How to Embrace Your Body Even When it is Not “Perfect”

Every month I run a membership group. Last month’s theme was body image. I knew this was an important topic, but did not realize how many deep emotions it would bring up for all of us.

The sadness, pain and frustration so many of us feel when we think about our physical appearance came to the surface.

As I ran the group I could feel the feelings in my body as well. I took a step back after the class and realized how deep-rooted these feelings are.

They are bound up with our sense of self-worth.

How do we get to a place of loving our bodies, even when we think they don’t look the way we want.

Well, I will start by saying: You do not need to love your body to accept it.

Be-friending your body and making peace with it where it is now, at the same time as you heal your relationship with your body and your relationship with food, is key. 

This doesn’t mean we need to love our bodies. It means we need to work on respecting our bodies and where they are at.

So what does this mean in practical terms?

·      We work towards stopping our need to be “perfect.”

·      We stop comparing ourselves to others (especially on social media).

·      We work towards stopping to criticize others and ourselves.

·      We work towards creating a healthy relationship with our thoughts and feelings.

So let’s start with these tools to start healing...

1)    Focus on your positive qualities, skills, and talents.

Make a list of 5 positive things about yourself say them out loud. It may feel weird at first, but our bodies listen to our thoughts. Let’s nourish our bodies.

 2)    Notice your negative thoughts, acknowledge those thoughts, then write 5 of them out. 

Yes, write these out and let’s see if we can come up with a more neutral statement instead. You wouldn’t let anyone else speak you with such negative words, so let’s start re-wiring our brains and stop allowing ourselves to do this. Reach out if you are having trouble with the natural statements. I am always glad to help :)

 3)    Remind yourself that many media images are unrealistic for most of us.

I have worked with a dozen fashion models over the years. Time and time again they are told how incredible they look on the outside, but they feel so awful on the inside. External pressures affect everyone, and are unrealistic for even them.

Start deleting people you follow on social media that make you feel poorly about yourself. Trust your gut -- it has all the information you need to know who is worth keeping around.

Let’s focus on appreciating and respecting what your body can do.