We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Sarah Kimball. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Sarah below.
Sarah, we’re so excited for our community to get to know you and learn from your journey and the wisdom you’ve acquired over time. Let’s kick things off with a discussion on self-confidence and self-esteem. How did you develop yours?
Like many women, I grew up struggling with confidence and self-esteem, especially as it related to my body image. Images of models, celebrities, and now influencers function as ideals of what the “perfect body” should look like. I always felt overwhelmed looking at these images and thinking of the beauty standards I could not attain. In fact, from counting calories to picking apart the things I hated about my body, my mind was completely consumed with negative self-talk.
It was only when I was introduced to the world of Health at Every Size, body liberation, anti-diet culture, intuitive eating, and joyful movement that this took a turn. I read books, watched documentaries, followed Instagram accounts, listened to podcasts on these topics, and was inspired by the messages I was hearing. I quickly learned that everything I thought I knew about health and wellness was wrong. Health is not one-size-fits-all. People are healthy at all different sizes, and more importantly, regardless of our weight or health status, we all deserve love and respect.
The more media I consumed on these topics (and the less media about diet culture or healthism that I consumed), the more certain I was that there was no need to look a certain way to be healthy and happy. I can accept my own body and live a confident life just as I am. Not to mention, I was reminded that my inner beauty, consisting of my thoughts, passions, talents, relationships, and personality traits, is far more interesting and important than my outward appearance.
Appreciate the insights and wisdom. Before we dig deeper and ask you about the skills that matter and more, maybe you can tell our readers about yourself?
I have always loved media about body acceptance, anti-diet culture, and Health at Every Size. This type of media helped me tremendously when I was struggling with my body image. Body-positive Instagram accounts that celebrate and showcase people of all different shapes, sizes, colors, abilities, and identities provided me with a view of beauty that is far beyond the narrow beauty standards perpetuated by mainstream media. Additionally, books and podcasts taught me to reject diet culture and instead follow intuitive eating so I could listen to and honor my body instead of following the made-up rules and empty promises of diet culture.
As I consumed more of this content, I became more encouraged to create my own content on these themes. However, I wanted to go beyond appreciating outward beauty and talk more about our inner beauty. Women are often objectified and diminished to their outward appearance, so I wanted to create a platform to celebrate women’s inner beauty.
My experience at Fordham University, the Jesuit University of New York, also encouraged me to start my podcast. After graduating from Fordham, I knew that I wanted to follow the advice of St. Ignatius of Loyola, the founder of the Jesuits, and “Go forth and set the world on fire,” so I started my podcast Ignited by Inner Beauty to do just that.
When creating this podcast, I took my passion for body positivity, female empowerment, and self-love and truly put these values into action. I have interviewed women from all walks of life and put their inner beauty on display. I’ve interviewed doctors, life coaches, authors, amputees, and more. It has been a privilege to share the stories of incredible women.
Podcasting has been the perfect way to exhibit what inner beauty truly is because while you won’t ever see the people that I’m interviewing, you will truly be able to see how these people are beautiful just by hearing their stories, getting to know them, and learning from their experiences.
In addition to my podcast, I’m sharing inner beauty through my blog, virtual body-positive book club for women, and online store.
I am fiercely passionate about inner beauty and hope that my content resonates with people and helps them reflect on their inner (and outer) beauty.
Looking back, what do you think were the three qualities, skills, or areas of knowledge that were most impactful in your journey? What advice do you have for folks who are early in their journey in terms of how they can best develop or improve on these?
For people who are struggling with body image issues, I would recommend learning more about the following key areas of knowledge, as they were crucial to my healing journey:
1. Anti-diet culture
Diet culture is everywhere, and it is perpetuated by influencers, advertisers, celebrities, and even doctors. It tells us that some food is “good” and other food is “bad” even though foods don’t have morality. It tells us that we need to be a certain weight based on our BMI when BMI is an unreliable marker of health. It tells us that we need to go to the gym to burn off calories as punishment for eating dessert instead of encouraging us to move our bodies in joyful ways. These are just a few ways in which diet culture is present in our lives, and it is undoubtedly harming people because it does the opposite of celebrating our inner beauty. It tells us that we are not worthy unless we are thin. Anti-diet dietitian Christy Harrison even calls diet culture the “life thief” because “diet culture steals your joy, your spark, and your life.” The more I learned about diet culture, the more I was able to recognize and turn away from its lies so I could embrace my inner beauty.
2. Body acceptance/neutrality (not just body positivity)
Body positivity focuses on loving our bodies. While it’s great to love our bodies, it’s unlikely we’ll wake up absolutely in love with what we see in the mirror every day. Instead of embracing body positivity, I’ve found focusing on body acceptance or body neutrality more helpful. Whether you learn to accept your body or even think about it in a neutral way, what matters is that you’re not spending all day thinking about how much you dislike your body. Instead, you can focus your energy on your loved ones, your passions, your talents, and what makes you beautiful on the inside.
3. Challenge negative self-talk
Whether it’s a comment from a family member, a before/after weight loss picture on Instagram, or an advertisement for a new diet plan, these triggers can set us off to spiral and think about our bodies in negative ways. It can be helpful to have some mantras in your back pocket to remind yourself that you are loved and worthy. Here are a few mantras I like to use:
– It’s hard to live a full life on an empty stomach.
– Who is profiting off of my insecurities? Why am I letting them?
– The people who love me care about me because of who I am, not what I look like.
– My weight is not my worth.
– Bodies change, and that’s okay. That’s normal.
– I am so much more than my outward appearance.
Awesome, really appreciate you opening up with us today and before we close maybe you can share a book recommendation with us. Has there been a book that’s been impactful in your growth and development?
There are many books I’ve read and loved that discuss anti-fat bias, anti-diet culture, and body acceptance. In fact, I started a virtual body-positive book club for women because I wanted to dive deeper into these fantastic books.
One book I particularly love is Anti-Diet: Reclaim Your Time, Money, Well-Being, and Happiness Through Intuitive Eating by Christy Harrison. This book is a well-researched and science-backed way of learning more about diet culture. It also dives into important conversations on racism, sexism, and classism when discussing why society values some bodies more than others. Reading this book opened my eyes to the sneaky and harmful ways in which diet culture is present in society and my life. It also taught me how to reject diet culture and free up space in my mind to think about what really matters to me.
In the book, Harrison says, “I started thinking about all the things that we could be doing in the world if we had our energy back, if we had our time back from spending it on some project of trying to be a body we think we’re supposed to be—that if we reoriented all of that energy back into the world, so much more would be possible.” Freeing myself from diet culture opened me up to focus on my inner beauty and enjoy what truly matters to me in life.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://www.ignitedbyinnerbeauty.com/
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/ignitedbyinnerbeauty/
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/ignitedbyinnerbeauty/
