“Beauty shouldn’t be about changing yourself to achieve an ideal or be more socially acceptable. Real beauty, the interesting, truly pleasing kind, is about honoring the beauty within you and without you. It’s about knowing that someone else’s definition of pretty has no hold over you.”

“Sometimes you need a reminder that negative comments about your body aren’t even really about your body, they’re about society and our society’s wrongheaded and impossibly narrow definition of a “good” body. Your body didn’t do anything wrong. What’s fucked up about your body is not your body at all, but that your body has to live in a society that thinks it has a right to say fucked up things about your body.”

“Health isn’t about being “perfect” with food or exercise or herbs. Health is about balancing those things with your desires. It’s about nourishing your spirit as well as your body.”

“Body acceptance means, as much as possible, approving of and loving your body, despite its “imperfections”, real or perceived. That means accepting that your body is fatter than some others, or thinner than some others, that your eyes are a little crooked, that you have a disability that makes walking difficult, that you have health concerns that you have to deal with — but that all of that doesn’t mean that you need to be ashamed of your body or try to change it. Body acceptance allows for the fact that there is a diversity of bodies in the world, and that there’s no wrong way to have one.”

“I’m not saying that you should deny the difficult events of your life. But the fact that you survived is also a wonderful story to tell. And that story, the story of the way you came through a difficult situation, found resources within yourself or outside of yourself, gleaned from that experience what you wanted and what you didn’t want going forward — that is a story that can inspire you and others to heal and grow.”

“I think fitting in is highly overrated. I’d rather just fit out... Fitting out means being who you are, even when people insist that you have to change. Fitting out means taking up space, not apologizing for yourself, and not agreeing with those who seek to label you with stereotypes.”

“Let's be honest about the "war on obesity." It's a war on people with a particular body type, funded by diet companies.”