82-How to Coach Internalized Fatphobia

Coaching internalized fatphobia is not as difficult as it may appear. 

Internalized fatphobia, also commonly expressed as fear of gaining weight or fear of fatness, is something most self-identified women are faced with at some point in their life.

This is why many non-diet professional & non-diet coaches struggle with the thought of having to talk about this with their clients let alone help them move through it with coaching.

Coaching internalized fatphobia

Coaching internalized fatphobia becomes a much easier process when you have begun your own journey healing internalized fatphobia in yourself first.

As a non-diet professional & coach, it’s my duty to become great at coaching internalized fatphobia.

Let’s dig into internalized weight stigma aka internalized fear of fatness.

Mentioned in the show:

Non-Diet Coaching Certification

Free Resources 

Transcript:

Undiet Your Coaching Ep82: Coaching internalized fatphobia

Hello my dear colleagues and welcome back to Undiet Your Coaching Podcast. It’s been almost three months since we ended Season 7 and now we’re back with Season 8, which is gonna take us all the way into 2024. So right now, so we have 14 episodes lined up for you.

That’s gonna take us into mid January. And it’s loaded. That said, it’s possible to expand between 14. I’m going to deliver 14. But there could be a couple of bonus episodes as I get moving into the season eight. and we’re going to tackle both sides of our businesses. We’re going to talk about professional skill sets.

We’re going to start with a two part series for the first two episodes, 82 and 83 on The two most frequent topic I held professional true in the non diet coaching certification. And then we’re going to have some guests also in season eight. I brought in I think five or six guests on really interesting question that I was asking myself.

And I thought I would go out there and talk to colleagues and record a conversation I had with them. So that’s coming for you as well. And we’re going to talk about business, more specifically towards the end of the season, as we get ourselves into 2024. Kind of strategic thinking, planning for the new years and how to approach business.

As a non-diet professional. So that’s what’s in front of us. and the podcast will drop every Tuesday every week from now until next year. And I wanted to highlight that the non-diet coaching certification is a go forward for the first six months of 2024. We’re gonna run our. I think it’s our eighth cohort.

So if you want to join us, be sure to jump on the waitlist. The waitlist, the link is on the sales page of the program. It’s also linked in the show note. The reason why I’m highlighting that for you before we even get started is that we have the extended eight month payment plan that’s going to be offered to people on the waitlist So if your name is not on the waitlist and you want to take advantage of that, you’re likely going to miss out. I’m also going to hold consultation in the first week of October, so in two weeks from now or next week, depending on when you’re listening to this. For all of you who have Specific question about your profession, about the current format of your business. Does it fit within the curriculum of the non diet coaching certification?

Are you the right fit for it? All the question you have in these consultation will go out to folks on the waitlist. So get your name on there. If you want to spend 30 minutes with me, one on one, answering all your questions. Okay, let’s get season eight started with a two part series. I didn’t title it series in the title of the episode, but I think it is a series.

it’s my top two most frequent coach topic with my students. Reminder that my students are professionals like you, and coaches, and therapists, and fitness professionals, people who help other people. And there’s two things that I coach over and over again, is how to help our clients.

When they’re experiencing weight gain and also how to help our clients specifically at the beginning of their non diet journey with the fear of gaining weight, the fear of fatness, the internalized fat phobia. And that’s the one we’re going to get started with today. How to help our clients with the fear of gaining weight, the fear of fatness and what is really behind that.

Let’s get started. And what is the best approach for you to help your client with that? And I have to say this, and I’m gonna expand on this as I go through this episode. There’s a distinctive element that makes the process for professional to help other people with internalized fat phobia is their own journey through their fear of gaining weight and their fear of fatness. We all have it. I mean, I don’t want to speak in absolute term, but I’m pretty sure that all of you listening to this have had the fear of weight gain. Or currently are experiencing some degree of fear of weight gain or fear of fatness or discomfort in your own current body.

And your ability, your journey through moving this fear for yourself is what will create ease. And create proficiency, I have to be honest, in helping others. So that’s what we’re going to talk about in the rest of the episode. It’s a training that I did actually. So mypodcast producing team is going to roll in the pre recorded training that I did for one of my program and that I’m sharing with you here on the podcast, because it was one of my most, I gotta say, brilliant moment.

It was very well done. My brain was just really. Deeply focused on the topic, and I wanted to share that training with you because it was profound. So I hope it serves you well. Next week we’re gonna talk about how to help our client with weight gain and the desire to quit working with us because they’re gaining weight. So stay tuned for next week’s episode. I’ll see you then .

The desire to lose weight in my perspective is only but a symptom. It’s a symptom of a dissatisfaction with who we are. It presents itself outwardly into the world as a dissatisfaction for our like physical body and it’s because that’s how we meet. The world, that’s what our socialization and our system and our belief we live in tells us that we can feel better about our life if we are smaller, we wear sexier clothes, we, somebody just commented on my post, but my life is better because I fit in the sexy clothes.

So this person has this perspective on life because that’s what she’s being reflected on everywhere into the world. It’s 100 percent normal that she would want to lose weight because she is being told repeatedly over and over again that if she looks a certain way, she’s going to be able to finally wear the sexy clothes and she will be fine.

appreciated by the world because she wears the clothes, because she’s in a smaller body, her life will be better. And because that person is not, and I’ll talk in the context of self identified women, because This person is not questioning what she’s being told is the solution to her dissatisfaction in the core of who she is.

She’s not questioning what she’s being told is the solution. For sure, she wants to lose weight. Now, how do we deal with that? Because our whole approach is a non diet approach where we don’t sell intentional weight loss. We don’t. For many of us, we don’t coach people towards intentional weight loss. So when people tell us, but I want to lose weight, how do we react?

Do we, and here’s where I see the major like why in the road is the background of the professional. So I’ve kind of categorized that if I can say, I’ll categorize it based on my own journey. Back 7 year plus ago, 7 plus years ago, when I was just coming off of a traditional nutrition practice, I didn’t have the skill sets that I have today and somebody would come into my office and say, But I need to lose weight.

I would get angry. There’s spirit to like convince them that losing weight is a terrible thing, that is not the way true. But I didn’t have the ability. To verbalize another solution or to help them understand another solution. I didn’t understand what it meant at a deeper level. So I didn’t know what to do with those people.

And in a way I was avoiding attracting those people. I was avoiding having conversation about the desire to lose weight because I wasn’t equipped to do it. Because as a nutritionist, I’ll think. Nutritionist, dietician, fitness trainer, who else have I trained? Doctors, anyone that is not from the field of therapy or psychology or even social work, if you’re not from these fields and you are from the field of healthcare, dietician, nutritionist, health coaches, you have not been trained inIn the psychology of human being, you don’t understand the bigger arcing principle of life coaching of the human relationship with themselves.

So when you’re faced with the desire to lose weight, you feel like lost. You’re like, I don’t know how to deal with this. I just know it doesn’t work. So I’m going to keep telling them it doesn’t work, hoping that they will change their mind. And it doesn’t. Just telling someone it doesn’t work is not going to offer them a solution to their deeper problem, which is their relationship to themselves globally.

Being able to unpack why this person has this desire, being able to present it to them in a way that they can see Solving their problem and living the life that they want is from another skill set. That’s from the skill set of Relationship. It’s from the skill set of coaching. It’s from the skill set of Loving yourself and we don’t have the skill set for that and that’s why it’s such a struggle.

That’s why we become Tiny this thing happened. We want to disappear under the table. I’ve coached many times Professionals says I don’t want to work with people who want to lose weight I want them like further along their journey But let me tell you this if we don’t work with those people if we as non diet coaches are not willing to work with people who still want to lose weight or we’re not willing to Help them through this desire.

Who in the hell will? Certainly not the weight loss industry or wellness culture or diet culture. They want people to keep want to lose weight. That’s what they sell. That’s the product they have. So they’re never going to coach someone on understanding their desire to lose weight and really making a consensual choice.

for what is best for them. and here’s the truth of it all. Many, most of us in the health field have been trained by diet culture. So here’s another reason why we don’t have the skill set to coach people through their desire to lose weight. It’s because the training we’ve received is from diet culture or wellness culture, which sells the desire, sells product for the desire to lose weight.

People that are following me that are from the field of therapy, psychology, social work, all these fields, they know what to do with this. They know they’re equipped to ask the bigger question and coach the person towards getting to the bottom of it all and helping them move towards what is really best for them.

that’s where I fill in the gap with my program. I’m going to host a workshop on Friday called How to Coach the Desire to Lose Weight. and the solution that I offer to the desire of losing weight is number one is coaching, right? Getting a new perspective on your desire to lose weight and then body acceptance.

And if the process of body acceptance, if for me, body acceptance. is about evolving your relationship to yourself. It’s about creating a new relationship with yourself. Because really, when you’re working on accepting your body, you’re working on accepting yourself. that’s what you’re working on. We may say it’s body image work, but it’s really about accepting yourself.

And I get it. As I said again a couple times, most of us don’t have the skill set. To coach relationship to self now that’s on us to take responsibility for that and it yeah, it’s totally true It’s a gap in our industry. That’s why I created the non diet coaching certification so we can have a Training platform that gives you the tool to deal with helping people in a non diet approach.

Training that is created to give you the tools to really help people in all the parts that they need help with. And it’s the only program training certification that I know of. That is not rooted in diet culture and wellness culture that is not fatphobic. And if there’s another one, please let me know.

But most of them all, they all have a tincture of wellness culture, diet culture, and fatphobia. So, that’s what I’m going to try to help you with on Friday. I’m going to try to, first of all, help you understand what do people really mean when they say, But I want to lose weight. What is it that they’re really saying?

I’m going to help you understand that at a much bigger picture level, and a much deeper level at the same time. And then, how to communicate that to the person in front of you. How to have that conversation with someone about their desire to lose weight in a respectful, and I want to talk a lot about consent.

How to have this conversation. And this is when you’re thinking about like respect, when you’re talking about ethics, it’s really about creating an environment where people feel safe. So how do you create a conversation with someone? That they will feel safe listening to you knowingly that you’re not expecting them to change their mind.

That you’re not telling them they’re wrong for wanting to lose weight. How to have this conversation with people. How to position, how to talk about what you do in a way that will not make people feel unsafe to be with you. In a way that will, will people want to hear you. That perhaps they’ll even ask questions. They’ll get curious. They’re like, oh, I’ve never heard this before. Tell me more. and this is a great insight for you if you’re currently a practicing non diet professional and you’re having a conversation about The desire to lose weight, and as soon as you start talking to this other person, they back away, they end the conversation, they interrupt you, they change subject, it’s likely because they don’t feel safe.

So how can you talk about what you do without making it about them being wrong? And them being stupid, and them being… Terrible for wanting to lose weight, because let’s just face it, they won’t change by being made wrong. So, have that conversation, and then, and this is 90 minutes, I’m obviously not going to train you to be a body acceptance coach, but what would it look like for you to create a coaching process, That will ultimately lead people to have a different relationship with themselves.

That’s what we’re going to do on Friday. So, highly recommend that you come there. And if it’s not with me you’re learning, that’s totally okay. Whoever you are learning to coach the non diet approach in a way that will truly change people. That will make them better from after working with you, by all means go learn that from someone, but that’s the work we need to do it and I’ve said this many, many times, we are at the beginning of our industry, 20 years from now, we will look back at today and say, Oh my God, how did we do what we were doing?

20 years from now, we will, our approach will be better known. We will have sturdy research based process. Like, it will be like so much easier than it is right now. And there will be a ton of training program and certification out there. that will graduate people in the health field by the thousand with this approach.

Right now, we’re like… at the grassroots level. That’s why, as far as I know, what I do, I’m the only one doing it professionally and training other professionals because this is how grassroots this is. The one thing I know for sure is that women deserve to be trusted. Women’s body deserves to be trusted.

Women have the right to feel safe in their now body. Women deserves the right to choose. And that’s what we do. We give people an option that’s currently not in their perspective. We come to that desire to lose weight to say, It’s totally normal you desire to lose weight, but did you know, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, you can also do this.

You’re there to give people an option. Women deserve the right to an option. And that’s what we do. That’s what our duty is as a non diet professional is to offer the self safe environment for women to know that they have an option. They have choices. They don’t have to go back on the 12th diet in their life. That’s what we do. But I can put that in a post. I would love to hear from you. What do you struggle with when it comes to having the conversation about the desire to lose weight?

I guarantee you, I’ve missed some perspective, I’ve missed an angle, I’ve missed… A point of view, please let me know what you struggle with so I can give you tools for it and resources.