What If Weight Loss Was the Answer?

Let's pretend for a moment. 

What if losing weight was the answer to

• Reversing, preventing, or maintaining a medical condition? 

• Making you feel 'better' (a.k.a. sexier, more attractive, more worthy or 'enough', etc.)

While it may be true that weight loss may help with medical conditions the problem is and always will be that intentional weight loss is not a permanent solution. 

So while many 'health' gurus argue that diets do work (often called 'lifestyle plans', etc.) because there is often weight loss when there is calorie restriction or extreme exercising, for most, these solutions aren't sustainable long-term.

For all of you who are saying something like...

I just think I look better and feel sexier when I'm thinner.

Feeling sexier or more 'attractive' is completely subjective. Feeling sexy or attractive is based on our thoughts about our bodies not on our feelings. Thoughts create feelings, not the other way around. So, if you can change your thoughts, your feelings will eventually catch up. 

Lastly, hingeing our size, weight, age, bank account, etc. to validate our worth is a losing battle because we'll always be trying to hit a moving target. Our self-worth is unconditional. 

I know that many of you may understand this logically but still struggle to reconcile this in your hearts. 

If this is you, I see you and want you to know that it's natural to feel this way because our culture values physical appearance more than most things. This is especially true for women. 

In the end, the answer is body acceptance, cultivating a radical self-compassion practice, and making more frequent deposits in our self-worth banks to name a few things. 

Ready to fast-track your body image recovery? Tap the Let’s Connect button below to schedule your free 20-minute connection call.

You don't have to do this alone.

What if Self-Care Served a Greater Purpose?

Most of us know that self-care is wonderful and necessary. It's an opportunity to take care of our emotional, physical, and spiritual needs so we can feel recharged and renewed even if only for a little while. However, what if self-care served a greater purpose?

In terms of healing from negative body image, which is often coupled with a strong lack of self-worth, self-care plays a significant role that I'd not considered until I did a mentorship with Summer Innanen this past summer.

Has it occurred to you that every time you engage in some kind of self-care, you are sending a message to your brain that you matter? It can be the cushy kind of self-care like a mani/pedi or it can be the not so cushy kind like setting a boundary with a family member or saying "no" to an invitation that just doesn't safe for you right now.

Self-care is important for all the reasons already mentioned. However, in terms of uncoupling the way we look from our self-worth, it’s very useful. That’s because every time we engage in self-care, we are also making a deposit in our Bank of Self-Worth. Sadly, because our culture is so obsessed with smaller, younger, fit, able, white, bodies, it's important that we consciously make these deposits in our Bank of Self-Worth because they help to counter these persistent and invasive messages. This isn’t an invitation to stress ourselves out when we're not able to engage in as much self-care as possible, but the idea is to be more conscious that our bodies usually perform and feel better when we’re more intentional about it.

Although they are helpful, listening to podcasts, repeating mantras, and belonging to anti-diet groups, etc. promotes a sense of belonging, being very intentional about making these self-worth deposits is what will really make the difference in healing negative body image and healing from dieting/restriction. Why? Because engaging in self-care is saying that you're good enough through your actions.

Making these deposits begins to dilute the toxic messaging that the way we look determines our value because most know intellectually that it doesn't. Now we just need to keep reinforcing this belief in our bodies because that's where the feelings reside. After all, getting out of our heads and leaning into these feelings in our bodies is how we heal.

Although I've been successfully helping my clients navigate negative body image for nearly ten years, this mentorship gave me new step-by-step frameworks and tools that I'm loving sharing with my clients because their shifts have been significant!

Ready to fast-track your body image recovery? Tap the Let’s Connect button below to schedule your free 20-minute connection call.

You don't have to do this alone.