Going to the doctor can feel like more than just a chore. It might make your anxiety sky rocket as you face explaining your symptoms and feelings to someone you only see a handful of times a year.  

If you exist in a body that doesn’t ‘fit’ into narrow definitions, like BMI, there might be added anxiety that you won’t be heard by those treating you because they can’t see past your body shape or weight. This is called weight bias in medicine. It is when a practitioner believes they know everything they need to know about you because you are classified as “overweight” or “obese” by their standards. They will often highlight or even pressure you to lose weight as a miracle cure-all to any and all issues.

That is simply not true.

Many people with higher body fat percentages live healthy lives with clean bills of health from blood work to digestion. And you deserve the same treatment from a practitioner that everyone else...

It can be so easy to get obsessed with the numbers on your bathroom scale and hop on/hop off every day or sometimes multiple times a day. You might be telling yourself that it’s “just to check in” but let’s look at your motivation a bit more closely:

If the number on the scale is higher than yesterday, do you have a bad day? End up picking yourself apart and vow to restrict what you eat?

Are you stepping on the scale more than once a day? Do you have set ‘rules’ for when you weigh yourself (for example, must be after using the washroom, must be without clothing, etc.)?

If you find yourself letting the number on the scale dictate your mood and actions, here are four reminders you need to hear. Feel free to print these out to read them when you need to, or even tape them on your bathroom mirror!

1. It is normal for your weight to fluctuate during the day depending on what you’ve had to eat, drink, or if you’ve had a bowel movement. And if...

You might think of emotional eating as something that comes up for you when you have strong feelings like anger, stress, or sadness. These are emotions that are usually easy to identify by your inner dialogue or your outward reactions like tears or yelling. But emotional eating can sneak in with all kinds of feelings.

Ones you may not have thought about is eating when you’re bored or lonely. These reasons for overeating can be challenging to identify because we often do them without any sense of awareness. You’re not feeling overly emotional and yet you find yourself walking the same route to the fridge or pantry thinking it is simply routine.

When you’re bored or lonely, food as a solution to missing a connection makes sense. Your favorite treats feel comforting, plus they are easily available—it never lets you down or doesn’t show up (like you might be feeling about people).

The first thing to do is to find out what kind of connection you’re...

If you are on your therapy journey—in one-on-one sessions, online courses like First Step, or other—we applaud you! It takes a lot of courage to open up and decide to actively work on yourself.

You might be finding that after a session you don’t feel 100%. You may walk away feeling sad, angry, exhausted or anything in between. And we want to reassure you that that is completely normal. It can be emotionally and physically draining to be vulnerable when looking at your behaviours and digging into your past trauma—some even call this feeling “a therapy hangover.”

Here’s how to not let these after appointment feelings stop you from doing this important work. Many clients have shared that there are specific things they do to give themselves comfort.

1. Book your appointment or time for your online course at the end of your work day. This means you don’t have to shift back into a work headspace immediately after, putting back on a...

Today’s blog is a guest post from Marisa over at Le Salon Literary Discussions. She runs a bookish business that offers reading recommendations, monthly online book discussions, and more!

Reading can be such a great way to relax. It can also be educational and help you learn new ideas and see yourself in new ways, which can be invigorating! No matter which you choose, both of these can support a sense of self-care. 

I know it can be challenging to find time to read these days between work, life, TV, and scrolling. If you need a few tips on how to make some time to pick up your book or e-reader, I’ve got some advice that might help. My biggest tip is to make sure you are enjoying what you are reading—and that will look different for everyone. From romance to graphic novels, thrilling mysteries to classic novels. Here are some book recommendations to get you started.

Non-fiction books to support your body and mind:

• Furiously Happy: A Funny Book About...

The summer ‘uniform’ is made up of shorts, tank tops, and sweating! All can make you feel uncomfortable if you struggle with body image. But perhaps the most dreaded of all is the bathing suit. At some point we go from children who love being in the water and playing in the sand without a second thought, to worry-charged and self-conscious adults who will actively avoid situations that require suiting up.

If this sounds like you, you’ll want to bookmark this post to come back to when you’re faced with a bathing suit event. Here are 4 tips to make you feel more comfortable (dare we even say confident!):

• You’ve heard it before but it bears repeating: no one is as concerned about your appearance as you are. We in no way want to discount experiences where someone something commented on your body. No one gets to do that and here’s what you can do if it happens. But we can be our own worst enemy when it comes to criticizing ourselves. Consult someone...

Have you ever noticed that when you wipe down the kitchen you immediately feel a sense of calm? Or maybe you love to light a candle during the cold, dark winter months. These are great examples of how small alterations to your environment can boost your mood in seconds. And we recommend finding more ways to add these things to your every day! It is a great way to tailor your environment, stack the deck if you will, to bring more joy and relaxation into your daily life.

You might think: “I don’t have the budget to upgrade my house!” While of course we’d all love to decorate or renovate our homes to fit our ideal dreams, you don’t have to go all out (and drop a lot of money) to see mental health benefits. You can try:

1. Sparkle and shine. Let’s face it: cleaning the entire house feels overwhelming! Instead, shift your focus and make it your goal to clean only one room in your house. We suggest choosing the one you spend the most time in, so you get...

The following blog posts talks about calorie counting in some detail. If this is something that might bring up negative feelings for you, please skip this post to protect your mental and physical health.

After eating emotionally you might be thinking you need to do a complete 180 and get really strict about what and how you’re going to eat next. A common way to feel in control of your eating is to count your calories. It’s become so easy these days as the diet industry has created apps that are always in the palm of our hands and can even scan labels!

Often clients will be able to white knuckle their way through a few days of eating low calorie only to find themselves binge eating at the first sign of stress, alone time, or even faced with a dinner they can’t ‘log’. And it can feel like being right back where you started after the initial overeating episode.

Very often it feels scary to let go of counting calories, but doing so can bring you back...

You may have seen yourself in our last blog post about body checking. It is the practice of monitoring and critiquing your appearance based on diet industry standards. Our tip there was to catch the negative thoughts in action and try and counter them.

In today’s post we’re going to take it to the next level: once you’ve caught that negative thought, how you can support yourself into creating a positive experience when looking in a mirror (either literally or in the form of comparison with other people’s bodies).

• Find the positive. After identifying the negative thought that came up, you might feel empowered to not only challenge it—saying it isn’t helpful—but to spin it into a positive. For example, instead of picking apart your thighs in the gym mirror, you could remind yourself that your legs just carried you through a workout! Focussing on what your body can do, instead of how it looks, can really start to reframe how you feel about...

It might feel normal to pass by a store window and check out your reflection. But if you’re noticing more than simply adjusting your scarf or hat, you might be falling into body checking.

Body checking is any way you monitor your body’s appearance. This might look like:

• Pinching or pulling at skin to temporarily manipulate how your body looks.
• Examining your stomach in the mirror while trying to “suck in” as much as possible.
• Stepping on the scale often.
• Taking photos of your body constantly, swearing they will be your “before” photos.
• Comparing your body now to one you had as a teenager or to others around you.

You might even notice that these habits become even more frequent when you are stressed, feeling sad, or even just about to go on vacation! The issue with body checking is that you’ll never feel like you are measuring up to whatever you’re hoping for because it is a way of constantly critiquing your body. The diet industry...