4 Ways To Love the Parts of Your Body You Hate
4 Ways To Love the Parts of Your Body You Hate
How do you love the parts of your body that you hate? Unfortunately hating our bodies is something that starts at an early age for many women. We start pinching our sides, looking in the mirror and thinking to ourselves, “if only I looked like ____ , then I would be happy.”
Learning to practice body neutrality, and positive self talk around our bodies is a constant process. Listen to the podcast about loving your body here, or read on for four ideas to love yourself a little more.
1. Challenge your belief that a certain body size is better
If you were to close your eyes and imagine the perfect body, what would it look like? How does that body compare to yours, your mothers, your friends?
Now think through why you imagine that body to be the perfect body.
Did you get those messages from movies or tv shows growing up? Was it something your friends talked about at sleepovers? Take mental note of wherever you got the messages.
Ask yourself, what does that body get you? More success, more attention, or more happiness? Being skinny or having a smaller body doesn’t necessarily correlate to those things.
Hopefully this simple thought exercise will help you see that oftentimes our standards of a perfect body are actually just messages someone told us.
Beauty standards vary from person to person, so even if your body were to become that version of beautiful, you still wouldn’t be perfect by someone else’s standards.
Ask yourself, what if I started challenging my belief that a certain body size is better than my body?
2. Find an exercise routine that you really love
Would you eat or exercise the same way if it didn’t promise a body change?
Why do you really work out?
What if you changed your thinking to find a workout routine that you loved and was life giving?
According to MedlinePlus, working out can help manage your stress, blood sugar, and your risk of heart disease.
Find something that you love to take care of your body for more than just losing weight.
3. Follow body positive influencers on Instagram.
There are many health and wellness influencers who are shattering the idealistic and unrealistic pictures of “health” on Instagram.
Here are some recommendations of people to follow:
4. Learn to be grateful for your body… apart from how it looks
One of the best things you can do to love your body, or to practice body neutrality is to have a gratitude practice around it.
Pause and thank your body for everything that it gives you.
You could be grateful for the ability to move your body, to not be sick, to be alive, or even to be functioning as intended.
For example, if you don’t like your stomach, you could say, “I am grateful that my stomach nourishes my body.”
Our bodies are a vehicle to love others, to serve, to move and much more! To listen to the full conversation on loving the parts of our bodies we hate, click here.
Learning to love our bodies takes time, and constant practice. For additional learning on body image, listen to How To Have Better Body Image With Registered Dietitian Caroline Shermer.