Because it is National Eating Disorders Awareness Week right as I type this, I guess the subject of health at every size, beauty in all shapes and sizes, and body acceptance and respect is just really on my mind.

Whether we suffer from an eating disorder or disordered eating, have social anxiety that is body-related, or simply feel hampered or hindered in any area of our life due to a lack of comfort with how we are made, the simple fact is that body image issues plague nearly 100 percent of us.

Work what you’ve got – and in time you may begin to LOVE what you’ve got!

I was talking with a friend today about a cool conversation she had with a health care professional who wanted her to come in and talk to their weight loss support group about healthy eating. She told this professional, “I am not going to address healthy eating. I am going to address healthy relationships.”

She shared that she said this because it is about the food – in the sense that we all need to ingest a certain amount of nutrients in order to survive – but then again it isn’t about the food at all – because food is just food, and it is designed to nourish, nothing less nor more than this.

It isn’t a surrogate partner. It isn’t a friend to lean on. It also isn’t an enemy that is out to get us. It is just food.

I really think it is.

That does NOT mean I have it each and every day, by the way.

Nor have I any way of knowing whether even the most famous celebrity body-love advocates feel absolutely zero pressure from the thinness-focused culture we live in.

Nor is it really any business of mine whether they do or not.

But I have had periods where I have really hated my body (the 15 year battle I had with anorexia and bulimia springs to mind) and also periods when I fell so in love with my body that every day felt like Valentine’s Day (like after my surgery in 2010, when I watched in awe and disbelief as my body knit itself back together in record time after being split nearly in half).