Does It Feel Like, "Loving Your Body," Is Only For Other People?
You’re not contractually obligated to hate your body.
I know many people who wake up every morning, and right before they look in the mirror to greet themselves for the day, they feel pure terror. Dread. Fear. We steel ourselves up to brace for the, "flaws," someone else has told us will be there, and we wonder how, "bad," they look that day, and the chorus starts:
"Ugh, gross."
"I can't wear that. Do I have any clean, flowy tops?"
"I'm giving a presentation today; will this hold across my chest?"
"I shouldn't have eaten ____ last night. I never get this right."
We've discussed it before, but it bears repeating: the language you're using has a measurable impact on your perspective.
Many clients come to me unhappy with their bodies, desperately hoping that the program I present will hold all the secrets to body change, and, as a result, happiness. They're disappointed to find out that it doesn't always work that way, and, in fact, countless repeated incidents of this led me to examine my coaching philosophy, such that I no longer coach with a focus on intentional fat loss.
Liking our bodies (and ourselves) is an inside job, one that can't be completed in an hour a day at the gym and a salad every night for dinner. It's a practice, and it often feels unreachable: how many times have you asked yourself, "how do I go from hating everything about my body to loving it? LOVING it?"
It seems a million miles away for a lot of us. It did for me.
(Also, under no circumstances are you required to love your body.)
Fed up with that feeling, I started taking a look at why:
Why did it feel like "loving your body" (or even feeling comfortable in it) (!) was reserved for other people? How do some people look in the mirror, or down at their stomach, and not feel regret? Or rage? or unworthiness?
I found that it's often because, quite simply, they've done a lot of internal work to realize which thoughts about bodies are theirs, and which have been planted there. What I mean is, we live in a society that tells us "fat" is bad, lazy, undesirable, closer to death. Is that true? No (and, even if it were, many of the negative outcomes we associate with, "fat" are more likely due to weight stigma. You can learn more about weight stigma from HAES author Linda Bacon here).
The person you're bashing in the mirror every morning? She's not exactly you. She's the version of you carrying your deepest fears and your harshest judgments. The subject of a painting you've observed with your most critical eye, a lens filtered by societal standards with which you may not agree.
You've created her from a fantasy, and it begins with the way you're speaking to yourself (and about other bodies).
We throw around words like, "lazy," "fat," "depressed," "anxious," "stressed," "failure," and "impossible" like they're neutral, like they're fact, like they're inextricably linked.
How are those seeds you're planting taking root?
That's not to say that depression can be cured with rainbows, sunshine, squats, and positive affirmations. There is certainly more to it than that.
But, when you're feeling down, or ineffective, or like an imposter, are you a friend or an enemy?
The words we choose matter. They reinforce ideas (that "fat" is the worst thing — or even a bad thing — that we can be; that our worth is measured solely by our productivty, so "lazy" is a mortal sin; that "stressed' is a badge of honor; that "failure" is who you are, that's it, forever and ever, amen, and of course you got it wrong this time, because that's what you do).
They paint the self-portrait against which we compare ourselves, ever so subtly.
Every day, we measure our "ideal" selves against our actual selves — the person looking back in the mirror, twirling her hair around her finger, asking if she can be loved *just like this* — and we deny today's iteration joy, peace, and magic if she doesn't reach the lofty ideal given us by storytellers and advertisers. We compare the inaccurate picture we've painted and with which we identify to the airbrushed advertisement version, and we hang our heads and sigh.
Of course they don't measure up. They weren't designed to. There's an industry making billions of dollars redrawing their ideal portrait, banking on the fact that your grotesque, Frankenstonian self-portrait will never measure up.
And it won't. Not because you're not powerful and gorgeous and free, but because neither one presents the reality of who you are.
So, how do you stop starting every morning with a hateful diatribe against your body?
With a small but significant step:
Examine your language and what's behind it, and change the words you're using to describe yourself. See how your relationship with your body changes.
xoxo,
Steph
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