some on the plate.
I used to distrust myself with food. Now I only trust myself to know what is best for me to eat and in what amounts.
I used to decide my worth based on how “good” I was with food. Now eating is just eating and I know I am always worthy.
I used to inhale food, hide it, sneak it. Now I eat slowly and in full view of others.
I used to exercise to counteract what I’d eaten or was going to eat. Now I exercise to enjoy and express my body.
I used to get security from adhering to food rules. Now my security comes from a deep connection to myself.
I used to avoid mirrors to prevent triggering body judgement and shame. Now I seek out mirrors so I can tell my reflection, “I love you.”
Body Love is Our Birthright
Loving my body when it carried extra weight wasn’t easy. And yet loving it then, instead of when it was socially idealized, was where I found my power.
Self-love hasn’t just transformed my relationship to my body but the actual energy of my body.
My tissues, organs and nervous system have responded to this infusion of love. A year of body love has undone decades of body hatred.
Giving up trying to lose weight can be a tough sell. It can feel like denial of your desire or even a misalignment with your body and its preferences as a biological being.
For me it wasn’t the desire for weight loss that needed suspending – I was actually carrying extra weight that didn’t feel great on my body – but the shame-based actions to create the change that needed to stop.
This is how we create what I call our authentic body or our body at its most natural, free state.
When my desire to live authentically in my body became greater than my desire to be thin, it was like my body sighed in relief. Only then, gently and slowly, did my body start releasing the weight it no longer needed to carry.
The entire time I rejected my body, this love was waiting for me just under my surface. It’s a love bigger than I could imagine and it’s inside all of us.
Our bodies are our own. They are our homes, our playgrounds, our sensory interpreters of the world. We are designed to love and care for them. We can trust ourselves. We can attend to our real hunger and free our bodies from the relentless pressure to be different. We are powerful enough to choose our narrative about our bodies and food.
Our bodies are calling us home. It’s time to ignore everyone who lied to us about our bodies and discover the radiant wonder awaiting us right here.
Read more from author Suzanne Carver at her website: https://www.thetrueyoublog.net/
If you are ready to start truly loving your body and feeling the lightness of freedom, join us for Alignment First Radiant Health – starting January 1st 2025.
