The Harms of Bounce-Back Culture and How Intuitive Eating is the Path Out

People talk about it and make jokes about it, but few acknowledge the disconnect a woman has with her own body after childbirth. It is confusing and vulnerable. For the last 9 months (ish), you watched your body shift and grow this beautiful baby. You went through a delicate and primal birth process. And after? A body that logically you know is yours, but somehow you feel like a stranger in it. Here, in this vulnerable and confusing moment, is where bounce back culture begins to creep in. Suddenly, your body is not viewed as strong and powerful like during pregnancy, instead it is viewed as weak, unworthy, and something to fix.

The Harms of Bounce Back Culture

Bounce back culture, which is a subset of diet culture, is an all-consuming beast. It gives constant mixed signals like: “Rest your body, but not too much,” or “Respect your body, but not until you reach xxx on the scale.” The ultimate goal of diet culture is to make you feel like you did something wrong or you didn’t try hard enough. In reality, diet culture actually failed you. If any of this relates to you, it’s because it is a very complicated thing that can have several emotional, physical, and social harms, including:

1. Unrealistic Expectations

   Bodies go through enormous changes during pregnancy and birth. The idea that a woman should “return” to her old body quickly ignores healing, hormonal shifts, sleep deprivation, and lifestyle changes.

2. Increased Body Dissatisfaction

   Constant exposure to “before and after” images and transformation stories can make women feel like their postpartum body is a problem to fix, rather than normal. This often increases shame, comparison, and negative self-talk.

3. Mental Health Strain

   The expectation to look a certain way can contribute to: anxiety, depression, low self-esteem, and obsessive thoughts about food, weight, or exercise.

Changing the Narrative

It is clear that bounce back culture is not beneficial and is even harmful for women. But how do we change this narrative that is rooted deep within our society? Well, to be honest it is a much more complicated process to change an entire cultural perspective, but you can be the change among your friends, family, communities and even strangers. It begins by changing your relationship with your bodies and with food. From everything I have written, you may see the benefits of changing your relationship with your body, but with food too? It may seem like a hard transition, but think about the main ways people try to manipulate their bodies - by manipulating their relationship with food. Restricting food, reaching different macro goals, changing the time food is consumed, all of these (and many more) are ways people manipulate their relationship with food. While it can be very easy to get caught up in the next fad diet or what the most popular influencer is doing, one thing remains clear…most of them will leave you feeling disconnected from your body. It may work for a while, but then the same cycle of “slipping back” appears. There is a reason by the age of 45, the average woman has tried 61 diets.

So, here sits a very vulnerable woman with a body that she feels lost in, while trying to manage a major identity shift into motherhood. Oh yeah, and also on top of all the other responsibilities and changes, she has to add the cultural pressure to bounce back to her “before” body. What this woman needs is peace in her body. She needs food that satisfies and nourishes. She needs to regain the connection within herself. This is where Intuitive Eating comes in.

Introduction To Intuitive Eating

Intuitive Eating is a non-diet framework that allows you to reconnect and heal your relationship with food and with your body. There are over 100 studies that all conclude a positive impact on psychological health, body image, and self-esteem.

The 10 Principles of Intuitive Eating are:

Reject Diet Culture

Honor Your Hunger

Make Peace with Food

Discover the Satisfaction Factor

Feel Your Fullness

Challenge the Food Police

Cope with Your Emotions with Kindness

Respect Your Body

Movement - Feel the Difference

Honor Your Health - Gentle Nutrition

These are not rules and you don’t have to do them in order. The only one that is suggested to be first is #1 because it can be difficult to navigate the other principles if they are treated like a diet. Intuitive Eating is a wonderful and life changing guide for moms to truly reconnect with their relationship with food and with their bodies. It can also take a significant amount of stress away from trying to feed your children properly, because they are naturally intuitive eaters. In fact, we are all born as intuitive eaters, but the cultural pressures have caused us to lose the innate ability to listen to our hunger cues.

Some great resources for navigating Intuitive Eating include:

• www.intuitiveeating.org

• www.intuitiveeatingcollab.com

Kella Unnasch - BSc, CIEC