📚Body Trust Book Club: Week 6

This week: Feb 16–22 | Chapters 8 & 9

This is one of those weeks that asks us to slow down a little. The kind of reading that benefits from pauses, deep breaths, and maybe a warm drink nearby. “I need to pause and sip my coffee” energy. ☕🌿 Let’s go.

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🌲 Chapter 8: Entering the Wilderness

I had a genuine chuckle at this line:

“Attunement is something you may not think about in your everyday life…”

…unless you’re me. Or a therapist. Or someone who overthinks their internal experience for a living 😅

What are your thoughts if you pause to think about this statement:

“We are conditioned, over time, to objectify our body (hello body checking behaviours)” (p202)

If you pause with that for a moment —any thoughts or feelings emerge related to this statement? 

The chapter also introduces the term “subjective immersion,” which Niva Piran defines as:

“Expressions of protest, resistance and defiance towards ‘normative’ pressures to adopt an external gaze and alter it [the body] to abide by appearance or other objectifying expectations” (p203)

Does this feel like a lot of academic language? Or can you feel how it might translate into daily life — how it feels to live, move, and exist in your body without constantly monitoring it from the outside?

🌱 Ways to Gently Build Body Trust (p206–211)

The book offers a list of gentle, non-performative (though also not simple or easy!) yet also powerful ways to begin or continue to explore body trust:

• Spend time in nature 🌿

• Reduce body checking behaviours

• Get acquainted with your body through gentle touch

• Start a body gratitude practice

• Explore gentle forms of movement

• Return to ritual and routine

• Consider working with a hunger scale

  • ⚠️ Caution: this will not be appropriate if eating disorder or disordered eating symptoms are high. Most people need support with mechanical eating first before integrating tools like hunger scales.

• Get support

• Explore your body story

• Write letters

• Ask for accommodations

• 
  

If you’re reading this with a friend or colleague, I encourage you to look at this list together and pick one or two things — that’s it. No gold stars for doing more.

For example: I recently wrote an email and sent an Instagram message to Lululemon about their increasing lack of size inclusivity. As the chapter suggests, you could write a letter every day to a different company… or just one. That's one way to action an item off the above list. Where does it feel best to start for you? & what will help you actually experiment with one thing off the above list?

And I love this reminder:

“The ability to move through your resistance and keep showing up to this work to increase access to your inner world is where the healing happens” (p212)

Heck yes. 👏👏👏

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🍓 Chapter 9: Allowing for Pleasure and Satisfaction

Strong quasi opening sentence, immediately bookmarked:

“Body trust work is a process of reclaiming our bodies after internalizing diet culture and oppressive ideals about our bodies, which further distances us from ourselves as we hustle for the perfect body” (p217)

This chapter does a great job clarifying the difference between hunger and appetite — in case you skimmed or want the refresher:

• Hunger: “I need food”

• Appetite: “What do I want? What sounds good?”

• 
  

Were you already familiar with this distinction, or did this land in a new way?

Also, let’s keep this on blast:

“The toxic masculinity and whiteness that informs nutrition restraint is infuriating: no feelings, follow the rules, you can't be trusted, intuition and desire are dangerous ways of knowing compared to science and numbers. Bullshit.” (p221)

YES. Thank you. No notes. Agreed. Infuriating.

I also appreciated the section on emotional eating — worth a re-read or a targeted skim if you’re short on time: pages 221–223.

This line also feels especially important to emphasize:

“If you have dieted, restricted, and restrained your eating throughout your life, we guess that what you believe is enough food might not be enough for your body” (p222)

And this one — tender and honest:

“We do not believe that pleasure will make you out of control and frankly, if it does for a while, that's what may be needed” (p223)

This feels true not just for food, but for feelings, rest, joy, boundaries, and desire. What’s your reaction here — agreement, worry, resistance, curiosity?

Finally, a crucial distinction/gem about pleasure:

“When we talk about pleasure we are talking about all in, go for it, no guilt, who is watching anyways, YOLO, pleasure for the sake of pleasure. We are not talking about experiencing pleasure but feeling guilty the whole time” (p225)

Read that again. And again. 🔁

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💛 Wrapping This Week Up

This was a another full week — conceptually, emotionally, and energetically.

If you’re feeling stretched, tender, or like you need a pause before moving on, that makes a lot of sense. This work asks us to slow down, listen inward, and let pleasure and trust back in — which is no small thing.

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⏭️ Coming Up (Home Stretch!)

Week 7: Feb 23–Mar 1📖 Chapters 10, 11 & 12 — the end! 🎉

Read what you can.

Take what resonates, leave the rest, and come back when you’re ready — coffee optional, kindness required. ☕💛

Let the ideas land in their own time.

Please give yourself permission to work with a therapist (like me 😉 ) if or when you feel stuck translating these ideas and suggested strategies into real life.

I'm rooting for you 🤟

Talk soon 💫