To All Us Body-Haters
How are you feeling about your body these days?
Sadly, 8+ women out of 10* say they live with body-dissatisfaction.
Not surprising since most of us have thought of our body as “The Problem We Must Fix” since we were teenagers. Starting with TEEN Magazines in the 60’s - and running right through the phones in our hands right now – we have a constant stream of unrealistic skinny-body images marching before our eyes.
The long-standing belief that our bodies need to be thinner before we can fully enjoy living has stolen entirely too much from us.
The belief that we can criticize our bodies into thinness is also painfully untrue.
These unkind myths have taken…
Too much of our emotional/relational energy
Too much of our joy
Too much of our precious time
Too much of our mind-space
Too much of our wild and free playfulness
It’s time for this to end.
Many of us have been feeling this way about our bodies for so long that we might not even realize that we can challenge it.
But we can.
And we should.
We can change our minds.
We can think in new and liberating ways.
As a Liberated Eating Coach, I get to witness first-hand how transformational this reframe is for the amazing people I get to walk with.
When they stop obsessing over being a certain pant size – and instead set their hearts on discovering what practices make them feel vibrant and alive – beautiful and freeing transformation happens.
Here are just a few of the wonderous things that can begin to happen for you:
You’ll feel nourished instead of either starved or stuffed
You’ll feel a strange and wonderful desire to play
You’ll enjoy your meals without food-anxiety
Your confidence will begin to grow
You’ll feel energized as you begin to trust yourself and your body again
You’ll begin to appreciate and enjoy your own unique characteristics
You’ll experience a new-found energy – in mind and body
It feels surprisingly good to have a growing friendship with your body after years of fighting and estrangement!
When we take the courageous leap to accept and honor our bodies as they are right now, the innate partnership we were born with begins to resurrect.
The truth is, our bodies have always been on our team.
We’ve just been trained to ignore our body-wisdom and listen to “experts” instead. It’s shockingly freeing to realize that you have been the real expert on YOU all along!
And here is, perhaps, the most profound change of all.
When we’re no longer straining over every bite we take and every tenth of a pound we lose, The Bigger Picture begins to come into focus.
We realize that this body-acceptance thing is much bigger than any one of us.
The generations coming behind us are watching.
I work with amazing women all the time who lament, with tears, that their mothers and grandmothers still diet, still fret, still miss out on life because they feel unacceptable.
One fellow Liberated Eater heard her elderly aunt say she had to hurry up and lose weight so she would look good in her casket. I’m not making this up.
Girls, the insanity can end with us.
We can claim it.
We can declare, each of us, in our own ways and words…
I relinquish my striving. I lay down my tired old weapons of self-condemnation and comparison. The harshness stops right here.
I choose to step completely out of the battle for thinness-for-the-sake-of-thinness.
I am stepping into the joy of living! Living fully, vibrantly and freely in the only body I will ever have.
I am deeply grateful for this body:
My best memories have been experienced through this body
The most fun I’ve ever had was possible because of this body
The last thing I saw that took my breath away was seen through these eyes, in this body
The most moving music I’ve ever heard came through these ears
The dearest expression of love I’ve ever given and received was given and received through this body
This body is uniquely mine.
This warm, pulsing vessel houses the essence that is me.
My body has been my constant companion. It was with me before I breathed my first big gulp of air, and it will release me as I breathe my last.
“This body, right here, has my deep gratitude and respect.”
As we repeat our new perspective to ourselves, and to others on our same journey, we will begin to forge a life-bringing New Normal.
Please hear me loud and clear when I say that this is not resignation.
This is not giving up.
This is quite the opposite.
This is. Love. Respect. Gratitude.
And these three choices cause all living creatures to flourish.
Including ourselves.
What will happen as droves of us stop scrolling and longing for someone else’s body and deeply appreciate our own?
Where will that level of care and devotion take us, and our health, over the next month? Year? Five years?
And.
What will happen for the beloved generations-to-come as we ALL walk in gratitude collectively?
I’m in! How about you?
Cindy
*Boring but important studies: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3745223/
Thank you Eugenia Maximova for this moving image.