Did you grow up with family members on a diet? Do you talk negatively about yourself? Here’s why you need to stop complaining about your body
Words will never hurt me… or my body?
As long as I can remember I have been paranoid about my body, either my weight or my shape. I have compared myself to other girls and women my whole life and I have never been happy with what I have seen – until very recently.
Everyday we are exposed to media that tells us that we’re not thin enough, beautiful enough, young enough, tall enough, toned enough etc. And of course there is a product we can buy to make us perfect. All we have to do is spend money and we too can reach perfection.
Disregarding that the “perfect” female body has changed a lot over the decades we will never be able to reach peak perfection because either our physiology or our psychology will stand in the way.
I can’t be 5 foot 8 anymore than I can starve myself into a size 6 without health problems. I will always be this height and I will never be that size. Am I to then forever be unhappy?
“In a society that profits from your self doubt, liking yourself is a rebellious act”
We have a choice, we can be unhappy forever – always striving to change our bodies from a place of self hatred and disgust
OR
we can start to try and change the conversation.
How to start liking yourself a bit more
1. Challenge your beliefs
That “problem” area that you think you have, the one that you developed as a child because someone once told you that you should be ashamed of that? It’s not a problem.
You think your thighs are too big? Says who?
You think your stomach isn’t sexy? Says who?
You think you should be a specific clothing size? Says who?
Challenge these long held beliefs about your body. Who first told you that this was a problem? When did you start to become worried about this? Why?
This is a long road of contradicting your belief system but whenever you find yourself having a negative thought about your body, challenge it. Is this your own thought, or someone else’s?
2. Start small
You’re really not comfortable with your stomach? Ok. What about other parts of your body that you do like?
Instead of me sitting here telling you that you should love every inch of yourself, I’m gonna tell you to focus on the parts of you that you do like.
Why does this help? We pay attention to what we focus on. If you spend all of your time paying attention to the parts of your body that you don’t like – that will be all you can see. Lets take equal time to appreciate and praise the things you do like.
3. Compliment others
We are conditioned to judge other people, our social media feeds and reality tv shows are full of examples of people slagging each other off and finding fault with everything. Just look at the news to see daily examples of this.
What happens when we start to give other people a break and ease up on them? That translates to ourselves as well. Not everyone is at their best everyday, if we can practice acceptance of other people regardless of body shape and size, we can start to accept ourselves along the way.
4. Be aware of who is listening
Remember that you developed your negative beliefs from somewhere, and if it wasn’t just the media, it was likely the adults around you.
If you are around children and teenagers, be aware of how what you say about your body will affect them.
If you are complaining about your weight and they are lighter – how does that translate to them?
If you are complimenting somebody for looking a certain way and they look different – what message does that send?
It’s no surprise that admissions to hospitals for eating disorders have risen sharply recently – all the negative talk we hear around us is not helpful.
If we can start to change how we talk about our bodies in front of others, we can start to change the way we talk about our bodies for ourselves.
In Summary
No good comes from talking negatively about yourself. It makes you feel bad, it makes others feel bad about themselves and it perpetuates this belief that we must all look a certain way or we will always be miserable.
Is this easy? No. But this is an important life skill – to start being kinder to ourselves and others. Self hatred will get you nowhere.
Ainzlie
