In The Rising Podcast- A Health and Wellness Podcast

Learning to Love Your Body: Practical Tips from Emily Lauren Dick- Part 2

June 08, 2021 Bettina M. Brown Season 2 Episode 79
In The Rising Podcast- A Health and Wellness Podcast
Learning to Love Your Body: Practical Tips from Emily Lauren Dick- Part 2
Show Notes Transcript

This is Part 2 of the interview with Emily Lauren Dick, author of
Body Positive: A Guide to Loving Your Body.


 Join me in part two of this interview.

Connect with me, and tell me how your body image affects your day-to-day life.


If you enjoy listening to my podcast, please consider leaving a 5-star review and subscribing. And keep sharing episodes with friends and family and on social media.
 
 




Thank you for your time and interest in this podcast! I invite you to leave a heartfelt review on whichever podcast platform you listen to. It does so much to bring exposure to the podcast and helps lift others up!

To leave a review, helping us spread the contents of this podcast- click on this link! Thank you!

Connect with me!

Website: In the Rising Podcast Website

Email: Bettina@intherising.com

In the Rising Pinterest:

In the Rising Facebook

Check out the Website: Fit after Breast Cancer


[00:00:00] Bettina M Brown: Hello and welcome to In The Rising Podcast. My name is Bettina, and this is the platform that I've chosen to talk about living a life that's really in alignment with your hopes and your dreams, and changing them into realities, making your vision. Something that you get to live every single day and living, not living.

Leaving behind the shame blame game and circling that pathway that leads to nowhere. So I like to also state that I am not a licensed counselor, psychiatrist, psychologist. I am a healthcare professional and a certified life coach, and the opinions I present are my own, but I just want to. Get to the root of what makes us feel that we have value and self-worth and put that out in the world.

And one of the topics that's really important is not just skin deep, but the topic of body image. And last week I had the wonderful opportunity of speaking with Emily, Lauren Dick, the author of Body Positive, A Guide to Loving Your Body. It's a phenomenal interview, and this is part two where we go a little bit deeper into.

What's positive, what's negative, and I play the devil's advocate for just a short while. If you miss last week's, I absolutely recommend you to rewind and start there. All right, let's start. Yes. And so, for the, like for example, I've read that and the supermodels even, you know, Marilyn Monroe, she would be deemed overweight for anything in our modern time, and she was really easy.

Exactly. The epitome of beauty and she was a size 12. 

[00:01:52] Lauren Emily Dick: Yeah, and beauty standards have, have really changed over the years and, and our sizing structure is really changed. I mean, the, there's no size quite, quite the same, even within a same company. So I think it's really important to, to not worry about the size, the numbers, and, and focus on, on what we 

[00:02:14] Bettina M Brown: have in common.

Exactly, exactly. Now Emily, I'm going to ask you a question or kind of pose it that way because I'm going to for just a moment play devil's advocate. Because there are some that will say, well, there is a level of fitness, right? There is a level of health and you cannot see a diabetes, you cannot see hypertension.

But when we are carrying more and more and more weight, and that is also statistically prevalent right now, that we are larger than we have ever been in this country, in the United States for sure. I'm not going to speak of other countries, or at least in more Northern America, more industrialized. What, how do you relate to someone who feels that they're trying to gain health?

But they're looking just at an ideal or think they have to be a size whatever it is, a certain number to have that. But they're also recognizing that carrying certain weight can also lead to other health issues. So, Maybe down the road. 

[00:03:15] Lauren Emily Dick: I think there's a couple things to sort of dismantle all of that is that really first of all, a lot of these studies that are put out there that we receive these statistics about obesity as bad and things like that are actually funded by diet companies.

So there's a bias when, when we're looking at a lot of these stats that we aren't aware of as a society. So that's a really important thing to, to take, to keep in mind. The other thing is that fatphobia is so inherent in our society that its not exempt from the medical profession and, you know, Even doctors can be biased against a fat person just because of the way they look.

There is a level of discrimination that's involved. In, in having, in living a life in a fat body, such as, you know, when you go to the doctor, if a thin person versus a fat person goes to the doctor with issues, the fat person is going to be told by the doctor that it has to do with their weight first and foremost.

Whereas the thin person will get a certain amount of tests instead of them being treated equally, and that's where the discrimination can, can come into effect. The other thing is health is not visible. You cannot recognize health by looking at someone. There are several tests, medical tests that would need to happen to really see what level of health someone is at if they need some help or some medical intervention or suggestions along the way.

There are a lot of dieticians out there that promote health at every size. So my recommendation would be to first see someone like that or simultaneously see someone that is a, a practitioner of that in dealing with, you know, maybe some health issues. The other thing is that Some people face barriers to health and, and that could be having health issues that aren't necessarily related to weight.

It could be a disability, it could be dealing with a, an illness. So it's really important to remember that our value and our worth does not have anything to do with our health, and we need to separate those two things. Especially when it comes to, when we speak of health. There's also mental health, right?

So mental health does not discriminate.

[00:05:36] Bettina M Brown: Right. And I really like the point that you said our worth is not dependent on what we look like because that's all what my podcast is about. Self-worth recognizing you have value just because you exist, you don't have to achieve something for anyone.

Right? And so that is really important to hone in on the fact that. Your, your health is a complete thing. It is not just physical. Absolutely. And when you carry emotional, like when you're, some people, when they're very emotional and, and having stressors, they will either not eat or overeat. You know, the problem wasn't the food, the problem was the stress and yes.

Situation. So being able to isolate that and look at other factors, not just the food and the weight itself is what you're saying. 

[00:06:24] Lauren Emily Dick: Yeah, it's really listening to your body and, and recognizing that you know, you're not feeling fat. You know, you, you might be feeling I. Uncomfortable in your body because you haven't drank enough water or you're bloated, or your hormones are doing something.

You know, like there's so many things and we really have to listen and dismantle the things that we're actually feeling physically and separate them from what we're feeling emotionally sometimes. 

[00:06:55] Bettina M Brown: I like that. I do, I do. I like how you phrase that, to separate that out and not discriminate against ourselves.

Right? There's a whole world that's trying to do that. We don't have to start ourselves. Absolutely. And so as we're kind of ending this interview, I wanted to ask you this because when we are passionate about something and from the book, you can just feel the passion emanating through your entire project.

And you know that this was, this took some time, but how have your own experiences shaped you to the place where you are today, where this became something very important for you to produce for the world? 

[00:07:31] Lauren Emily Dick: Yeah, I mean, I struggled with negative body image my whole life. I never developed a, a full-blown eating disorder, but I dieted, I've done all kinds of things over the years and when I went to university and studied sociology and women's studies, I really learned about the systems at play, these social systems that keep us in these little boxes and I.

Just had this profound like aha moment, and I wanted to make this information accessible to everyone, especially young girls, because that is when I could have used that information the most and I wanted to simplify it in a way that. That made it easy to understand and, and make you feel a little bit better about why you're having those negative thoughts and sort of, you know, put you in the right direction to take a path towards maybe more self-acceptance and, and improving the way you feel about yourself.

[00:08:29] Bettina M Brown: That's, yeah. And that you're right, there's a time when you could have used this information yourself and it's like you're giving this to all the people that were in that place where you were so that you could, and they have that opportunity to know it's okay to accept who they are right now. 

[00:08:46] Lauren Emily Dick: Exactly.

We're going to change the world, you know, one step at a time.

[00:08:51] Bettina M Brown: Exactly. I like that. Are there any other projects, Emily, that you're working on that you wanted to You know, put some points out there, what you're doing. 

[00:08:59] Lauren Emily Dick: Absolutely. So, I'm actually working on a body positive book for very young children because these image, these body image issues are happening earlier, early and early on.

And also I've just joined an organization called Live Life Unfiltered, and we're getting ready to launch a new campaign called Show Me Unfiltered. And it's really all about creating a world that is a lot less filtered. So, Those are the, the next things on the books. 

[00:09:29] Bettina M Brown: You sounds like you're very busy and you're doing really wonderful things.

I'm really excited about all you're doing and all the people. One step at a time, one person at a time, because every person that you interact with has the ability to, you know, affect other people around them. So that one person here and there makes such a big difference. 

[00:09:49] Lauren Emily Dick: Oh, I agree. 

[00:09:51] Bettina M Brown: Absolutely.

Wonderful, wonderful. Well, I truly have enjoyed this time with you. Thank you so much for spending it with me and my listeners and I'm going to put a link about your book, where to get it and I absolutely recommend it and I think this is something healthy for children. Young women, older women, anytime.

You can always change your mindset and I think you have so much to really offer and I'm glad that you took the courage and all the women in this book took the courage to, you know, voice what was on their mind. 

[00:10:24] Lauren Emily Dick: Absolutely. Thank you so much. I appreciate 

[00:10:27] Bettina M Brown: that. Absolutely. Well, you have a wonderful day. 

So, in line with what I say every, every podcast show is that if this is something that interests you or you can tell this will be beneficial, go ahead and share, leave a review. It does so much to help promote the podcast and put this in the ears of those that can really make a difference for.

And until next time, let's keep building one another up!