How can we love our bodies when we say they aren’t perfect?

Many of my clients have spent their lives feeling imperfect, wishing they were thinner or looked different in some way. Body image and weight are connected intimately. (Read my previous article here)

But how do you fall in love with your body when every day you wake up and feel like something is wrong with the way you look? Is it your arms, your thighs, your stomach? All of you?

Why should you “fall in love” with your body anyway? Isn’t the frustration and dissatisfaction more motivating? Often people will tell me that if they dropped that, they would just eat like crazy and get even fatter! I can’t tell you how many times I’ve heard that.

I find it is just the opposite though. The more we in fact “love” or appreciate ourselves- and STOP all the negativity aimed at our thighs or any parts of ourselves, the more we can eat normally and not binge or restrict. It’s truly just the opposite. You don’t have to take my word for it. I have more than enough client success stories to prove it. It just works. (Read their stories here)

If we focus on a problem, we create more of it. How can we focus on what is right and good instead and create more of that?

So how does one do this?

I know, it feels impossible. Trust me, I know. But it is not and you can make a new choice. This is the difference between people I think. We either want to make choices in our lives and feel empowered or we want to avoid responsibility. Hey, I’ve been there so I’m not judging here. Sometimes we have to check ourselves and ask how we can take responsibility in our lives.

At times taking responsibility feels impossible, but it is where our true power lies. It is our only power perhaps- the power of what we want to think or believe or do.

Here are the three steps you can take to love your body when you don’t.

The first step in releasing negativity about the body is to choose to start loving your body instead. Choose it! For many it is near impossible to start choosing without support, but it can be done if you don’t want to get that support. My recommendation is to be willing to change how you view yourself and your body. Then the most important question to get on track with body image is to look at what is really upsetting you in your life and being willing to stop focusing on your body as the problem and address the bigger issues. I have found that weight is never about weight, but about life, living and happiness in general. These are good things to put our focus on instead of a new diet.

The second step is to find tools to help release the deeper root beliefs that created the problem in the first place. My favorite tools are meridian based therapies because I know they work time and time again. I have created my own way of working with women based on energy and intuition at this point that goes deeper faster to the core issues to be released, but it’s still energy healing therapies. This can take some support and sometimes time but it does work and it provides permanent relief from yo-yo weight gain and food obsession. EFT tapping is my favorite tool to access the deepest root causes for a struggle with body image and weight.

The third step is to have a daily practice or ritual of finding peace. It could be anything that works for you. Mine changes all the time. It’s just about what works and inspires you at any given time. I like sitting for 5 to 15 minutes in a seated position with a candle lit, breathing in a focused way, walking in nature, being with pets, tapping, yoga poses, praying. Find your peace and make going to it a daily ritual. We all have access to peace, it has never left us. We just have so much distraction and thoughts messing with it sometimes we don’t realize it. It’s ok if this is just a practice and you find it hard to have peace. It will come if you keep practicing and when it does, there is no negativity, no judgement, no right and wrong and story of who we think we are. It is truly healing to let go of all of this, if even for a few minutes each day.

The focus on our bodies or our weight or food as “the problem” creates more of the same in many cases. Natural weight loss is possible when we release this negative focus instead.

When we let go of our stories of ourselves anything is possible, even loving ourselves when we had a million reasons not too.

Blessings Goddesses~