You Don’t Have to Hate Your Body: The Power of a Health at Every Size Approach
Raise your hand if you’ve hated or still hate your body. I’ve got mine up and I imagine most people do too. Diet culture and valuing people based on their body size and shape is the water we swim in. I’ve experienced the harm of this water, drinking down the hurtful messages as a teen and young adult. I wanted to be loved. I wanted to be desired. I wanted to be in control so I engaged in severe food restriction and over exercising. While there are many reasons people end up in disordered eating patterns, I know one root cause: societal messaging. As a somatic psychotherapist I see its impact on my clients all the time. If you’ve struggled with disordered eating, whether that’s chronic dieting, emotional eating, bingeing, or obsessing over food, you’re sadly not alone. Many people spend years cycling through guilt and shame, believing that healing can only come through weight loss or control. But what if the path to true healing doesn’t require shrinking your body—but expanding your compassion, awareness, and trust in it?
That’s the invitation of the Health at Every Size® (HAES®) approach to body image and working with disordered eating. I’ve found it to be a very helpful framework for folks dealing with disordered eating and body image issues. It takes an accepting view of body size and shape, which is much needed as the harmful waters of societal messaging continue to flood us.
What is Health at Every Size?
Health at Every Size is a weight-inclusive, evidence-based philosophy that supports health behaviors without promoting weight loss. Instead of focusing on the number on the scale, HAES emphasizes:
Respect for body diversity
Compassionate self-care
Intuitive eating and body trust
Joyful movement for self-love
Social justice and access to care for all bodies
In therapy, this means shifting from body control to body connection and learning to listen to your body’s needs, while challenging internalized weight stigma. The goal becomes building a respectful, supportive relationship with food and movement that takes you out of the harmful waters of diet culture.
A Brief History of HAES
The HAES movement has its roots in the fat acceptance and size diversity movements of the 1960s and 70s. Activists and health professionals began challenging the medical community’s overemphasis on weight as the primary indicator of health.
In the early 2000s, Dr. Linda Bacon published research and later co-authored Body Respect, helping to formalize HAES as a clinical and ethical framework. Today, HAES is championed by the Association for Size Diversity and Health (ASDAH) and has been adopted by eating disorder professionals, nutritionists, and therapists who recognize that health is multifaceted and not determined by body size.
Why Is HAES Effective for Disordered Eating?
Disordered eating isn’t just about your relationship to food. It’s about shame, trauma, and a culture that moralizes body size. When we focus exclusively on weight as the problem, we reinforce the very patterns that keep people stuck. HAES is different because it promotes the following values:
Freedom from diet culture: There are no “good” or “bad” foods, just learning what truly nourishes you.
Reduced shame: Your body doesn’t need to be fixed. Our bodily needs change due to lifephase. Learning to accept yourself no matter the phase is healing.
Sustainable care. Behaviors like gentle nutrition and joyful movement feel more doable and less punitive.
Stronger self-trust. You learn to tune into hunger, fullness, and emotional cues without guilt, shame, or fear. This is one way to build more self trust and love.
This approach makes space for deeper, more lasting healing that goes beyond the surface-level promises of dieting or appearance-based change. These values aim to develop ongoing self intimacy that helps you come home to yourself.
What Does HAES Therapy Look Like?
In therapy, HAES-informed work focuses on healing the relationship between mind, body, and behavior (and I would personally add spirit). Some common interventions include:
Body image exploration. Gently unpacking beliefs about weight, appearance, and self-worth that are often rooted in early experiences or trauma.
Psychoeducation. Learning how diet culture, fatphobia, and weight stigma operate and how to unlearn these harmful systems of control.
Mindfulness and somatic practices. Using body-based tools to help reconnect you with hunger, fullness, and emotional needs.
Values-based work. Clarifying what truly matters to you, beyond body image, and helping you live in alignment with those values.
Self-compassion practices. Replacing self-criticism with curiosity, patience, and warmth toward yourself.
Media literacy. Building skills to critically examine body messages from entertainment, social media, advertising, and health narratives.
Boundary-setting. Learning how to protect your healing by setting limits around diet talk, triggering environments, or harmful comments.
These interventions can help you reclaim autonomy over your body, on your own terms. While these interventions are helpful, attuned therapists and disordered eating professionals will make an effort to meet you where you’re at. HAES is a wonderful framework, and yet, even it can become harmful when its interventions and principles aren’t introduced thoughtfully and worked with gently. When I was struggling with my disordered eating issues, I wasn't ready for a framework like this. The therapists who I worked with understood that and met me where I was at in the process. Sometimes folks have to work through the underlying issues that inform disordered eating before HAES can be adopted.
Resources to Support Your HAES Journey
If you are ready to explore this path further, below you’ll find some supportive resources. And if you’re not ready, that’s more than okay. Our relationships with our bodies is an ongoing process. Sometimes we need to explore many options before HAES even makes sense.
Books
Intuitive Eating by Evelyn Tribole and Elyse Resch
Body Respect by Linda Bacon and Lucy Aphramor
The Fck It Diet* by Caroline Dooner
Anti-Diet by Christy Harrison
Podcasts
Food Psych with Christy Harrison
Maintenance Phase with Aubrey Gordon and Michael Hobbes
Reclaiming You with Kara Lydon
Websites
https://asdah.org – Association for Size Diversity and Health
https://www.intuitiveeating.org
Social Media
@thebodyisnotanapology
@thenutritiontea
@bodyimagewithbri
Find Peace vs. A New Diet
Amid the harmful waters of diet culture there are islands of peace. While it can take a while to find your island (or new continent), I’ve seen how coming home to your body and making peace with food opens possibilities. A HAES approach offers a compassionate and sustainable way out of the exhausting loops of disordered eating, moving you towards a life guided by connection, trust, and care. Therapy can support you in unlearning harmful beliefs, reconnecting with your body, and creating a relationship with food and self that’s rooted in respect as opposed to restriction.
If this resonates with you, I’d be honored to walk (or swim in my metaphor) alongside you on your healing journey. Consider reaching out to learn more about how to make HAES your reality.