Irish Blessings
A new offer + A few things of late
“May all that is unforgiven in you be released.
May your fears yield their deepest tranquilities.
May all that is unlived in you blossom into a future full of love.”
– John O’Donohue
It that time of year when I no longer know how to dress myself, for the weather. It is either still cold or mild, and I have either too many layers and the sweat dripping off me, or I’m finding myself cold because I braved it and left my scarf at home… Somehow I can’t seem to get it right. It will be like this at least until May.
Today we celebrate St Patrick’s Day here, which perhaps needs no introduction, but the 17th of March feels like the turning point where Winter is truly about to let go of its final grip. Maybe it is because the days are much longer now, and if the sun is out you can actually feel the warmth on your skin now, that this is when I personally feel like Spring has arrived.
It will be cold here for another few months yet, still, winter is now behind and a new season is upon us.
This week’s newsletter is a round up of a few interesting articles that I came across recently and that I thought would be worth sharing, especially as they were thought-provoking in their own right. Before I point you in that direction though, I want to see if there is any interest from you to join an 8 week ‘Reclaiming Body Trust’ group program?
I ran this back in the beginning of 2023 and it was a really nourishing experiencing. So if there is enough interest I will run it again, starting the end of April.
Reclaiming Body Trust
8 Wednesday evenings (7.30pm Irish Time) - Online via Zoom
This group programme is for you if you:
Are you stuck in diet rock bottom and looking for where to go next?
Are you curious about intuitive eating but struggling to get going on your own?
Would you like the support of likeminded people as you are navigating finding peace with food, eating and your body?
Body Trust is the missing link when we are moving away from dieting and obsession with food and weight. towards food freedom and body liberation.
The relationship with our bodies is complicated and many things can disrupt it, from an early age but we can reclaim it.
In this 8 Week Online Programme I will facilitate you and the group through:
Wk 1 Your Body Story and body trust as your birth right
Wk 2 Moving away from Diet Culture
Wk 3 Non Diet Nutrition and eating for nourishment
Wk 4 What has grief got to do with it?
Wk 5 Allowing for Pleasure and Satisfaction
Wk 6 Reclaiming Movement
Wk 7 Deepening your Body trust roots and widening the healing
This programme will help you understand why your body trust got disrupted in the first place and how you can reclaim it so that you can find our way to a path free from rigid thinking about health, weight, bodies and nourishment.
It will allow for a deep dive into how the culture we swim in has a major impact on how we feel about our bodies, and help us move from seeing our bodies as an object instead of the home they are.
If you are ready to try something different instead of just trying harder I invite you to come and join me, along with others, for this adventure!
It is my sincere desire that you will leave feeling more connected and at home in your body at the end of it, and that your mind, time and energy is freed up to explore all your heart’s longings instead of being hijacked by food and weight obsession.
We will use the book Reclaiming Body Trust as our container to take us though the weeks, so if you don’t have this book already, you will need to purchase it before we start.
Places are limited to 6 only, to keep the group small and intimate. We need 3 people to go ahead with the group.
We start Wed 30th April.
Investment: €250 for the full programme.
Interested? Reply to this email and let me know! Or email me linn@straightforwardnutrition.com
Or if you’re ready to sign up use the button below ⬇️⬇️⬇️
Now on to some articles that caught me interests of late and that may be of interest to you too.
I first came across the work of Tara McMullins work and Newsletter What Works, on Substack and I appreciate her skills of bringing together topics and themes, exploring how they intersect culturally and, in our everyday lives.
In this most recent essay called Standardize Me she explore how standardizing has not only been the path to mass produce goods, but also that this process overtime, now when transferred into the technosphere through data sharing is “standardizing” all of us.
There is also a part of this essay that speaks to the standardizing of clothing and how less than 100 years ago, the clothes were made to fit your body and not the other way around. Something that bears repeating. That section reminded me of a podcast episode that speaks about the standardizing of jeans sizes in particular, which one of my clients shared with me a few years back. You can listen to that podcast here.
Another article that caught my attention and really got me thinking was
latest essay on ‘Feeling Fat vs being fat’.
There’s so much on this topic and along side her thoughts and experiences, it made me think about the very common and probably familiar experience of looking back at old photos remembering how you “felt fat” at that time but possibly being in a smaller body than your current one. “feeling fat” often has nothing to do with fatness itself. In my experience when people use that language what they mean is that they feel discomfort of some kind. It may be feeling bloated, or overly full, or the body is stiff or clothes are tight (causing discomfort). “feeling fat” tends to be a momentarliy sensory experience, that does not come with the weight stigma, anti-fat biases and stereotyping that is leveraged at people in bigger bodies all the time.
Because “feeling fat” is a sensory experience, I have also had the privilege to hear from some of my client in bigger bodies that when they feel good in their bodies the feel, well good. Not “fat” in that “feeling fat - sensory way”. Even though they still live in a body that may very well be / often has been subjected to the discrimination of living in a larger body, in a society that deems that as a personal failure.
I do think we need to get better at naming what it is that we are actually feeling when we use the shorthand of “feeling fat”, because that may reveal a whole lot more nuance.
The final article that caught my attention was the one below from
via and the headline alone made me feel very seen.As someone now in my mid 40s, with no pension plan savings in place, and a world that feels like it is constantly on fire, I have been having similar thoughts. If you are feeling something similar, have a read!
Have a lovely week,
Love the work you're doing here, Linn. The outline for this course looks so so good, spot on for reclaiming trust. I wish I had found a group setting when I was first detoxing from diets and getting into intuitive eating. Definitely would have made my journey easier!
And thank you for including my piece on feeling fat vs. being fat. I agree with so much of what you've written about on this subject. I didn't mention it in my piece, but you did here. I still have days where I feel fat, and I am fat, but I also have days when I don't feel fat either. And generally, I feel best in my body when I'm moving my body, usually outside, surrounded by gorgeous scenery.