Jess Weiner led a beautifully successful career as an activist and inspirational leader for self-love and body-acceptance, everyday confidently stepping into her size 18 jeans. Then one day, a SPARK.
During a lecture Jess was delivering on loving yourself at every size and living for today, she was challenged by a woman in the audience about how she could truly love her obese body.
Shocked and embarrassed, Jess handled the moment with a firm hand, but always grace and courage. Later in private, that woman’s comment got Jess thinking; it wasn’t about weight, it never was, but what about health?
“It had been 16 years since I weighed myself. In fact, I’d stopped completely when I began recovery from the eating disorder I’d suffered from in my teens. So I didn’t know: Was I really obese? My body wasn’t anyone else’s business, but had I done everything I could to make it my business?” Jess Weiner, Glamour Magazine September 2011
Jess found herself at the crossroads of self-esteem and well-being. She chose both.
Her journey to a healthier self was every bit the challenge it is for all of us, with the added pressure of growing a career built on loving yourself at every size, and here she was, losing weight. Too much pressure to handle? Ha, then you haven’t met Jess.
“My own growth is about whether I believe in myself and love myself.” She’s speaking our language.
If you’re on your own path to well-being, don’t miss this.
SG: The place you’re in now, of looking at self-love in a new, healthy well-being way, do you feel as if your message of self-love before was inauthentic or maybe naive?
JW: My message of self-love before was exactly where I was in my life, and now it’s evolving as my understanding of my own health and well-being changes. I know a lot of women tapped into my story of struggle with eating disorders and my really sincere quest for body-love no matter what size you are and I still believe that. What I wanted to deepen was the conversation about health. You know, you couldn’t have asked me 15 years ago if I thought that one day I would be excited to learn what my cholesterol was; I would’ve said, “Who cares?!” That was who I was. I was younger. I didn’t care as much.
The awakening I had was that the numbers don’t define me, but they’re an indicator for my body as to where my wellness is on a spectrum and when I discovered that I was at a place that I was not satisfied with for myself, I decided to do something about it. But it wasn’t in the same way I might have done it when I was a teenager, which would have been extreme dieting, a lot of body loathing, a lot of body-bashing. I really have [changed my health], over the course of almost two years, thoroughly, lovingly, methodically, with a team of professionals that really support me. I feel like that’s a great example of wellness.
My message about love is expanding to include loving areas of my health that I didn’t really think I needed to know about before.
SG: You speak so honestly about your own negative self-talk. That’s certainly something I experience, I don’t know a woman on the planet that doesn’t, and so often it holds us back from even small changes in our life that we desperately crave. How did you move through past negative self-talk to action?
JW: I think what you just said is really important, I don’t think anybody ever gets fully past negative self-talking. I think that’s a part of being our human experience. What I’ve done is adopt and create tools that help me. The best, I give full credit to Geneen Roth, author of “When Food is Love,” she says, we have negative voices, they talk to us about what we just ate or what we can do, what we need to do and they’re really harsh. So what we can do is ask yourself in those moments, “Why am I having this voice? What is it serving? What does it want me to pay attention to? Does this come up pretty frequently? If so, when does it come up and why?” I’ve been able to discover that I have a pattern with my negative voices. They tend to come up when I’m procrastinating. They tend to come up when I’m not being truthful with myself about how I feel. I’ve practiced the gently inquiry to myself, “What’s going on?” versus trying to heal a wound with a sledgehammer. That doesn’t work and it’s really painful!
Negative voices are opportunities to hear something about ourselves that can teach us how to love ourselves more. When
we can look at them like that, then they don’t have the ultimate control and power over us.
SG: How did you set a health goal, and most importantly, stick to it?
JW: I looked at my numbers [weight, blood sugar, LDL, HDL, etc.] and I went, “Okay, I want to do something about it” and I set goals. For me, goals are really important because guess what, I don’t get motivated if I don’t have a goal – a lovely thought doesn’t do it for me, I need something to aspire to. I also worked with my doctor to set realistic goals.
It was a genuine journey for me. I really — I understand that everybody gets motivated to look at their health by various levels of crises. For me, seeing [my test numbers] was enough to wake me up, to say, I don’t want to go down this road, so I’m going to take another path.
SG: You have such a heart for girls and young women; for mothers, sisters, aunts – all of us impact a young woman in our lives in some way – how do we start this conversation about healthy self-love, self-image with them?
JW: We have to start when they’re itty-bitty and we have to start with realistic language. I’m all for “Love your body no matter what. You’re a superpower, you can do anything.” Obviously, I want to tell children that they can do anything and be everything, but I think we must talk to girls very lovingly and realistically about their bodies, their health, their being, and their self-worth. It’s never too early to tell little girls, “I think you’re adorable and I love your personality and the way you smile and you’re so smart.” There’s a way that we can fully begin to validate and talk to our girls that doesn’t set them up to believe that they’ve got to be only one thing or the other – only pretty, or only smart.
I would add, for adult women, we must lead by example. But let’s not be so hard on adult women, I mean, we’re really just like young girls in a grown-up body. We have to work through our stuff. Even women who become mothers, that doesn’t mean that they’ve automatically sealed all their girlhood past hurts, right? It’s important for adults to be willing to be flexible and grow and learn and say to your daughter, “Gosh, you know what? I used to think the same way. I used to think every time I saw Kim Kardashian, that I didn’t look good enough.” Those are the conversations I think we should be having with our kids. Not so much, “Oh, don’t watch that show or I don’t like that person” or “Oh, this is terrible.” Let’s deconstruct for our girls the messages they are receiving, let’s teach them to be media literate and to be critical thinkers because that’s going to grow their confidence as they make decisions for themselves.
SG: With your own journey to whole, are there days you feel “Ugh, I’m so sick of myself”? Personally, 
with all of the self-work, I feel that way all the time!
JW: Are you kidding me? All the time! It’s not easy. It wasn’t easy for me to write [the Glamour] piece. I was getting ready to tell a really personal story about myself that I knew wasn’t going to be received universally well. I took that risk because I’m more concerned with my own growth and that is not reliant upon whether everyone believes in me or loves me. My own growth is about whether I believe in myself and love myself.
What I know about my life is that I am where I am because I make good, hard decisions and I look within when I don’t want to. I am where I am and have what I have because I’ve been willing to take the risk of myself and to disappoint somebody else to be true to myself. And that’s worth it to me. (This is Stephanie…I must take a moment and reflect, when Jess said this during our interview, my body lit up with goose-bumps. Reading it again – same. AH Jess – yes, yes, yes!!)
SG: I always ask, what do you wish you had known at 20 years old that you know today?
JW: You know that gut instinct that tells you to turn left when you think you should turn right? Turn left. Every time you have a gut instinct to do something, do it within five seconds. Don’t think about it. Just do it because inevitably, you end up going left anyway.
SG: (laughs) Yes, but we fight it and end up taking so many wrong turns.
JW: I always think, “Go left, Jess!” It’s not just the listening, it’s the acting. I took a lot of risks when I was 20, but I definitely wish that I would’ve known that my gut was always right. Always right.
BONUS
SG: I keep up with your tweets and posts and you are an extraordinarily busy woman. On top of your career, you are also a dedicated activist, why?
JW: I’ve always had a real appetite for taking action in life; I’m definitely not a dweller. About eight years ago, I created Actionist Network, an eclectic gathering of doers, believers, world-changers and people who have overcome great things and started businesses or non-profits or really involved moms or educators. The more we can all get together and talk about ways to take action and ways to look at our life differently, the better we are; especially in this really fast-paced, disconnected world.
SG: That’s so important, having community around you. You know, that’s the core of HerExchange, women coming together in this powerful way. When has a community lifted you up in a powerful way?
JW: Oh my gosh, the most formative experience that I ever had with groups came at a time when they literally saved my life. When I was in college many years ago at this point (laughs), I was struggling with an active eating disorder. I went to the counseling office to get help and instead of really sitting down and talking to me, this intake counselor thought I could benefit from hearing and seeing other women, so she put me in group therapy. Those eight women [in group therapy] represented a community. They showed me a community of women that could love unconditionally. They helped me imagine a world greater than I could imagine for myself. That group of women showed me the power of community and they were a very instrumental part of my healing process.
So I agree with you, women do better for themselves in their lives when they surround themselves with women who uplift them and honor them.
Ah – AMEN! Thank you for that important reminder, Jess. Ladies, celebrate your community and the incredible women you are – inside and out!
Visit JessWeiner.com for much more.
-Stephanie Goetsch, November 2011
