ABSTRACT
This chapter explores how clients develop body shame around their size and shape as the result of messages from family, friends, health professionals, the media, and other sources. It explains how these messages that are rooted in diet culture and weight stigma become internalized, so that clients believe that they must lose weight to be worthy. This chapter provides an array of body image strategies that can help clients cultivate body positivity and feel more at home in their bodies. Additionally, it focuses on the needs of higher weight clients given the anti-fat bias that exists in diet culture, and discusses ways to support them around their past and present experiences of weight stigma as well as other marginalized identities that they may have.
