Our culture has been profoundly shaped and influenced by the dieting and weight loss world. It can be difficult to tease out truth from falsehood.

There are many lies the weight loss world has spread over the decades, and many women are carrying those lies around with them wherever they go.

Here are 6 lies about your body you might not even know you believe.

1. Your body needs to be fixed: Our culture loves to tell women in all sorts of ways that their bodies are flawed and need to be fixed. Whatever the prevailing beauty standard is of the day rules supreme. If you don’t measure up to that standard, you have your work cut out for you. If you find yourself constantly comparing and measuring yourself up against the beauty standard du jour, chances are you are carrying this belief around in your back pocket.
2. The fat on your body is bad: This toxic belief ties into whatever the current beauty standard is. There have been many times when voluptuous, round and fleshy women were the most coveted and attractive. But in today’s day, fit, toned, low body fat bodies are hailed as the most beautiful. This leaves women hating anything on their body that jiggles or moves when they don’t want it to. It also tries to convince women that if their bodies carry fat (as bodies do), they are somehow bad, inferior, and less worthy. How do you feel about the fat on your body?
3. Food is your enemy: This lie is based in fiction simply because our bodies were created to require food to live. Food isn’t the actual enemy here, but relating to food as foe is. If you are someone who turns to food for comfort, as most of us do, there may be times when eating to self-soothe becomes problematic. It’s easy to then make food the enemy. But even here, food isn’t the enemy. The emotions you are trying to avoid feeling by eating are what need your attention. But food? Food is good. Food is important. Food is necessary and right. Do you ever feel like food is your enemy?
4. You will be happy when…: Women who want to lose weight – any amount of weight – will often think they cannot be truly happy until they lose the weight they want to lose. This also applies to you if you feel like you can’t truly be happy until you fit into your skinny jeans or whatever your current weight loss goal is. Here’s the thing about this belief – it tricks you into believing a magical number on the scale or a specific pant size holds the answer to your happiness. They don’t. YOU do. How many times have you told yourself you’ll be happy when… ?
5. You must be in control: I know many women who have been dieting since they were in their early teens. For 30+ years they’ve skipped meals, counted calories, weighed themselves daily, tracked fat grams and restricted carbs. Why? Because they fear if they aren’t constantly in control of their weight or what and how much food goes into their bodies, they’ll go crazy. With this mindset, weight gain is right around the corner from crazy, as is the downfall of everything else in their lives. It’s as if by “being in control” they can control life itself. Self-control can be a good thing, until it isn’t. Do you ever quietly (or not so) insist on being in control?
6. Your appetite is your enemy: For many women who want to lose weight, hunger and appetite can feel a lot like two adversaries that need to be squelched. Because if you’re not hungry, losing weight is a simpler process. We just want the body to be quiet and acquiesce to our plans. But what are we really doing when we make appetite our nemesis? We are disconnecting from our bodies and our biological needs. We start playing the game of dominance and control. We start trying to win at the small game of weight loss instead of the bigger game of vitality and power.

At the most basic level and underneath all these lies is a snapshot of how women have been taught to relate to themselves.

Instead of enjoying how our bodies help us experience and give life, we’ve learned to believe it’s far better to exert dominance, control, coercion and force upon ourselves.

Most of these messages and beliefs are on autopilot and in the background of our minds. They’re so automatic and have been there for so long, we’ve grown accustomed to them. We’ve normalized them. We think it’s our own voice that is talking, our own mind that is thinking these things.

But it’s not your voice. These aren’t your unique thoughts. They are messages and beliefs that you’ve been mimicking from an outside source.

EVERYONE sold these messages to you. EVERYONE handed you these lies. EVERYONE expected you to believe them and act accordingly.

But you don’t have to.

You get to start questioning the things you currently think and believe about yourself. You get to start removing yourself from the grip of these deceptions. You get to defy the self-hate you’ve been taught was good and right and necessary.

Because you don’t have to do anything that is harmful to the health of your being.

If you’ve been complicit with these lies, it’s not your fault. The shame and torment of women’s bodies has been passed on for generations and generations. It’s a system. It was inescapable – until now.

What you can do is choose something new for yourself today. A new story. A new belief system. A new relationship with you.

You get to start honoring yourself, now. Today.

It’s time.