Episode #21 Reframing Body Image for Female Athletes: The BodySelf Approach

In this empowering episode, we dive into the transformative BodySelf approach to body image healing, a framework designed to help female athletes redefine their relationship with their bodies and unlock their full potential. 

Together with my guest Whitney Otto, we explore how societal pressures, and competitive environments shape body image and why addressing these challenges is crucial for mental and physical well-being.

You’ll learn about the key “muscles” of the BodySelf approach—mindful awareness, curiosity, and self-compassion—and how they not only enhance self-perception but also improve athletic performance. 

We discuss practical strategies for navigating “bad body image” days, turning emotions like frustration or jealousy into tools for growth, and building a collaborative, empowering relationship with your body.

Whether you're an athlete, coach, or simply interested in fostering a healthier connection to yourself, this episode offers actionable insights for you to try.

We also delve into how mindfulness, Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CBT), and Internal Family Systems (IFS) can integrate into the BodySelf framework to support mental health in sports.

Tune in to discover how you can use these tools to strengthen your mental toughness, embrace your unique athletic journey, and thrive—inside and outside of competition.

Find Out More:

• Follow Whitney on Instagram
• Follow Body Image Inside out 
• Read the Book: Body Image Inside Out
• Listen to the Untrained Podcast here 

Ready to reframe your self-perception and embrace your body’s power? Let’s dive in.

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Transcript

hi I'm Celia boothman founder of LTR coaching and I'd like to welcome you to the inspired triathletes podcast where I'll be bringing you stories from female triathletes and taking on topics that are important to women in the

sport hello and welcome to today's episode I'm here with Whitney the co-author of body image inside out and we're going to talk a little bit about her background how she got into body image Fields I don't know how to describe it that sort of area and that Arena what was it that interested you in that and we're going to talk about the book a little bit and give you some tips hopefully to take away that you can try out if you're experiencing any kind of negative feelings about your body image so welcome Whitney thank you very much for joining me so first off do you want to give you a little bit about of background about who you are and how you got into this space sure absolutely well I'm thrilled to be here I'm finding you know I'm doing a lot of podcast conversations about the book and the insection of body image and Athletics is so juicy for me so I love these conversation thank you so much for having me so currently I am an executive performance coach so I work with fol folks in the corporate realm I have a podcast called untrained untraining the negative ways we've been taught to move through the world with another with an Olympian fencer and um I was a rower in the sport of lightweight rowing so I rode in College open weight and then moved on to the national team was a world champion and an alternate for the 2000 Olympics and Rowing was a big part of my identity and it taught me a lot lot I think both positive and negative and or you know there were sort of positive lessons and negative things about it um but I've always I also had a eing disorder so and many people go into coaching from you know the corporate sector and some people go in from as a therap having a background as a therapist so I was a background had a background as a therapist and the way the book came about is that I had a friend and we were this is 20 years AG go and we were both in the field of Eating Disorders as therapists and we were helping one another through life but one of the things we talked about was our own body image and we both had negative body image but we found that when we could bring our humor and our compassion and our curiosity and our lack of criticism to one another's body image that different things happen so it was from that lens that we created workshops that that led to the book okay that's amazing that you helped each other and had that support from each other because that's probably one of the things that makes the biggest difference I would ass imagine you know if you're in that situation if you feel like you're alone then it would be really tough going through that well you know as a coach right I mean that's so much of our value is we can be that safe space to talk about the places where we are experiencing challenge and to get in there with somebody and offer a different perspective because you know I always say body image healing is not a solo sport it is a team sport and we so much of our negative selft talk is developed sort of an isolation right like we talk to ourselves um in very negative ways very often around body image or could be even around our athletic Pursuits um and we need my experience to be in dialogue with other people around those topics to find new ways to talk to ourselves and be with ourselves yeah definitely and did your eating to sort of start when you were in sport was it kind of wrapped up with that yeah the chicken or the egg you know that was something I would got really curious about myself um I definitely started before a light a weight restricted sport um and I think it was sort of what part of what drew me to it right A lot of my friends are like no way like my three meals a day like I'm not doing that whereas I was like sure that sounds great sign me up for deprivation I'm I'm into that um so I think that that that's I don't think it caused an eaing disorder for me I think it no so you yeah it kind of like pulled you in that direction because you were already kind of going that way as well so it suited your thoughts and your beliefs about yourself at the time I guess yeah or how to treat my body yeah okay and did so obviously there was pressure there for you to be lighter then in your within your sport yes so most people in you know it's sort of like wrestling most people go suck weight or lose weight in order to reach the weight at which you're going to compete so I was not I definitely had to lose weight every season in order to reach my um my performance or competition weight and every year I was like I'm gonna stay here right but it just wasn't biologically in the Stars could ever stay there you know weight our bodies are all about life and survival right so I mean I'm sure you've seen this in your own experience and with other with other folks that when we go below our body's natural weight it gets harder and harder right because our body's fighting us for survival and then when we stop you know the deprivation or we finish the competition then very often our weight goes higher than it was and then it'll sort of even out so you know we are um we are fighting our own bodies programming for life sometimes when we're trying to make our bodies go get to a certain weight yeah and would you say that we have like a like have you kind of leveled out in your weight have you kind of found the weight that you just you're comfortable in and that you are now this is the way I'm supposed to be that you kind of gravitate towards yeah I mean I think it's a I feel very comfortable in my skin and I don't think I could have said that there would most of my life I couldn't say that wow that's amazing so how long did it take you to get comfortable in your skin and I'm assuming that you still you know we have bad days you know when we don't but yeah I mean I it took a very long time um because our bodies hold our stories and our bodies hold you know their bodies um they hold so much so to really learn more about them and work with them in new ways and so one of the reasons I like the book or what I I think one of the things I brought to the book is a kind of like a try this or train in this way right because let's just take a bad body image moment right that's something we can all relate to we can all we've all experienced when our negative body image spikes and you know before I wrote the book unconsciously the way I would respond and the way many of us respond is i' have an uncomfortable feeling and then I would decide okay I need to fix myself right and especially as an athlete I could change my diet I could change my training I could increase my training right so then I'm off to the races on these so to speak um changing and fixing myself I don't deal with whatever uncomfortable feeling probably prompted me to feel icky in my body and unfortunately the society we live in will probably applaud me oh good for you you're so disciplined oh you're so fit oh you're so blah blah blah and on around and round I will go on that little Loop every time I feel uncomfortable and blame it on negative body image right um because very you know one of the things that we say in the book is that our body image is not just what we look like and I there's two ways I can kind of prove this one is I mean if you ever had the experience of waking up and feeling pretty neutral about your body image or positive but then by middle of the day you just feel terrible about your body right I think most of us can relate to that or maybe it's the other way around and that's because of what happened to us and it's how we fa how we feel in our bodies that changeed not our actual bodies and the other thing is we all know folks who have you know whatever ideal is that we think leads to great body image who don't feel comfortable in their skin and people who don't fit the ideal who do feel comfortable in their skin so those are two ways that we like to prove that body image is not just how close you are to a beauty standard yeah definitely and Society will have a huge impact on that because we are programmed to think a certain way about our body we see imagery you know we take all of that in and and it's like you say it's held within our body and we have to find ways of of changing that or yeah retraining like you say that what was your podcast called dra no untraining untraining I knew it was not yeah so it's like mind you know working out what that is so you you're talking about in the book I guess some of the triggers maybe that um the triggers have they're going to differ for everyone aren't they but they're going to be different for everybody but one of the things that we realize in writing the book is so many of the triggers are relational right we tend to think it's like oh I had too big of a meal or oh my hormones whatever sure sometimes that's the instance but very often we leave uh an interaction with somebody that where we didn't feel seen or we didn't feel respected or we didn't feel cared for and that can be what prompts a bad body image moment or you know we go for an interview or a reunion or a date that those are the moments when we're like what am I going to wear and I can't find anything and my body doesn't look right right because there's a charge we feel vulnerable and uncomfortable and fixing our body becomes the solution because we are taught in through the media through billion dooll you know product out there that we need to fix ourselves to be okay so we're constantly sold if you fix yourself then your problems will be solved or you'll be X Y or Z so yeah and I think as athletes we have so much training around disciplining our bodies and our bodies being our identity and it just Stacks the deck all the more what do you think yeah I think you know that's like when I first started getting into Triathlon it was like oh my power to weight ratio needs to be high so I have to be like lighter so that I'll be able to ride faster um and I tried I'm not very good like restricting calories anyway I kind of like don't like it and I but I did try and I lost a quite a bit of weight um and I wasn't feeling great you know it just didn't work for me um but there was this kind of like oh if I can get lighter it'll work it'll work and actually like you say once I become um just didn't think about that anymore and didn't worry about it and let my body just respond to the training and fuel it properly I ended up riding a lot better and a lot faster and I was Stronger so I think mentally it takes a toll doesn't it on on you kind of like that you know worrying about every little thing that you're going to eat or you know how it's exhausting to think like that all the time so it probably takes a lot of mental stress away from you if you can do that as well I would imagine yeah absolutely it did for me right I mean you know everybody's journey is personal but I sort of think of it as you know my corporate clients who are staying up too late and not getting enough sleep and being stressed all day long sure maybe they'll get the project done on time but if they keep doing that their performance is 100% going to suffer and similarly if we're performing if we're if we're training and competing in a weight that's not our healthy weight and all this mental energy has to go into it that's not going to give us the best performance in the long run but I think where body image comes in what what I'm really interested in is you know it's just silent and and it cannot be visible but we can exude a lot of energy having the these negative thoughts so I'd love to talk about how I train negative body Images now we talk about in the book um because again we get to train what we train grows stronger um so when you have that negative body image moment you know maybe you try on your I was a rower we had to wear these Unis suits oh my goodness talk about body image moment put on a brown Unis suit I wrote for brown um and so you you you feel uncomfortable and so the old way of dealing with it is oh I'm gonna change this about I'm gonna fix this about myself right so I like myself better but to also say okay what is going on here and to just describe the moment without the Judgment without being bad without needing fixing so that might be something like I'm trying on outfits for the interview I have tomorrow and nothing looks good on me right that's very different from I'll never get this job I look terrible I can't possibly find anything that looks professional enough right in one we're bad and in the other I'm just having a bad body image moment and I'm naming what it is that's hard about this moment it's really hard to figure out what to wear for this interview or date or insert whatever so that's just the first part and it it it reminds me of positive psychology where um I used to apply this to sport which is you finish a practice instead of saying oh my God I'm so terrible I'm the worst rower in the world I had a bad practice I lost my seat race whatever we could also say I didn't get great sleep last night I had a hard time focusing I didn't have a good practice right not I'm bad but this just sort of naming the situation so that's step number one can you relate to that and yeah for sure definitely I mean that's what I try and get people to do is like don't it's not a personal thing it's it's the situation and and being a sometimes it's hard very hard for people to see and listen to their thoughts though and and work out what is at the root of it they can got in this habit of like blaming themselves and and not really listening to that voice you know it's they're listening to it but they're not actually realizing how much damage it's doing and you know I had my son yesterday was got he had a bit of a meltdown at the climbing wall and I said would you talk to me like that and he went nope and I said well don't talk to yourself like that either you know you don't need to it's just being I guess compassionate towards that rather than putting the blame on yourself and and being a bit more 100% And that's the third step which I'll get to in a second but yeah when when we talk we don't want our kids doing that right and I've had with my son too as well like you're training talking to yourself like that like yeah why would you do that and to think of all the times I did that for myself right um but I I also think like you can do both and right so bad you have to get it out as well yeah yeah okay I'm doing that thing again all right I'm GNA at least practice okay okay okay what's the situation let me take the attitude out of how I'm describing it I don't feel I don't feel great in my brown Unis suit really nervous about the race tomorrow yeah right just describing it without the attitude it's the first step and then the second step is being really curious so what is it that's high stakes about the interview tomorrow what do I think I get to feel if I find the perfect outfit you know being curious about what we're after and what it what are the higher Stakes feelings that we're dealing with um that's a really important thing to get curious about and I do that with my kids too right what is it about this situation if you look like so and so what would you get to feel so being curious about that and then the last thing is just acknowledging it right like ah it's really a big deal to this interview tomorrow or like this is a scary race that you're having tomorrow and there's a lot on the line for you just bringing some compassion for the moment that you're in and why you may be having big feelings because at the end of the day Deb and I who my co-author really believe that body image is stepping in to try and help us manage overwhelming Feelings by saying oh here's something you can fix here's something change and guess what if you fix and change it oh there's all these promises ahead of you right yeah but it doesn't it last for if you get the promise it lasts for like whatever five minutes or so and then we got to do it all over something else yeah something else will come in and so go ah you've gotta do it again yeah in some ways it's the same thing with a good practice or winning a race like we still end up having to do it all over again if unless we can internalize how to relate to ourselves in a satisfying way yeah definitely it's like when you've done a race  so you don't need to worry about getting sometimes it's about acceptance of what people are going to think of you if you don't do well in that event or something and it's like putting that to one side and thinking it's okay yeah I used to still okay I used to think like when I reflect on my moments of Victory right when I won the significant ones like it was like just I would get several hours of just beautiful self-acceptance like you know I felt so good about myself but yeah then it would fade yes um so the the rewarded Victory is very different from the comfort with ourselves that we have to actively cultivate that yeah a long time yeah because it's an external validation isn't it when you do well or you have that which is good as well you know and that's fine and we need that as well as the self-acceptance don't we we need the both really in tandem so yeah you've talked about curiosity self-compassion and you've talked a little bit have you got any other examples of that put into practice maybe that you can give from an athletes P perspective one of the things I like is to jealousy right I'm a jealous person I get jealous people all the time I've always been jealous and one of the things that we say is that when we get jealous often it's we're initially drawn to somebody's something external like oh I want that external attribute that they have you know and then we can get caught then it goes from like oh I want that to like uh jealousy and envy and I don't have that and comparing which feels icky but what we like to really challenge people to do is say what do you imagine that person with amazing arms right or really strong legs whatever it is you want what do you imagine they get to feel in their life what do you imagine they have in their life because we're always creating a story right that person who looks like that feels like this and has all these other things and when we get curious about what we imagine that other person gets to feel or what their life is like we get more information about what we actually want more of yeah and then we can say well how do I get more of that we may still want whatever arms that look like that or whatever but we have more control over oh I imagine they're really adventurous and they go off on the weekend all the time with their friends hiking in the mountains or whatever it yeah we could do more of that right um so it challenges us to say this is the kind of life I think I want more of because the the body part or the visual is is portal to something else we imagine they have so that's a practice that I engage in myself and I we like to ask people to consider as well yeah I I think that's great and maybe it's like more oh that person inspires me like it's it's like you can almost reframe it like that and then it's not so negative either it's more like I'm not jealous of that person they're really inspiring I really want what they've got because they're inspiring me as well right what do they have and what do you want they have yeah yeah definitely and it's yeah and you can't always you know if they've got a different life situation you can't always have exactly what they have but yeah you're right you can definitely use it as a tool to to get in sort of delve into what fires you up and what gets you excited that's great that's really good so go ahead no you go I was gonna say one other thing I mean I think as as athletes we're very embodied and we're not I'm far more embodied now you know that I work out for an hour a day than I did when I worked out six hours a day right um because I have built a relationship with my body whereas before I was commanding my body to do things all day long and sort of there and not there you know because you can be your body because I need to make sure I move the or in this way and I need to be present but I'm also kind of dissociated because this is really painful you know so there's of this dance um so another practice is to just be curious about our own Sensations um we really like Sensations because that's the body's language right to feel warm or Buzzy or tight or you know to just be more Curious and aware of how our body feels in response to our various environments um because again so often as athletes we have to push down how our body feels we have to dissociate from disregard it uh to get the job done yeah so when we're not competing or when we're out of you know when we're in more leisurely times um to just tap into our body and Sensations and be curious yeah definitely and that is quite tricky to do when you're training for a big event you know when you're doing an endurance event a lot of it is about just overriding that I'm tired I don't want to do this session it's just like yeah so but there are like you say there's times when we can do that so there's times like you know if you're in your off seon or whatever and you you know there's no point in pushing yourself to Breaking at that point there's there's other times when you want to save that and I think if athletes can think of that like Okay can use that then but at this moment I'm going to focus more on my sensation in your body and and listening a bit more to it rather than just going nope but I think you and when you do that sorry when you do that then it's gonna help you later on as well to a certain extent because you know I think sometimes people just go too far and they push too much and they they don't it doesn't work out well long term really but again you know there's a lot of encouragement but we but yeah so that checking in with yourself how is my having a relationship with your body and not just your performing body I think yeah is how does my body feel and does it get a voice here um yeah and when we're in an intense competition period like probably not right so it really more offseason work and the other thing I would say is to kind of get to know yourself and like plan for bad body moments right like so days off used to be really bad body image days right you're not working out you know those were times when I could count on feeling negative body moments or um again we're talking about these events there are certain times when we can plan to have negative body image and so how do we want to handle it how do we want to deal with it because when we know it's coming it's just like I'm G to feel really nervous before this race I'm gonna want to puke and run away whatever when we know it's coming we can be prepared with tools and uh skills to address it yeah and so what kind of thing would you use in that situation to prepare so how would you go about that well again it's it's going to be individual but how might I do all right well I'm gonna definitely make sure I'm like hey this is you knew this was coming it doesn't mean anything about your body you know let's just it's here because you know you feel uncomfortable when you don't train or you take a rest day like sort of explain it um what makes you feel better oh I feel better when I wear like comfy clothes I feel better when I spend these days talking to other people because I get engaged you know um when on these days I want to you know drink a lot of water or whatever it is um but and then experiment with what helps you I want to talk to someone about it I want to name it to somebody else um yeah or I want to distract myself from it there's a million ways to manage it but um running experiments and not but not you know if we're actively trying to address and take care of ourselves rather than going around the loop of like oh well I'm going to work out anyway even though I really need a rest day um I think that's when we can strengthen some new muscles and as you know like athletes are good at being tolerating discomfort so we can also just say like this is a little uncomfortable but I know why I'm doing it and I can handle it yeah it's just that balance isn't it of getting it right and I think that's always a struggle for people is like when is the point when I ignore it and when do I need to and I I think practicing those exercises is going to help you to tune in a little bit more and understand and be able to make that decision no this is not a good idea to train on this day because I'm just completely wiped out but maybe I need to go for a walk or do gentle stretching because that helps but you know it's the same with some of my clients like I have some clients that cannot take a full vacation and I'm like okay well you know why don't we map in a couple hours you know so you don't feel so overwhelmed or you you feel connected right so it's just playing with things and running experiment yeah definitely that definitely will impact on like your performance later on as well because I think the more connected you are to your body the more you can help it perform better yeah but as we know sometimes when we connect to our body it's uncomfortable yes just naming that it's not all like rainbows and unicorn no no I know so if we don't you know practice those techniques what kind of what could happen what what are the risks of ignoring uh you know or just going with the bad body image and and kind of listening to those voices if we don't address it what can happen what kind of spiral can we go down well me I think we we we've we have experiences of the Spiral and we just keep on them you know and it's uncomfortable to dislike your body and to not like how you look or how you feel um and it yeah it's really uncomfortable I could speak from personal experience and I don't that for anybody and I think that um like anything it's practice it's discipline it's it's trying new things I 100% believe in working with other people I think we move things faster that way yeah um yeah but so I think the greatest risk is not feeling like yourself fully and not feeling comfortable in in your own skin I don't know what do you think is a risk yeah I think so and I guess there's the danger of us just not being present with other people as well you know like our relationships are going to be worse with other people if we're not in a good relationship with ourselves then you can't you kind of absorbed with that and can't necessarily connect with other people so well that's why I think it's amazing that you had you know someone with you that you could connect with like that because a lot of people I think feel this way but they just don't they don't even want to admit that there's something going on there so yeah to be able to do that yeah I think with you know I always say if somebody thinks somebody else hasn't eating disorder is really valuable to reflect that back I'm concerned about you for the following reasons but body image is usually invisible and we don't always know that somebody else is yeah we don't talk about it I remember like I had a friend years ago and uh I remember I used to have like bad just days when I'd go oh I feel so fat and like you know say that kind of stuff and she was a little bit more weightier than me not you know but she wasn't as Slim as I was and she said to me once how do you think that makes me feel if you're saying that and I was like oh I'd never even thought about it and I think you know as women we have to be able to say actually it's not okay to talk about yourself in that way and you know because it affects everybody it's not just you it's it's everyone around you and the people that you interact with if they're hearing you saying that then they're feeling bad as well so if you can kind of talk about it and say actually we shouldn't be you know talking and to have spaces where you can talk about it I think it's important to have spaces where you do create safe spaces to talk about I mean I always say you know I I love our book and I'm so proud of it and I don't think at the end of the day it's as valuable as being in a room of people in a safe space being able to talk about our body image in a constructive way because that is just so healing to realize you're not alone that other people have the same challenges and to hear different people's stories and to um you know start to develop a relationship with your body image we always say like couple therapy for you and your body image there's this whole world in there and we when we get to know it we can just like you know taking our partner to couple therapy when we get to know them better yeah interact more effectively yeah definitely and so what you're talking about you know is mindfulness and CBT those things are mentioned in your book do you want to explain a little bit about what CBT because I I love CBT okay yeah so cogni behavioral I cognitive behavioral therapy you know we talked about it a little bit in the loops but you know being very learning more about the connection between our feeling our thoughts and our actions and um you know I talked about it a little bit I have an overwhelming feeling very often I decide there's something wrong with my body and I need to fix it and then I'm going to engage in all these behaviors as a way to improve myself right and then and but then if we actually like map that circle out we have this in our book where we have a little we call it the rotary exercise we can map out for our El what that looks like once we see it then we're going to experience it differently once we've made it conscious and we've called that out and we can do that for body image I do it with my corporate clients all the time with you know the patterns that happen with them yeah so how do you use cognitive behavioral therapy in your work well I think it's just more I don't know if I do it sort of I don't map it out I sort of think it more because I I did but I think I probably did start when I first started looking at it I probably started mapping things out but it wasn't necessarily CBT it it's come from all sorts of books that sure pretty much say you know that a lot of things that you read about your mental training psychology it comes down to a very similar thing you have a thought you make it mean something and then you try and fix it or you take some action or you don't or you know there's there's that kind of pathway and if you interrupt it then you can change things so I think my it's not quite as like official CBT but I mean lots of things that you read are so yeah they say very similar things and it's a great it makes complete sense it's very logical isn't it that's what I like about it it's like I feel like this for that and this is what I do and so you can sort of see it and think oh that's bit crazy and the other lens that we take is internal family systems which just says that we can have lots of different parts with lots of lots of different takes on the situations or jobs so I could have one part that is you know I um want to train for this event I one part no I want to take it easy and I want to have a fun time you know another part we can have very diff Parts with very different ideas about different things in our lives and they can sometimes be polarized so a lot of people say like I don't understand why I worry so much about body image I don't think of myself as a vain person right um that's something a very common thing and then another part that's like but I want my body to look this way so just allowing that we can have a lot of different voices and desires Within in us uh is thing that we like to give permission for yeah yeah and being listening to that and being aware of it because otherwise it's really confusing it's like what's going on why do I feel so conflicted so yeah and and all and so one of the things I just do with my clients all the time is like let's name all the different perspectives and voices and let them all exist even if they're fighting yeah and that's great really good place to to start looking definitely awesome um and so I also wanted to touch on as we age our body image and how that changes and these tools you know we want them in place really to help us through a transitional time really in in our life so I find that a lot of well two things one that a lot of folks will have achieved relative piece with their body image and then they go through the age related changes and you know your butt moves over here and your hips move over there and you know this moves over here and they have a complete body image like ah I need to body image just gets loud again I need to change I need to stop this I need to fix this so that's normal I've experienced it a lot of my clients have experienced with a lot of women I've talked to um so just normalizing that it's almost like you know again it's sort of like puberty like what's going on and how do I this or control it and I think that um it's a process and I think that the process does involve some grief yeah you know um I did an Instagram post about like trying on a bikini and talking about you know there's just this moment of like H I don't like that and even if I wanted to fix it I can't fix it like it just it's fundamentally changed and that left me feeling very powerless and kind of scared and I had I had to grieve right that that my body changing in ways that I couldn't control and so I think it's like a combination of you know Spandex and grief and you know like getting some new clothes or you know it's like yeah just one approach but you know trying different things and you know even with all the age related interventions we could do um you know I talk about this moment when I had like one screen up with a manuscript and one screen up with some like you know product or procedure I could do to help me with my aging body and I was like wow I'm such a hypocrite or like how can how can these two things coexist and you know I really wrestled with that and in the end I sort of decided like I just don't want to come at this fix it procedure from a spirit of self-hate I don't want to if I ever decide to do it I have to do it like from a spirit of self love and not like you have to change yourself Whitney or you're unacceptable no one will ever want to talk to you right so um I didn't up end up doing that thing but that's sort of how I'm navigating it myself personally is um if I'm in that like oh I hate this about myself and I have to change it that's I don't want to I don't want to act from that place I want to do some digging and get in there with somebody else to have a conversation about it yeah and I think you know there's there's so much that you can do as well so accepting it it as you say comes with that grief of like what you're actually you know it's your Youth and all the things that you could do as well you're thinking my body's it's not recovering as well identity it's like really threatens our identity yeah there's a lot there's a lot in there isn't there that's happening at that time and um you know I think like you say trying to fix it in I know time or it's like you you can't stop aging our bod will win yeah no matter what race we want to win in the end of the day our bodies going to win yeah it just work exactly yeah yeah and I I think it's I mean there's an opportunity there if you haven't come to terms with your body image is to actually go okay I really do need to to get on top of this now because it's not going to get any easier yeah I mean I say I've never been more comfortable in my skin and like I'm really struggling with aging there's a lot of things I don't like but I sort of found my way with holding it and even holding a lot of the negative thoughts I have um but I don't like it it's not easy no it's not there's lots of good things about it as well though totally like you say you know I feel way more confident and comfortable now than I did when I was in my 20s and and I don't like what's happening to my neck it's all true yeah yeah exactly I'm like make sure you take the photo from up there thank God for a lighting yeah oh that's funny okay um so yeah the book is out now isn't it and people can get it where y out yeah and is there anything else so you've got the podcast untrained as well that people can listen to and they can find out more about your approach to um body image if you want to just give me some ideas what they are sure so we have body image Inside Out is our website andite out is our Instagram account um follow me on LinkedIn Whitney auto where I talk about untraining and Body Image yeah and we have some right now there we we will add some virtual ones but we have inperson workshops for clinicians and okay folks who just want to learn more about body image and okay both work with folks individually so oh brilliant that's really great okay um and this I just thought about another quick question about Coach so if coaches are kind of interested in this how can they help their athet how can they help athletes and in this way with body image I I think bringing somebody in um you know a counselor or somebody trained in this to help people have conversations like bring somebody in for the teams to have live conversations um and also do education around Eating Disorders I think it's super healthy to know like because it's I think there's often a fine line and sometimes Sports can mask that fine line yes especially Endurance Sports or weight restricted Sports uh so just to because often the teammates will pick up on stuff so give folks um instructions like here's what you do if you're worried about about yourself here's what you do if you're worried about other people here's how you can practice new ways of being with your own bad body image moment so um I think getting a qualified person in to work with the team is a great idea what do you think what and then getting the community sort of involved you know having a community involved yeah definitely I mean I I do onetoone coaching so it's a bit tricky unless someone comes to me with a specific like this is making me feel like that then I don't don't know unless they're going to be comfortable talking about it um so yeah it's tricky but I would encourage people to talk about it you know don't don't hide that because it's you know we there's things that you can do definitely like I said body image and needing to sorter healing are not individual sports no definitely not oh and it's been lovely to chat with you Whitney thank you so much and uh yeah I'll Point everyone in your direction I'll put the links in the um description on the podcast for people to get in touch and uh yeah good luck with everything you too thank you thanks for listening today have a great day take care bye for now