Forgive me for the things I said while I was dieting

Forgive me for the things I said while I was dieting.

I said so many things. I spent the last two decades of my life dieting in some form or another, so I have a lot to atone for. And in the last few years this took a turn towards the extreme with my foray into online health and fitness coaching. I have a lot to be sorry for, especially from that.

So here I am, with a humble heart and my hat in hand, apologizing.

I want you to know what I know now —  nearly everything I said was spoken from a place a fear and born out of lies that I believed.

I hope you can understand how much I was struggling back then and how badly I needed those lies to be true. I wasn’t trying to mislead you. I was actually trying to help, but I was really doing damage. I see that now.

Forgive me if I made you believe the lie that you need to change to be good enough.

Forgive me if I made you believe the lie that there is a “right” and a “wrong” way to eat.

Forgive me if I made you believe the lie that thin equals happy.

Forgive me if I made you believe the lie that certain types of food are “good” and other types of food are “bad.”

Forgive me if I made you believe the lie that you can’t be trusted around food.

Forgive me if I made you believe the lie that you needed color-coded containers to tell you how much to eat.

Forgive me if I made you believe the lie that movement has to look a certain way or be 30 minutes long to “count” as exercise.

Forgive me for showing you countless sweaty selfies.

Forgive me if my constant hustling for worthiness made you think you needed to hustle too.

Please forgive me if I ever asked you to get on board with my latest diet and workout craze.

I no longer believe those lies and I am sorry if anything I said caused you to believe them too. I am here to tell you that I will no longer be perpetuating the lies of diet culture. It is my hope that I can speak some truth into that space and reclaim it both for myself and for those I have misled. 

The truth is your weight is not your worth.

The truth is  you are beautiful, valuable and worthy of love exactly as you are in this moment.

The truth is health looks different for every body, there is no one-size-fits-all approach.

The truth is, it’s not always what you do that matters most, but how you do it and why you do it.

The truth is we hurt ourselves when the motivation behind our decisions is fear rather than love.

So please forgive me for the things I said while I was dieting. I promise to speak from love not fear from here on out.