Welcome to Day 19 of the 30 Days of Encouragement series. This series encourages you to trust the process, extend grace to yourself as you step into the unknown, and keep going even when it is difficult. 

Today’s post is about practicing loving your body.  

Loving Your Body When You Don’t Want To

This is more or less a continuation of last week’s post, Loving Yourself. It keeps circling me, so I will go a bit deeper with it. I would be thrilled to tell you that the practice of loving yourself is all ups and has no downs. Unfortunately, that has not been my experience…nor any other woman I know. Like most other things, some have struggled with it more than others. Everyone on this planet has insecurities over their bodies in one way or another. While some individuals can accept their bodies as they are, others get caught in a nasty spiral of shame or self-hate. I used to belong to the latter category. I had to learn to love my body even when I didn’t want to or didn’t feel like it.  

Speak Love

I firmly believe my current physical state is due to the genuinely hateful things I would tell myself when I was younger. I was constantly criticizing and belittling myself internally. My words then turned into actions because that is how it goes. Thoughts and words always, always precede action. The action comes from how you identify yourself. I identified myself as lazy and unworthy (though I didn’t realize that at the time), so why would my actions involve caring for myself? Peeling back the layers and getting honest with myself about what I was grabbing onto in my mind helped. It is deceptively easy to float along with your thoughts directing the boat without realizing what you are actually communicating to yourself. Once I began connecting the dots of words leading to actions, I began to change how I spoke to myself internally and externally.

Now, what are some small ways to begin to shift from body-hating to body-loving? Here are a few tips I’ve used that have helped me.

• Begin to compliment yourself OUT LOUD.  If you are not used to saying nice things to yourself, this initially feels weird and disingenuous. However, it is necessary. You are trying to learn a new way of engaging with yourself, which takes time. Really focus on the places you like, even if it is the same compliment over and over. Just like everyone has areas they wish looked a little different, we all have areas we like. Once you get comfortable complimenting yourself, other places begin to jump out at you because you have shifted from looking for parts to critique to looking for spots to love.
• Become curious about what you are communicating to yourself with your actions.  By this, I mean begin paying attention to your actions and whether or not they are affirming you love yourself or are sabotaging. For example, I would not buy clothes in my current size to “encourage” myself to lose weight. Thus communicating to me internally was that I am not worthy of looking nice at my current size. Looking nice has to wait until I am slimmer. See how that is not actually encouraging or communicating love to myself? In reality, looking lovely now, regardless of size, is the way to express appreciation and love for myself. Doing so will encourage me to take better care of myself and express gratitude rather than criticism. Remember, clothes are meant to fit you; you are not meant to fit them.
• Learn how to be photogenic.  I am dead serious about this one. I will feel gorgeous and sexy, then I will see a picture, and POP goes that bubble. You are not ugly. You just don’t know how to take flattering pictures. Same here. Look at anyone in the public eye, and you will find stunning and hideous images of them. Are they attractive, or are they ugly? They are neither all of the time. They know how to play up their assets. Learn how to use yours. Once the image in the photograph begins to match the image in your mind, magic will happen. Belief will start to back up those pleasant feelings, and change will occur for the better.

You can do this!

Until Next Time,

Sarah