WHAT WE'RE ABOUT
We are constantly redefining our own perspectives, and therefore tend to write a lot about our personal experiences. Many followers and contributors are living with anorexia, bulimia, body dysmorphic disorder, depression, and a variety of other body image disorders or mental illnesses, so please be respectful and remember that health applies differently to everyone. Any and all potentially triggering content will be prefaced with a trigger warning.
RBI supports all races, genders, classes, and sizes. We try our best to make this a safe space for everyone. If we are not doing our job or checking our privilege, we invite you to please inform us.
Some of the artwork you see here has been created by our founder or moderators, some sourced when applicable. Please be kind enough to source this blog whenever you share it's content.
We are not health professionals. Any and all advice provided on this blog is supported only by our own research, studies, and personal experiences; nothing more.
This blog is part of the Safe Space Network.
Turns out it’s super hard to find recipes for green smoothies without being bombarded with OMG MAGICAL FAERIE GLOW CLEANSE. LOSE WEIGHT. LOOK BETTER. POOP GLITTER.
I just want to mash a bunch of fruit and veg into a delicious drinkable pulp because it’s yummy and it makes me feel good, I DO NOT NEED YOUR “DETOX” CLEANSE BULLSHIT RHETORIC, THANKS.
Why do I feel this sudden urge to try a fucking ‘cleanse’? Why does it sound so appealing to me when I know it will make me insane?
Like, I have owned the fact that I am not a normal person. I can barely feed myself properly day to day without making it more difficult than it needs to be. I can’t afford the expense of a ‘cleanse’ (literally and metaphorically) nor do I think it would even really benefit me in any way at all. I can rationally acknowledge this, at least.
But I see cleanses EVERYWHERE, SO OFTEN - all these thin, glowy-looking, able-bodied, mentally-sound motherfuckers keep preaching on about HOW AMAZING THEY ARE where ever I look. And because my feeds are so inundated, I think the bullshit has finally seeped into my brain.
I’ve got people in my life who dedicate hours and hours of their day to cooking, packing perfect little lunches in bento boxes, going on and on about “natural” and “non-processed” and “organic” everything under the sun.
It must be so simple, right? To do all the right things, eat such virtuously “healthy” foods and nothing else, spending weeks drinking designated shakes and foods to “remove the toxins” in our bodies.
If it’s so easy, then why does even the thought of pursuing it break me?
Will I ever be able to eat something without feeling guilt or shame?
Must our diets be so tied to our morality and sense of worth?
Must it really be so fucking complex?
I appreciate what this artist is trying to do, but a lot of her images focus on weight loss and I find them discouraging. I wish they could be body positive and not reinforce the stereotype that thin, lean bodies are the only healthy/strong/useful/desirable bodies.
Yep. I put the triggering “body positive” fitspo art associated with this post under a link because it’s fucking horrid.
Girl toes the line between “body positivity”, pro-weight loss and fitspo crap on the daily, so people keep reblogging her body-positive-leaning shit and not realizing that a lot of the messaging she puts out into the tumblr community does much more harm than good. I’m so fucking tired of her shit showing up on my dash. I don’t know what her stance is or whether she’s acknowledging this shit because I try to avoid looking at her blog at all costs, but I understand she has a very large following of people and with that comes the responsibility to fucking comprehend why this shit isn’t cool.
seriously, FUCK this shit.
i’m not “seeing results” because my body doesn’t give a fuck.
so i’ve stopped looking for “results” not because i’ve given up, but because it’s fucking common sense.
my body is persistently, unequivocally FAT.
it always has been, and always will be.
no amount of steps i take will change this.
what some perceive as giving up, i perceive as moving the fuck on with my life and accepting my role as a fat and fabulous woman who can eat, sleep, and exercise normally without losing a goddamn pound.
this is part of the thought process i have to go through every time i see a graphic like this, or ones like it that are more damaging - i have to rationalize my own body and existence and way of thinking. i have to reassure myself and remind myself of the past. i have to try very hard not to let my mind shift into a reductionist frame of mind that i’ve tried so hard to break, because it’s not worth it to my health and happiness.
fuck. this. shit. i want to wipe fitspo (and thinspo) off the fucking planet.
END RANT.
Poor self-esteem is a hard thing to dissolve, but so many things contribute to it. It’s so personal, deeply embedded and unique to every individual.
Some women feel they need a man to tell them they’re beautiful before they start to believe it. Some women will go to great lengths to attract that kind of attention and feed the loop, when in truth your confidence remains the same, and in most instances is weakened due to the dependence you have on others to tell you that you’re beautiful.
No one loves their body all the time. My first step toward loving my body came with accepting and owning my defining features, educating myself on how/why women are portrayed the way they are in visual culture, realizing where this self-hatred was coming from and killing it at the source.
I did this by looking at photos of women of similar build and body type to myself. I stopped comparing myself to women in the media. I stopped comparing myself to anyone else, period.
I realized that if I could find beauty in the bodies of women similar to me, what was stopping me from finding that same beauty in myself?
I have days where I dislike my body just like anyone else, but I don’t blame myself. Temporary dislike is natural, intense hatred is fueled by outside factors.
Looking back at some old shit when I first started this blog (circa Jan 2011) and was starting to work out my place and how I felt about myself. I’ve learned so much but this pretty much still sums up how I feel. I’ve just expanded on it. A lot.
I feel like I’m finding beauty in everything around me. My sister grabs her tummy in her hands, frustrated with the wrinkled and loose skin from rapid weight loss, and the first words out of my mouth are “what? that is so lovely!”
“No way, I fucking hate it.”
“But I think it’s beautiful.”
I really truly fucking do find beauty in every single body I see, and I don’t quite know exactly when that started happening, but I know this blog and all of you are driving it.
Not to mention everything else I’ve learned and collected and passed on here has been so invaluable.
It’s been a good time :3
Damn weight loss bullshit interrupting my enjoyment of Sam and Dean’s beer-guzzling reflection scene, GTFO.
4 simple steps
1. chop off your butt
2. throw it in the trash
3. idk
4. destroy the patriarchy
seriously
Damn weight loss bullshit interrupting my enjoyment of Sam and Dean’s beer-guzzling reflection scene, GTFO.
TW: Body shaming, fitspo (yes, it can definitely be a trigger!), anxiety, and weight loss-related discussion.
When I read this article (“Why Fit is the New Thin”) and reblogged it the other week, the damaging possibility of fitspo made sense to me at the time - but as I try super hard to avoid triggering content on the internet, my filters had previously kept most of the damage at bay - until recently.
Sometimes no matter how hard you try to limit and censor your intake of media and visual culture, shit slips through the cracks and smacks you on the nose. And this came out of no where.
I can’t explain why or how, but this sudden increase in fitspo on my Pinterest page has really been making me insane - this illustration particularly triggered so many things for me, so be warned.
[Comic/illustration of straight-sized white girl, crossing her arms and holding a jump rope. To the left of her: “YES I’m trying to lose weight.” To the right of her: “NO I don’t hate my current body.”]
Can someone just explain to me how this is possible? Because obviously someone thinks it’s possible and the logic escapes me.
To me, in my mind, the desire to lose weight directly correlates to body hate in every conceivable way. This is why I can’t bring myself to be more active and am struggling with the physical aspect of my personal wellness. This is why my mind is in constant turmoil about the need or desire to exercise - I can’t stop connecting losing weight and body hate with fitness. I can’t. I start working out and it all floods back, all the hate I used to have for myself, and it fucks everything up.
It’s really scary. Some days it’s different. I can make myself slow down enough to do some yoga and take a walk and focus on the positive aspects of how it makes me feel, but then it takes me 20 minutes to talk myself into stepping off my driveway. My anxiety/depression and my physical health are persistently at odds with one another.
But I digress - if you are making a vested effort into trying to lose weight, then how can you claim to love your body as it is? Aren’t you still trying to attain some other, newer, possibly unattainable kind of beauty ideal? Where did that ideal come from? What is the fucking point? Why does weight loss need to be a goal at all?
To me, the bottom line is this: “Fitspiration is thinspiration, even when it’s dissing skinny girls. It’s not about health — it’s about using “health” and “fit” as code words for beauty standards.”
It’s just as triggering and damaging, especially for those recovering from eating disorders or trying to find their own level of wellness through Health at Every Size.
And for people like me, struggling with mental disabilities and trying to mend broken relationships with physical fitness - this fitspo trend is monumental mind-fuckery.
I won’t tolerate it anymore.
The fat shaming, diet-peddling, fitness bragging, and health policing in social media is hard to escape and filter away. It’s becoming harder and harder as these new trends in viral messaging continue to pop up all over the place. Anyone with Photoshop and a desire to project their opinion has the power to reach you and make you stop in your tracks. Sometimes those messages are empowering, helpful, thoughtful ways of sparking discussion or introducing a new perspective - sometimes those messages are damaging.
Making safe spaces for ourselves on the internet, as people dedicated to body acceptance and diversity, is a constant uphill battle. But it is important, when our minds are ready to go in a million different places, to keep the truth in the forefront of our skulls.
Surround yourself with people, imaging and messaging that empowers you. Divert your eyes when something questionable comes across your path.
Remember that health is attainable and different for everyone. All bodies are good bodies. Love yourself, love your body, and accept change as it comes in any natural form. Reject the desire to conform to the beauty ideals of people other than yourself. Question where your own beauty ideals stem from and consider that they may not be grounded in positivity or healthy thinking.
Own yourself - because at the end of the day, no matter your size, you need to be solid with you and no one else.
Poor self-esteem is a hard thing to dissolve, but so many things contribute to it. It’s so personal, deeply embedded and unique to every individual.
Some women feel they need a man to tell them they’re beautiful before they start to believe it. Some women will go to great lengths to attract that kind of attention and feed the loop, when in truth your confidence remains the same, and in most instances is weakened due to the dependence you have on others to tell you that you’re beautiful.
No one loves their body all the time. My first step toward loving my body came with accepting and owning my defining features, educating myself on how/why women are portrayed the way they are in visual culture, realizing where this self-hatred was coming from and killing it at the source.
I did this by looking at photos of women of similar build and body type to myself. I stopped comparing myself to women in the media. I stopped comparing myself to anyone else, period.
I realized that if I could find beauty in the bodies of women similar to me, what was stopping me from finding that same beauty in myself?
I have days where I dislike my body just like anyone else, but I don’t blame myself. Temporary dislike is natural, intense hatred is fueled by outside factors.