From Big Fat Blog on loving vs accepting your body:
To me feeling love for the body is not as important as accepting it and honoring it. … Choosing to treat my body with respect and honor, to act lovingly towards it, is vital.
There are parts of my body I like more than others, but I have to say that I feel very accepting of mine. Part of that is because I am an old lady who wears purple … it’s very freeing to be past the age where your biological clock has stopped ticking so loudly. And part of it is my approach just leaves me feeling pretty damn good. I will take peace of mind over being a size 0 any day.
As an aside, I think HAES is a wonderful framework. And yet, here I am on a weight-loss journey. How do I reconcile it?
Well, I guess partially the way Debra of Just Maintaining reconciled weight loss maintenance and size acceptance:
So here I sit, living honestly a maintainer’s life (sans style), and yet knowing the veracity and compassion that is Size Acceptance. There is no question about reconciling them. They’re both truthful. I don’t need to reconcile that grass is green and the sky is blue.
For me, I suppose it’s my cockeyed optimist viewpoint. Although dieting is a terrible weight loss strategy (largely because the emphasis is typically on weight rather than health), that doesn’t necessarily mean (to me anyways) that successful weight loss is impossible.
No, I see this as a quest … one that’s a bit like a Chinese finger puzzle. As long as you try to solve the puzzle with the obvious solution, you fail. And so I persevere, exploring the less obvious.
Weight Maven is written by Beth Mazur. Beth believes that obesity is more symptom than cause and that the real problem is our Western diet -- especially sugar, refined grains, and industrial oils. Beth writes about nutrition, ancestral health & food policy. And cats! 
I have read many of the Fierce Fatties articles and I understand their position about Health Acceptance at Every Size. The bloggers have lost and gained many times and have had to face bullying and discrimination. I believe that it takes great courage to say, “Stop-no more dieting. I am accepting my body.”
I also agree with you that successful weight loss is possible-but it takes perseverance, education and a mind-set change. It’s not easy.
In my case, I had gained almost 30 pounds because of lack of activity and bad eating habits while I had my last two jobs. I have since lost 20 pounds and want to lose a few more just to be able to button a couple of pants that I used to wear. It’s odd.There would have been a time that I would be desperate to get to a certain magic number. Now I don’t really care. It doesn’t bother me that I won’t be the size that I was on my wedding day over 30 years ago. I believe that’s a type of size acceptance, in my own way.
Good luck on your continuing quest, Beth. You’re an inspiration to a lot of people.
Thanks MrsS … that’s very nice of you to say!
Hi Beth. You are an inspiration. I hope this is not hubris, and forgive me if you’re familiar with Mary Oliver this poem, but its so lovely and works so well with your theme I have to risk it. (Aside: I LOVE that you do daily quotes. I’m a quote addict. 135 page word document of quotes and counting. Perhaps we shall compare at AHS.)
You do not have to be good.
You do not have to walk on your knees
for a hundred miles through the desert, repenting.
You only have to let the soft animal of your body
love what it loves.
Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine.
Meanwhile the world goes on.
Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain
are moving across the landscapes,
over the prairies and the deep trees,
the mountains and the rivers.
Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clean blue air,
are heading home again.
Whoever you are, no matter how lonely,
the world offers itself to your imagination,
calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting-
over and over announcing your place
in the family of things.