Summer of Kindness

I love this marketing program by the Butterfly Foundation to encourage kindness to ourselves around food and eating as we go into Christmas and warmer weather. The Butterfly Foundation is an Australian organisation that supports people with eating disorders and body image issues. I have completed their foundational course for health practitioners.

I find this is quite a significant issue in all sorts of clients, although I tend to see the less extreme end of the spectrum, which I simply call disordered eating. However, over 1 million Australians have an eating disorder, so this is a significant mental health issue with often serious health consequences.

Not liking the way our body looks is also so common as to be normal for women in our culture, to the point where it takes up an unhealthy amount of our thinking time and energy. It can also be more of a problem in the warmer months, where people with body image issues can hyper-focus on their body and feelings of shame. 1/3 of women, according to the Butterfly Foundation, avoid wearing a swimsuit in public because of concern about their weight.

At Christmas and during summer holidays, it is normal and natural to eat differently to at other times. People with disordered eating patterns, body dysmorphia, and yoyo dieters, can find this very distressing. They find themselves eating food they might not normally eat, or find themselves binging on foods they then feel guilty about. Christmas is a time for coming together around food, and, traditionally, for feasting. Also, for being around relatives who may notice body changes and make comments.

It can be very triggering for people with body image and eating disorder behaviours, to receive comments about their weight, their body, or the food they are eating. The media focuses on the “summer-ready” body, when most people feel they are dragging themselves over the finish line and are just glad they survived the year. Stress levels are high. Even apparently minor, innocuous comments can reignite intense feelings of body dissatisfaction in many people. This can sometimes trigger extreme self-destructive behaviours which are usually then desperately hidden.

So let’s be kind to each other, and enjoy a summer of kindness. Let’s be aware of how difficult this time of year can be for people with eating disorders, body image dissatisfaction, and even mild disordered eating. And let’s be kind to ourselves, because it’s a rare woman who does not have some level of dissatisfaction around her body.

I do like to work in this area, so if you would like some support, I am here.