the Shira Rose

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Body Positive

So… You Overate During The Holidays – Now What?

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I’ve gotten quite a few messages from you guys sharing that you feel anxiety about overeating during the holidays and have been tempted to cut back this week to compensate.

First of all, take a deep breath and have some compassion for yourself please! Sukkot is 9 days long and challenging for so many people. Holidays can be hard whether you struggle with disordered eating/eating disorders or not. It’s a lot of family time, a lot of sitting around at hours long meals – so please try and be gentle with yourself.

Now, let’s talk about what cutting back over the next few days would look like. Because the thing is, dieting/restricting/cutting back pretty much guarantees that you’ll feel SO much more out of control when the second round of big holiday meals start up again. Because you’re going to be hungry AF and allllll the foods you didn’t let yourself have all week will be in front of you again. And what happens? You feel completely out of control around those foods and think you have no self control.

overeating during the holidays

Naaaaa- the reality is that when you (more…)

My PCOS Story and What I’ve Found To Work

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I never ever thought I’d be publicly disclosing that I have PCOS. When Julie Duffy Dillon first reached out and asked if I’d come on her podcast to talk about my experience with PCOS, my first reaction was heck no! Being that I have a presence online and the fact that I work as a psychotherapist, I just prefer to keep my personal life as private as I can.  But that same night I was looking up PCOS hashtags on instagram and the very first hashtag was #pcosweightloss. I knew right then and there that I needed to go on Julie’s podcast because I want others to know that dieting does not (and should not) be the way to manage your PCOS. Check out the podcast episode here.

colorful sweater

When I was diagnosed with PCOS, of course I immediately googled all the best treatment options… as one does. 🙂 And all I saw over and over again were recommendations to (more…)

This is Why I Don’t Praise Weight Loss

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Let me start off by saying that I genuinely love giving people compliments. I love spreading kindness and when it comes to compliments, I don’t hold back. With that being said, I will not compliment someone’s weight loss and I don’t think you should either for the following reasons.

Complimenting weight loss reinforces the myth that being smaller is considered better.

It also places the value of who you are as a human being on your body size. I would hope that we wouldn’t define ourselves by the dress size we wear but instead by who we are as people and how we choose to live our lives.

We live in a world where we’re constantly told that being fat is the worst thing you can be. Like it’s some sort of plague- oh wait, it is! It’s an actual epidemic. We’re telling fat people they need to be eradicated and that’s a huge problem considering we come in a variety of shapes and sizes and fat people are not going anywhere. I will not participate in reinforcing the idea that you are now more worthy of acceptance and love because you shrunk a few sizes.

Someone’s weight loss can be from a sickness, severe stress, or an eating disorder.

I have two recent examples that happened in my life. I posted a picture of my grandmother and I at my cousin’s wedding. Someone sent me a message saying that they were jealous of my grandmother’s shrinking waist line. Well, the truth is my grandmother recently lost too much weight and could not eat because my grandfather has been in a coma for the last few months.

The other example is a friend of mine who recently relapsed with anorexia. She went from being considered chubby or fat to a more average weight and of course no one suspects an eating disorder in people in higher weight bodies. Well, every time she gets a compliment from an acquaintance telling her to keep it up, etc, it’s reinforcing her eating disorder behaviors. She’s being praised for starving herself and no one knows!

eating disorder

The problem is that people suffer from eating disorders in ALL body sizes so you truly cannot tell when someone is suffering. My friend does not need praise for starving and purging the little she does eat.

You never know why someone lost weight so it’s better not to comment on it.

And lastly, research shows that almost everyone (around 95%!) who diets will regain the weight back within a few years – sometimes ending up at an even higher weight than before the diet. I wouldn’t want to compliment someone’s weight loss and contribute to them feeling badly later on when they likely gain it back.

Here are examples of compliments you can give that are NOT body or weight related:

You’re intelligent.

You matter a lot to me.

I love your creativity.

You have amazing taste in —-.

You are so kindhearted.

I wish more people were like you.

I wrote this post originally for NEDA blog here. Read more about my thoughts on dieting here and why the term “clean eating” is dangerous AF here.

2 Major Tips On How To Get A Beach Body

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I’m a huge fan of Escapa Living (remember this adorable colorful tassel dress?) and I’m excited to partner with them today to share this off the shoulder tassel dress I’ve been loving. The vibrant print is giving me life and making me so impatient for summer! Escapada Living also recently expanded their sizing to include plus sizes 0-3x which makes me even happier to be able to partner with them today. Now… let’s talk about about how to get a beach body.
escapada living

I hope you’re paying close attention because there are two important steps for (more…)