Joni Edelman

You may have seen the acronym "HAES" floating around the Internet, and that is because the "Health At Every Size" movement has taken over THE WHOLE WORLD.

I guess the point of a spiritual awakening is just that; if you were already awake, you wouldn’t need a moment that was self-defining. You’d already be defined.

A weekly trip to Walmart would end in tears — first theirs, then mine. Them pining in the toy aisle. Me saying no. Over and over. It wasn’t so much that I wanted to buy my kids whatever they wanted, it was that I couldn’t.

It doesn’t get any more difficult to insult ourselves, regardless of how old we are. It would be ideal if it got easier to respect ourselves, but it generally doesn’t do that either. Every year you age, and every year the aging you looks at the you of the years before and thinks, I can’t believe I thought I was fat/ugly/etc.

Suffering is America’s favorite thing to do. We starve ourselves to lose weight, and we’re a success story. We don’t sleep, and we’re just getting SO MUCH DONE. We do a thousand things a day and involve our kids in a thousand activities, because somehow, in some perverted way, that makes us successful.

photo credit: Lindy West (instagram), by

At certain points in the month I definitely feel worse about my body. I'm much less confident and more prone to eating the wrong things, and not doing physical exercise.

I said (on TV, to Rachael Ray, so there are a few million witnesses): If you want a bikini body, put a bikini on your body.

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