Dani Bryant, MHC

If you are on a journey to find a new sense of freedom and body liberation, you may be looking for a starting place or a road map. 

If you are ready to explore body liberation and to begin your journey off on an open, welcoming, inclusive path, I encourage you to start with Health at Every Size® (HAES®). 

HAES is an approach to health which is holistic and rooted in principles and values which honor the worth of all bodies. HAES is a lens in which to view ourselves and others. HAES is a community of advocates, teachers and clinicians ready to stand shoulder to shoulder to fight diet culture and the damage done making us believe we were meant to stay small and not to take up space.

Let’s dig in more about the components of HAES and why they are essential in one's body image journey. 

Below are the tenets of the Health at Every Size Approach which have been adapted  from Body Respect: What Conventional Health Books Leave out, Get Wrong and Just Plain Fail to Understand about Weight, by Lindo Bacon, PhD, and Lucy Aphramor, PhD, RD.

Respect

• Celebrates body diversity;

• Honors differences in size, age, race, ethnicity, gender, dis/ability, sexual orientation, religion, class, and other human attributes.

Critical Awareness

• Challenges scientific and cultural assumptions;

• Values body knowledge and lived experiences.

Compassionate Self-care

• Finding the joy in moving one’s body and being physically active;

• Eating in a flexible and attuned manner that values pleasure and honors internal cues of hunger, satiety, and appetite, while respecting the social conditions that frame eating options.”
  

At its core HAES advocates for “health” (whatever that means to YOU) on your own terms. It promotes advocacy and autonomy to work towards new health focused behaviors (again whatever this means to YOU).

A common misconception is that the movement is “Healthy at Every Size.” This is a misreading and the true intention of HAES is to amplify the idea that folks of every size can pursue healthy behaviors and that all bodies are worthy of respect and weight-inclusive care. Care that allows people to work on improving their mental, physical and emotional health.

Health at Every Size® can be a roadmap to body acceptance and liberation. I encourage you to explore and seek out the support from this loving community. I also encourage you to use these HAES registries to find a therapist who is a HAES provider. Those resources can be found here and here.

If you are ready to dig in deeper to Health at Every Size®, I recommend that you explore the scientific research all about HAES which can be found on the website for the Association for Size Diversity and Health.