A Generous Plan For Your Body And Your Business. Far too many business owners (especially women) hold themselves back because of how they feel about their bodies. But what if you could have a generous plan for both your body and your business?

As meaningful business owners, we cannot ignore the system and culture in which we operate. And there’s no escaping the fact that how we feel about ourselves – both about our abilities but also our value and rights to take up space, have a knock-on effect on our businesses.

So on today’s podcast episode, Coach Meredith Noble and I discuss how our body image, and the fact that we’re swimming in the sea of fatphobia that is our culture, affects our ability to really step out and make a change in the world.

But let me back up a bit.

It all started with an email landing in my inbox:

“I’ve been thinking about getting in touch for a while because I’ve been wondering if you’d be interested in having a conversation about women’s bodies and how we bring them into our entrepreneurial lives. I was listening to Amy Porterfield’s podcast a while back and she mentioned that she limits the amount of video she does in her business because she’s self-conscious about her body. … It made me realize just how much body insecurities are affecting our work lives, whether we’re beginner entrepreneurs or much more established. I dream of what we women could do if a major portion of our waking lives wasn’t obsessed with getting or staying thin, or shame about being too large!”

Meredith Noble

I couldn’t agree more. When I talk about feminine conditioning, I talk about the challenge many of us have in taking up metaphorical space in the world – and we can’t ignore the connection this has to the fact that, for women especially, taking up physical space. The fact that to be a fat woman in this culture is to be generally considered ‘less than’, when our value as women is often primarily based on how ‘attractive’ other people think we are.

The study “Fat Phobia of University Students: Attitudes Toward Obesity,” found that women are more likely to experience fatphobia than men. And more horrifying still, according to The National Eating Disorders Organization, From age 6 to 12, 40-60% of all girls are concerned about their weight or are fearful of becoming fat. Aged 6!

So is it any wonder that how we view ourselves through this prism of fatphobia can dramatically impact how visible we’re willing to be in our businesses – even if we’re super successful like Amy Porterfield?

Meredith and I really dig into this in our conversation and I learned a ton – from what Heath At Any Size actually means, how diet culture messes with our heads, and how we can start to climb our way out of this collective hole and build meaningful, world-changing businesses – whatever our size.

About Meredith Noble