Your anger toward diet culture is clear-seeing wisdom

One of my favorite parts of Intuitive Eating is that it begins by normalizing and giving us permission to feel anger.

In principle 1 - Reject the diet mentality - we are encouraged to "get angry at diet culture that promotes weight loss and the lies that have led you to feel as if you were a failure every time a new diet stopped working and you gained back all of the weight."

We are not asked to "make peace with food" before we express this anger, scream a loud "no more," and take back our power and agency. In fact, the anger must precede the peacemaking process.

The French have a word that describes the feeling tone of this anger: revendication, or taking back, reclaiming.

NOT TODAY, WW/NOOM/KETO/WHOLE30 (SATAN)!

There is a gendered aspect to anger. Women in particular are kindly escorted away from owning this natural human emotion, as if feeling it threatens their very identity, femininity, acceptability by the masses.

In some lineages of Buddhism, however, anger is viewed as a form of clear-seeing wisdom. I'm not suggesting we act on our anger; that seems to be simply the flip side of the coin that tells us to not feel it. But there's something between rejecting it and reacting to it, and that is feeling it, allowing it, staying with it, and seeing what's there.

When we are able to feel and be with our anger, we may see that it is wise - we DO know what's best for our bodies, it was wrong to ever be told otherwise, WE ARE THE BEST JUDGES AND CARETAKERS OF OURSELVES.

What might it feel like for you to allow your anger to be experienced? What wisdom does it have to share?