This topic came up a few times this week…and it’s only Wednesday!
The topic is: Loving/hating your body.
A client confessed to a few of us at the studio that she always focused on her body in a negative manner.
Always complaining to herself (and maybe others, I don’t know) that she had ugly knocked-knees. She worried about looking like a hunch back with a big, pregnant like belly (like her mother.)
She was hating on her body.
Another client wondered “how did I let myself get like “this.”
I used to beat myself up, standing in front of the mirror and tell myself how this body part was ugly, this part was fat, and so on.
Wherever these thought habits came from, likely from our childhood, possibly innocent comments from our family or comparing ourselves to our friends or girls in Teen-Cosmo, they don’t serve us now.
These non-loving words we use towards ourselves do nothing positive, but they do prevent us from personal growth. These words and thoughts keep us stuck, they keep us from thriving in this area of our life.
You cannot make permanent and positive changes or impact on something you hate.
I bet you know the plant experiment story. The one where you have two plants in the same environment except one plant you hate on it with negative thoughts and talk and the other plant you love on with positive thoughts and language. The plant you “love” thrives and the other one dies…yeah, that story is also you when you say hateful things about your own body.
I do believe it’s valid to recognize when you are not healthy, when you are overweight or not taking care of yourself.
Notice this and then take action to change, but still love your body.
Taking steps, making honest effort to improve your daily actions, may or may not have the results you were hoping for, however, if you begin eating better and exercising regularly, you ARE doing better and your body IS changing, even if it’s happening only at the cellular level.
It may take a lot longer than you expect to see those outward changes.
It’s like this for some of the ladies in my F.A.T. Method program. They don’t all see changes on the scale, but they feel better, their clothes fit better or people tell them they look better….and they ARE better and healthier!
If you speak negatively about your body then do this: look at yourself in the mirror and remind yourself of all the good things your body does/has done. You may have carried and birthed children, cared for an ailing parent, walked a 5k, jumped in mud puddles with your toddler, moved some furniture…find something, anything to love on and be grateful for the body you have right now.