By Kristen Donia

You’re probably not surprised to hear that just like other aspects of life, body positivity is made up of more than one component.

Let’s look at an example.

If you decide one day you want to play volleyball, from that day on you will make choices that are in alignment with that goal. You’ll take classes in school where you learn and practice these new skills, look for classes or clubs in your area, and perhaps read or listen to books that create a better understanding of the rules, and even what it’s like to play in college or professionally.

Similar to learning how to play a new sport, body positivity has more than one element to learn. If you’ve been following along with this series, we’ve looked into helpful books to aid in learning new ways of thinking about our bodies, found influencers that are sharing their powerful stories and paving the way for girls to lead more body positive lives, and learned new ways to set goals for a better mindset, plus more!

Yet one aspect of body positivity we haven’t discussed is what we put in our bodies, and ultimately how that makes us feel in our bodies and about our bodies. Just saying the word diet stirs up emotions for many of us.

After all, from paleo to keto, to vegan and vegetarian, there are too many approaches to food and quite honestly it’s simply, overwhelming.

We will dive deeper into this in future articles, but for now, I want to consider a few things to get us started. How do you feel after you eat your meals? Still hungry? Overfull? Do you suffer from stomachaches? How much of your meal is fresh fruits and veggies?

Restricting what we eat is often not the best course of action while being mindful of what we consume and how it makes us feel, can be. And there is definitely a fine line between the two.

You may have heard the word, moderation. Adults often like to use it to say, “everything in balance.” And while everyone’s body is different, and no one “diet” or approach will work for everyone, integrating a variety of foods into your diet and tracking how you feel and staying away from things that make you feel not good, is a great place to start.

This is a tender subject and one that we take very seriously at Teen Strong. Advising others on how and what to eat is certainly not our place, or our goal. We simply want to get the conversation started so that we may all live happy, healthy, body positive lives, and connect you with resources that you are curious about along the way.

Do you have questions about diet or another health-related topic? Click here to ask our health experts! See you next month!