Be very thoughtful about what you put into and hope to get out of social media.

Baguettes on pink paper in the shape of a hashtag.

I have a love/hate relationship with social media. It can be such a powerful tool for good, like Evelyn Tribole's recent 10 days of Intuitive Eating (and if you haven't seen it, check it out here) and Sonya Renee Taylor's talks about, well, anything (follow her here).

Social media can also be a terrible forum for our worst tendencies: doomscrolling, time-wasting, compare and despair, amplification of diet culture-induced desperation, uncharacteristically brutal comments made with nary a ramification, bullying, canceling, and downright distortion of reality.

I'm here to remind you of something:

SOCIAL MEDIA IS NOT REAL

It is highly curated, often superficial, focused on brand creation and propagation, and trying to sell you stuff you might never have sought out on your own. It distorts what we think of as normal.

I'm probably showing my age here but I have developed such an appetite for what's real that I'm finding all the staged posts, reels, and stories a bit hard to take. That's not to say that I'm not posting my own info once a week or so, scrolling at the wee hours of the morning, getting belly laughs out of a good mom joke, and following every damn non-diet professional I can support in this meager way. I just try to maintain the perspective that this is an alternate reality: sometimes helpful, sometime harmful, sometimes downright dangerous. And that's not to be forgotten.

One role social media does play - and it's a big one - is helping us feel connected. Especially now when many of us are suffering from what I'd call affect deprivation (which includes a deficiency of vitamin H [hugs]), the need for connection is high. But please don't let the pain of nowhere near enough connection allow you to think that Instagram or Facebook or TikTok is it. Don't drop anchor there. Visit occasionally, but please do come back to the real world.

PS. Be on the lookout for an announcement of an upcoming 12-week Intuitive Eating course starting in early March. It's going to be a real no-frills "launch" so you might have to look for it.

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Don’t let what you think you should do stop you from doing what you could do.

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Become familiar with the stages of (dieting) grief