Moving Past Food, Body, and Fitness Shame with JC Lippold
In this live chat, movement and mindset teacher and community engager JC Lippold sits down with Sharon to discuss how to move past the cycle of shame around food, our bodies, and fitness.
I am so excited to be talking about a really compelling issue, and that is the shame that we often feel when it comes to how we eat, how we feel about our bodies, even how we work out in our fitness regimes. I am really thrilled to have my guest with me today, JC Lippold. He is an expert in this area as a leadership and change consultant, and he works with companies, nonprofits, and community organizations really shining the light on this issue. I was fortunate enough to actually see him speak at a nutrition conference I went to recently, and it was life changing for me. I’ve been writing and talking about this topic a lot over the past few months, hoping to shine the light on how to move past this shame that we often experience when it comes to our food choices, fitness, and bodies. JC answers all of our top questions and gives advice for moving past this shame in this super inspiring chat. Make sure to follow JC Lippold on his social channels @JClippold and on his website at JC Lippold. Check out the full interview below. And read more about my take on moving past food, body and fitness shame here.
Things You Will Learn
- What is food, body and fitness shame
- How to stop the food, body, and fitness shame cycle in your own life
- How to give yourself grace
- How to have a healthy relationship with food and fitness
- How to stop culture shaming
- How to be enough
- Tips on how to have a balanced fitness lifestyle
Interview With JC Lippold
Q: Tell us a little bit more about yourself and your background in this area.
A: Yeah, absolutely. So, I always kind of start anytime when I talk about what I do, and who I am by saying that I look at myself as a homemaker, right? Someone who in a lot of different realms, attempts to make space for people where they feel what we should feel in a home. Where we feel space, we feel stillness, we feel the opportunity to be courageously ourselves, because once we find that space we know that we do potent things. We do unique things that make sense to our intuition, our history, and our desires for what we want to see in the world. So, I have a background in theater, education, fitness and in mindset work. All of these things that allow people to truly tap into what makes them them.
Q: What are the experiences people are having when it comes to shame and how does it impact our lives?
A: If we think about shame, I always love going into, you know, a dictionary understanding, because it’s that genesis of how we look at words. So, three really hard, heavy definitions to shame: a painful feeling of humiliation or distress caused by the consciousness of wrong or foolish behavior. Another one: a loss of respect or steam dishonor. Lastly: a regrettable or unfortunate situation, or action. So we think about body shame, food shame, fitness shaming,
all of these definitions lead us to this idea that if I’m the one feeling shame I have done something drastically wrong within my own being that is foolish. That then leads to this idea that I am broken, that I am not enough, that I am responsible for being less than who I’m supposed to be. So, a really bad thing to feel. And if we think about how many people we know who experience this and where it comes from. The power of social media within expounding shame and within rooting shame within a person. Yeah, you know what social media is, it’s a big conveyor of this prominence of and pervasiveness of shame in our culture. But I always love sharing this quote by Edith Wharton, where she talks about how you know light is shared in two ways from the candle and from the mirror that reflects it. One of the hardest things about pinpointing the root of shame is that it’s like that candle and that mirror. We’re all mirrors to what we see and what we feel, and what we think is right, as we all aspire to find information and pathways to our well being. Body, food and fitness shaming are all rooted within this desire or this belief that we are incredibly responsible for achieving “healthiness” or “wellness.” But, what is healthiness? What is wellness? What is the right way to eat or the right way to move?
If there is this perceived correct way of doing these things, all of a sudden we all fall short of accomplishing it. So, we see ourselves experiencing shame. We see others through social media lenses. We hear about how other people see our shame whether it be medical professionals, or RDNs, or fitness professionals. We hear about it from our loved ones, who may be rooted in kindness, throw us shame in order to encourage us, or remind us to be well or healthy. This idea of shame, aside from feeling really bad, it also creates these pathways that perpetuate more and more shame, and also more and more barriers between us, and are owning our lives, our wellness, our happiness, all of these things.
Q: Can you talk more about the confusion happening at high levels among consumers, even dietitians and health professionals, when it comes to shame around food and fitness?
A: So, you know Southpaw Insights is the organization that conducted this first comprehensive research in the nation on shame. The fuel and desire of a lot of invested parties to look at a consumer’s pathway and acknowledge the shame that they’re carrying. Some rough stats show one in one in three people state that they have experienced shame personally. 88 of those people have long-term, lifelong residual symptoms and effects, and changes within the way that they operate from that shame. Which means, if we think about that, we are all continuously surrounded by the effects of shame. We look at people within the industry of dietitians, within the industry of caretakers of others in any health or wellness realm. How many of those people have a shame story that led them into doing the work that they do?
I always talk about the root of my shame, and I’ll share it right now and then I’ll kind of let this pebble hitting the water ripple out. I always talk about when I was young, very emotional, not athletic and non-competitive. I have an alpha brother and an alpha father who love me and I adore them. We’d be playing baseball in the backyard and as a kid who loved the idea of baseball but was incredibly fearful to go ahead and participate in a masculine competitive realm. I did not like the feel of a baseball hitting the bat because it made my arms shake and that made me get emotional. So, my dad, lovingly, would throw me a ragball so I wouldn’t have that negative response. I remember one day I got the confidence and went to the park to play baseball with the other young male identifying human beings at the park. It sounded like a great idea to me. I go to the park and all of a sudden there wasn’t a ragball option for me and of course I didn’t want there to be one, because then I would stand out in the not enough way that the ragball represented. So, I went to the park and then I went home laden with shame because I was not enough to fit into the constructs of what I was supposed to be, of what I was supposed to do. As I mentioned, that’s my story.
If we drop that pebble into the water and we see the ripples, how many people have a shame story from an early age? Whether it be in a physical sense; running the mile on track and field day, dodgeball, the hang test, the rope climb, the fill in the blank. Or from a food standpoint, are you going to eat all of that? Oh, that’s not healthy, or eating hot lunch, or bringing lunch from home. All of these things are rooted within two things, the assumptions of what is right and healthy and well within our culture lens. And then are we living up to it? If the answer is no, I’m not living up to it, that little root, that little seed plant of shame for most of us is from a very young age. So, how does that play into our future? Well, it creates a lot of assumptions of what is right and what is wrong. A lot of the work that we’ve been doing is ongoing. How do we derail this idea that shame is this pervasive, sneaky essence and presence around us that we never actually pinpoint? Once we pinpoint it, once we see it, once we rationalize any pathway to how we treat ourselves, this is really that starting place to derail this cycle of shame that we see.
Q: Do you have any ideas about how we can reconcile between feeling shameful and living healthful lives when it comes to our food and fitness choices?
A: Yeah, absolutely. I am going to raise up two points. One is the reality of our culture and then number two, I’m gonna talk about a term that I’ve created that I use all the time called enoughness. We could give a hundred people the exact same diet and fitness routine, and the way it’s going to hit them is going to be different every single time. It’s the complexity of the human experience. Then there is the desire of people. Again this goes for professionals, for loved ones, for our civic duty, to care for our fellow human being and because we care, we attempt to make things as simple as possible, because we assume if something is simple, then it’s executable. We’re going to be leaving our mark on the world. That train of thought is great, but it’s broken and here is why.
If the problem is complex, providing overly simplified messaging and pathways does not reconcile the complexity. A lot of the work that I’ve been engaged in is within this. The cycle of shame starts with people hearing really simple messages on what to do. I’ll throw out some of them: “you eat so little, no wonder you’re so skinny.” That’s meant to be a compliment. “Whoa! Your plate could feed an army.” That’s meant to be playful. “You look great for your age.” Backhanded compliment. “Commit to be fit. Don’t eat bread or fat. Get the body you deserve. Dare to be great. Be 1% better than you were yesterday. Move more eat less.” All of these things sound pseudo-motivational, pseudo-directional, and incredibly simple. Simple if you’re willing to commit to grit and put yourself in the seat where you are most important. But, here’s the deal, we know this to be true. Think about every infomercial for every diet and fitness thing you’ve ever seen on TV for the past 50 years. The main part of the screen is the happiness, the clarity, then at the bottom of the screen, what does it say? These results are not to be expected within the general public. Everything is complex and differentiated. So, if we look at that, the simple message leads to people going, hey, it sounds simple, therefore my fitness and my nutrition, and my well-being should also be simple. We try it, we do it, we fail, or we think we fail because we don’t achieve what we think we’re supposed to achieve. And then what does that do? It drives us into feeling isolated. Everybody else has it figured out, I don’t. Therefore I must be the problem. If I’m the problem, I feel guilty. Guilt is the birthplace of shame. That shame leads to isolation and desperation and then you’re left going I’m ashamed of me. Everyone’s ashamed of me. I need to fix this quickly.
So, what do we do? We look for the simplified message again and again and again, and the cycle starts. We look for the easy answer. We have all of these loving professionals who are attempting to simplify the complexity and I think maybe our opportunity is to get really good at acknowledging their reality, acknowledging the complexity. Then what I see again and again and again from so many people, is then walking alongside people as they find their pathway to what their healthiness looks like.
So, as I mentioned, I have this term that I use that I think reconciles. We don’t want to enslave people to their shame. But, we also want to help people move towards healthier lifestyles. This term enoughness, I define it as the act of acknowledging that you are already indeed, enough. Now, enoughness does not equate complacency. It does not mean I don’t need to do anything because I am enough. What enoughness means is, I am in my current state capable of doing things, thinking things, feeling things that are going to be innately good for me, that are going to help me grow in understanding and in confidence of who I am and what I do. Within this idea of enoughness there’s four tenants, and I’ll share two of them right now. The first one is all about our communication, all about our language, and it’s wrapped up in this. Minimize the minimizing language and speak your truth quickly. The word “just” sneaks into our language to minimize the power of the work we’re doing. Well, I’m just gonna go for a walk. I don’t have time for anything else. Well, I don’t think I could do the whole plan that my diet is suggesting. So, I’m just going to start by doing these two little simple things, just going to do little simple things. We’re setting ourselves up for failure. Number one, just is minimizing the power of the work and then saying that it’s little and simple things. What if those little and simple things are actually really, really big hard things for me? If the world sees them as little and simple, all of a sudden I’m set up for failure.
The second is tied to the first. So, this first idea of bringing attention and awareness to mindfully communicating our truth without minimizing language. Secondly, is this idea of our intuition. I define intuition as the part of our being that says, “hey, do that. That will feel good. That will make sense.” We all have that inside ourselves. Culturally we are trained to not listen to it. How often do we hear within the fitness world, “your brain will say no before your body will give up, so just keep going.” Actually, no. If your body is telling you something and you are being trained to not listen to it we are in essence taking away our eyesight, our ability to hear, and sense and taste and touch. Our intuition is there so we can tune into what our body is telling us. If we speak our language clearly and as being good or bad, or enough or not enough, all of a sudden we start empowering that person that we’re attempting to help, whether it be our client or our mother, or our brother, or our neighbor. By acknowledging the person rather than maybe the shame that they are carrying.
Someone asks the question, so within this idea of not wanting to amplify or add to, or create shame for people, it sounds like it’s a really hard conversation to navigate. What do we do? Are we just supposed to be quiet? Are we not supposed to say what we see, or walk into that space assuming that we can be alongside them? This question was raised for a moment, and what I saw was the person and I saw the shame. I think a lot of times because we care about people we want to acknowledge that we see the shame, we want to acknowledge the shame, and speak to the shame because that’s the thing we want to go away. But, if we are that person who is carrying that shame, and that dietitian, that fitness professional, that loved one, whoever it is, starts the conversation by speaking to the shame, by pandering to the shame, by coddling the shame rather than by speaking to the person who is actually really there. Then that person sees the shame, too. They become a mirror to the shame rather than a mirror to the person.
So often in the same conversations as we already said, it’s complex. Shame will not go away. In the short term shame may never go away. I always like to say this shame begins to lose its power once we see it, and we say that we see it. It doesn’t go away, but it begins to go away. I have lived with my shame for decades upon decades, upon decades. I walk into a room and I go close in on myself for a moment, because that’s automated. It’s habitual. It’s something that’s in me but, because I have been able to see it in myself and see it in others, and to engage in conversations like we’re doing right now, it’s amazing how much power that that shame loses because I am enough, because you are enough, because I don’t have to do anything, nor does anybody else ever have to do anything to be enough right now to be happy. To be whole. To make decisions that are going to bring them joy. To begin to try new things that they may “fail at”, or may not “work for them.” But, in reality, when we do things, even if they don’t stick, we’re saying to ourselves rather than the shame. I am enough. I care about myself. I’m invested in my own journey, and we know how much easier it is to support someone when they feel empowered to be a part of their journey.
Q: What are your thoughts on shaming cultural food traditions?
A: Two thoughts come to mind. Our minds are powerful things. As a person who isn’t a dietitian, I’m not someone who will ever give nutrition advice because I know that people are hungry for the answers from again that desperation that leads us to look for simplified messaging. There’s this wonderful study that was done on stress. They ask two questions; is stress good or bad and do you live with a lot of stress or a little bit of stress? Then they watch these people’s lives over the next few decades. What they found is the people who live the longest were the people who thought that stress was a good thing and they had a lot of stress in their lives. The people who live second longest said stress is good, and they had a little bit of it. People who live third longest were the people who thought stress was bad and had a little bit of it in their lives. The people who had the shortest lifespan saw stress as bad, and had a lot of it. I raise that point not to be tangential, but to make this point that the things that we think are right or wrong, even if they are not right or wrong, they are because we live to believe that they are true. The idea of 70 min of moderate exercise a week gets the thumbs up. I would say this 70 min of what someone acknowledges within their life as merited as modern exercise gets the thumbs up because we know there are people who live very active lifestyles but “never have time to make it to the gym.” They eat very, very well but they don’t follow the plan. So, then, these people who are doing well are led to believe they aren’t and their bodies respond accordingly because we know how we feel about ourselves. We know how we think about ourselves greatly impacts the way that our physiology responds.
With that being said, to your point about foods that are more woven within our cultural fabrics, our ethnic groundings and fibers and our being all of a sudden, what do we start finding if we grow up thinking that who we are and what we do is bad? It negatively affects us. We look at the world in which we live and what is held up as being right. It’s normally very isolated to us to a certain segment of people who have a certain amount of money, who have a certain amount of privilege and proximity to certain foods within where they can shop and where they can acquire X and Y and Z. All of this to be said, it’s really easy to say, yeah well, if you want to be healthy, here’s the hoops you need to jump through. But, raising the point that everybody feeling like they need to do the next newest thing.
Within this research that was conducted we did some qualitative interviews from the quantitative research. This one interview stuck with me and I share it all the time. There’s this wonderful vibrant single mother of two who is going back to school. She makes this point how she blames herself because she’s been lazy since she’s gone back to school and hasn’t had the time to do the good things; the right diet and getting to the gym to work out. She said that she needs to get back to doing the good things, she needs to get back to trying new things. The last part of that setting stuck with me, she said she needs to get back to trying new things. You can’t go back to doing things that you haven’t done yet. But she speaks to the culture and our whole fabric the industry of food and fitness is built on. The idea of facts that the next new thing is the best thing that you can be doing right now. But, history shows that 6 months later it’s no longer the newest thing which means it never really was outside of the energy of us, believing that we continuously are never going to be enough. To be as healthy, as fit, as sexy, as strong, as fast, as young, as morally, ethically right within our choices.
So, where does that leave us? It leaves us feeling pretty cruddy. It leaves the industry constantly fueled by desperate people looking for the next right answer. The answer is unraveling that it’s saying, hey, you know what, I always use you to tell a story. I mean, I grew up in a large family who didn’t necessarily have a lot so our celebratory meals were going to the big buffet restaurant or getting fast food on a birthday. I always make the point at the end of a really long, stressful day, let’s say I was out the door at 5 am and I’m getting home at 11 pm. I’m stressed. I’m tired. What would be better for me in that situation, eating something that’s going to comfort me like a fast food, value meal, or the healthy salad? Count the macros, dig the data out of that, which would be healthier for me in that moment? I would go to the nail to fight that me eating comforting food is when we alleviate my stress response. It’s going to take me out of my fight or flight. It’s going to allow my body to know that we are safe, and guess what. When the body feels safe and supported and happy and healthy it starts responding that way. I think the danger is that “bad food is going to kill you.” It’s like anything in excess is going to close you off from the fullness of life. We see them on both sides of the spectrum. The people get trapped within the shame cycle, so they don’t consider they have any control over improving their quality, or making good, happy, healthy decisions. We see it on the side of I always eat the right thing. I always do my workout. I’m at the gym at 5 am. I’ve never done anything wrong. Both of these sides of the spectrum lose out on the fullness of life because they’re living with a simplified message and losing on the simplicity of the fullness of their life that they get to experience. Simplified messages are not going to go away, but it is our acknowledgment of them that will make the difference.
Q: What are some tips or small steps people can take to move towards a more balanced fitness lifestyle?
A: I have some ideas with my work I do within the fitness world. I have a long history within the fitness industry teaching a lot of things, training a lot of teachers in a lot of things, a lot of modalities of movement. In the last handful of years I have found that my affinity for exercise has gotten less and less. My affinity for being physically in shape has gotten less and less. I actually say now that I don’t think I really exercised in the past 5 years. Now I move every day, but I move with an intent that is different than exercise. I lead events that are all designed to bring people who do not know each other, yet are in community with each other. People who do not know each other, is a long way of saying strangers. Every month I create an event that is movement based. It is exercising, but the intent and the curiosity and the and the kind of butterflies in the stomach that everybody feels is I’m going to be spending this next hour with five year olds and 80 year olds, with people of of every race and ethnicity, of every body size and shape, of people who are “athletic” and feel “comfortable” within their movement world, and people who have been blocked out from feeling comfortable. They show up for the connection of the community and the movement is now a side benefit.
This is the example, I say two things to them every month. First of all, I say imagine this was a wedding. I have a big group of people who are getting ready to move together. Imagine this was a wedding that you’re invited to, the first question you are going to ask once you are invited to the wedding is what’s going to be the wedding meal. What’s going to be for dinner? If it’s chicken or steak I’ll show up, but if it’s fish or pork chops, I’m not showing up. No one would ever ask that question, because they are going because it’s a wedding. They’re going because they’re going to see people that they love and know do something wonderful in their lives. The meal is a side benefit.
What if we look at movement? What if we look at what we put into our bodies in terms of nutrition not as if I’m eating the right thing but I am bringing a lunch to work that I can enjoy with my hands outside on a bench because I want to spend more time outside. So, now, all of a sudden, you make nutrition decisions based on what’s going to allow you to experience different work. What if all of a sudden I run marathons. I don’t train for marathons, but I run marathons because what fills my cup with marathon running is being around people doing something that fills their cup and they maybe have never done before. I go to new cities that I’ve never been to before to run a marathon there, because I believe there’s no better way to get to know a city than by moving through its streets. I have no idea what my personal record is for a marathon. I don’t care. I don’t spend a lot of time running miles leading up because I don’t find a lot of joy in moving by myself outside of race day. People go well, then you must be this athlete. I go, no I already told my story. I’m not naturally athletic, but because I don’t have confines on myself in terms of how I need to finish I will never gut it out. I will never die at the finish line, because I don’t want to feel that. It’s okay if other people do, that’s not my intent. The side benefit is the marathon. The true reason I’m there is to get to experience a world and people I would not get to experience otherwise.
So to the point of, what can we do to make healthier, more sustainable decisions for our well-being? I think one of the things we can do is change our focus on why we are doing what we are doing. Do we live to eat, or do we eat to live? A lot of times people fall into that oh, yeah, I’m supposed to eat to live, food is fuel. Actually, it’s not. There’s fuel elements to food, and if you focus on that, yeah, then food is fuel. What if food is joy? What if food is connection? What if food is time and pause and peace. All of a sudden I think you start making different decisions. I haven’t exercised in five years, and I move every day. People go, what? Because the second thing I say at these events is, Hey, everybody! Once this event is done let’s say you get a message on the way home, and someone asks you, hey. So you went to that event today, how was it? What was it? And since October 2016 since we’ve been holding these events monthly, I’ve said this, you’re gonna get to that moment where someone asks you what was this event like and you’re gonna have no idea how to answer the question because our culture does not have ways of expressing what we are doing here, and why we are doing it. I encourage people to follow your lead, because you say I think there’s something here for you to experience. Even though I’m not going to be able to put it into words right now. Will you come with me to experience this thing because I think it’s going to be good for you people.
Every single person is influential. We’ve lost that truth. We think there’s only certain people who have influence. Everybody has influence if we start experiencing things that are meaningful to us, and we share that with people who we love and who love us. There’s a sustainability to what happens. After that I will take nutrition advice from people I know, who innately care about me. Who understand my uniqueness and my history and my why and my what. Those are the times that I start thinking about how I can shift how I experience life because I feel safe, because I feel enough, because I feel seen. How do we do that with food and fitness, and all of these things; mindfulness and meditation and fresh air and sleep. How do we remove these things from being something that people feel ashamed of into a space where they can feel happiness and wholeness and connection and joy? I think it’s in leading with those things. What are you doing for your happiness today? What are you doing for your home today? What are you doing for your joy today? The healthiness becomes that side benefit of our journey.
About JC Lippold
JC Lippold is a professional homemaker: holding space for others as a nationally renowned teacher of movement and mindset, community engager and social movement trailblazer, a theatre director and as a full time Leadership and Change Management Coach and Consultant. Whether in the yoga studio or the board room, on a marathon course or in the theatre, JC aspires to be a masterful student each and every day. JC earned a BA in Theology and Master’s Degree in Leadership, is a 1 Giant Mind Certified Meditation facilitator and holds credentials across many modalities of movement. The founder of 5K Everyday Conversations, a social movement designed to create access for all to daily conversation with strangers & TCO Local, monthly all are needed, all are capable connection events, JC is passionate about redesigning the fitness landscape in the United States to where the target audience is: everyone. As a brand ambassador and consistent positive friction voice, JC works alongside brands like lululemon, CorePower Yoga, [solidcore], Orangetheory Fitness, allbirds and Fitbit to ensure they continuously explore ways they can shift the exclusionary and shame-inducing realities of the wellness industry to a more sustainable, happiness and health-giving part of our culture and economy. Alongside his work in fitness, JC is a full time Leadership and Change consultant working alongside Fortune 500 companies, non-profits, civic and educational communities. You can often find JC on the Twin Cities’ ABC syndicate, KSTP-TV as their wellness expert.
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