Will I ever lose weight? Am I meant to be fat forever? These are questions I ask myself from time to time. I never felt like I could love my body in real-time. My weight is and has always been a struggle, but no matter what weight I was, I always desired a “better body.” I used to dwell on my weight and be critical of everything about my body. What I now know, is the worse you talk to yourself, the worse it gets, because it leads you down a rabbit hole. I have come to understand that you have to love yourself right where you are. If you don’t love yourself now, then you won’t love yourself later.
I have struggled with weight for most of my adult life. Even when I’m active, I still struggle with weight loss. I try to be positive but it doesn’t always work. It got me to wondering, how do you accept your body regardless of your size/weight? How do you love the body you’re in? What should you focus on to accomplish self-acceptance?
How to accept your current size/weight.
It’s important to accept yourself as you are. Have you ever looked at an old picture of yourself and said: “I wish I could be that size again!?” But at the time the picture was taken you felt fat?! I can’t count how many times I have said that to myself! If you have ever done that it’s proof that you may not be a good judge of your own size. All the more reason that you have to love yourself right now! Right where you are! You’re not going to love yourself in the future if you don’t start loving yourself right now! The proof is in the picture and your history with feeling overweight in the past when you clearly weren’t! You will never be skinny enough, lean enough, pretty enough or perfect enough to live up to the standards you have set for yourself. That’s why you have to make it your mission to start loving yourself now.
Anti-Diet coach Christina Montalvo wrote an article called Pursuing Weight Loss Was Making Me Sick; in it, she says “I thought my wellness was only measured by how small I could get. No one told me my wellness also meant my emotional state, my mental well-being. No one told me that it wasn’t healthy to be all consumed by the pursuit of ‘wellness.’ No one told me it wasn’t normal to pray to god as I stepped on the scale praying for a ‘good day.’” How are you measuring your health and wellness? Is your obsession to lose weight making you sick? It is possible to be the healthiest version of yourself right now, and that has nothing to do with your weight.
Fitwatch.com suggests that you accept yourself as is. The article says to ” Focus each day on being completely accepting of yourself, body, mind, and spirit. You can even speak to yourself kindly if it helps. Say things like this: “I completely love and accept myself now. I love myself even though I’m not perfect. I don’t have to be perfect to be lovable.” It’s nice to think you will say something kind to yourself when the time comes, but if you’re anything like me, that won’t happen unless you have a plan of what you’re going to say to yourself. Take a moment and think of what you could say to be accepting of yourself, in a moment where you’re talking bad about your body or your weight. What you say has to be something that resonates with you and something you have already thought about. When you’re talking down to yourself is not the time to come up with a new loving phrase or mantra. Have a phrase in your arsenal that you can pull out when needed. There is nothing wrong with writing it down! Personally, if I don’t write it down, it’s lost and I won’t remember it when I need it!
Love yourself and the body you’re in, now!
Love the body you’re in by throwing out negativity and comparison. Often, we consume so much unhealthy content through social media and advertising. We assume what we see is other people’s reality; when in truth, it’s not. It’s the version of themselves that they want you to see. According to WebMD, you should “Ditch the things in your life that make you feel inferior, whether that is body-bashing friends, fashion magazines with supermodels, or TV shows that portray men and women in an unrealistic, sexist way, Silverman says. If a family member or roommate makes you feel bad about the way you look, talk to them directly and establish a ‘fat-talk-free policy,’ she says.” One of my best friends in college never said a word about her weight. She had a fat free policy; she just didn’t talk about weight issues. I loved that. I was surrounded by other young women who obsessed over their bodies and constantly talked about what was wrong or what needed to be fixed. I secretly decided to follow my friends lead because I thought it was so stinking badass that she owned her body and who she was at such a young age!
Consider listening to your own body, like Huffpost.com suggests. The article encourages you to listen to what you are saying to yourself about your body and develop a mantra to re-wire your thinking. The article says “if you’re experiencing a lot of mental drama around your food choices being ‘right’ or ‘wrong,’ Kara suggests the mantra: ‘What I choose for lunch is not a reflection of my moral status as a human being.’” Why is it that once you make 1 bad food choice you say screw it and eat a bunch of other bad things! Eat bad food when you want to eat bad food, but don’t associate that with being a worthless human being. You made a choice. What you do next is also up to you!
What you focus on grows
The more you focus on your body and your weight, the more obsessed you become with it. Wikihow suggests you refocus your attention on something you can control. “Be beautiful, inside and out. Rather than obsessing about your physical appearance, commit to cultivating inner beauty. True inner beauty does not wrinkle or sag, never goes out of style, and will be remembered long after you are gone.” Focus on your inner genius! Who knows what other great opportunities can come from that!
Since we’re on the topic of focusing on something in your life that you want to grow, consider consuming content that is healthy for you! Chances are you are going to consume content like social media, television or magazines. So, you might as well purposely add some positive content about body image. One such positive example is the body positivity movement, which is all about having a positive body image. It’s empowering people to love themselves as is and stop trying to fit into stereotypes.
Question your long-held beliefs about your body and weight. Where do your beliefs come from? What did your family say about their weight or yours? For more on limiting belief’s check out my previous article “Everything you need to know to overcome years of self-Limiting Beliefs.” After you reflect on your beliefs and where they came from, Psychology Today suggests you “think critically about which ones work for you. If particular information is intriguing, try it out to see how it makes you feel. If you adopt a behavior that leads to better physical and/or mental health, and — most importantly — it is something you can sustain over the long term, keep it in your toolkit.” The important thing is you find something that resonates with you.
I recently saw a video on Marie TV with professional dancer Amanda Lacount who is breaking stereotypes about overweight people not being able to dance or be successful! If you feel overweight, are you letting your size hold you back? Are you letting your weight define what you can and can’t do? Stop letting other people put limitations on you and please stop putting limitations on yourself! Let’s break the stereotype together friend! As women, let’s stop obsessing over our bodies and the size jeans you wear!
Everything that I have found and listed above sounds amazing, but part of me would also argue that it is too fluffy and won’t work for everyone. Let me explain!
What has worked for me is having a no-tolerance policy for negative self-talk. I don’t dwell on my body weight and shape. I focus on what I can do. Here’s how it started. Years ago, A boyfriend at the time, heard me call myself fat! He said, I thought you were confident?! I responded I am, but we all have insecurities. He said but you’re choosing to be insecure about your body. I said “true, I guess.” In my head, I had a million excuses and a million reasons why he was wrong and couldn’t truly understand what I was going through. But then I started to think about it. What if I could just turn it off and not feed into the hate and discontent, I had about my body. I started doing that routinely and it helped. When negative thoughts came up I would either tell myself to go for a run or I would say “you’re not talking to yourself that way. You are confident and that’s how you’re going to act.”
Regardless of what method you use, do something that feels right and authentic to you. Choose to keep fighting the negative feelings about your weight. Chose to not stay in a place where you are beating yourself up. Who you are today is exactly who you need to be, it’s time you realize that and own it!
Marie
P.S. Today: Take time for self-care!
[mc4wp_form id=”335″]