Are you unhappy with your body? Do you dislike your body? Do you hate it even?
If your answer to any of these is yes, what do you think about when someone tells you to love your body? Does it seem like you never could?
Maybe you can’t right now, it is quite difficult to jump immediately from loving to hating. But don’t forget that there’s a lot of stops in between them to work toward.
Acceptance is the first place to go.
Accept that this is what your body looks like now, this is it’s health now, and this is the truth of what your body can do now.
Accept the truth.
You may then ask, “Why would I want to accept something I want to change so badly?”
Because acceptance is more likely to lead to positive change than hate.
Acceptance doesn’t mean you have to stay this way forever. It means you’re not constantly hating, rejecting, and looking at your body with disgust. None of these are going to contribute to feeling better about your body. In fact, they’ll probably lead to self-destructive behaviors, like binge eating, because if you think all these negative things about your body, you’re probably not going to care about doing good things for it.
Acceptance is what will help move you in the right direction.
When you look in the mirror you can either insult and disrespect yourself, or you can look for the good.
What do you like about your body? You’re not allowed to say nothing!
I know you can find something. Your hair? Your fingernails? Your calves? Your eyes?
Now what do you appreciate that your body can do? Can it walk? Can it see? Can it laugh? Can it feel happy?
We get so focused on what we don’t like about how our bodies look that we can forget that they’re meant for so much more than how they look. Our bodies are meant to DO! They are the reason we are able to even live life. That should count for something!
Look in the mirror and purposely say to yourself, aloud, something you like or appreciate about your body every day. It can be something you see or something you can do because of it.
Either way, you’re teaching yourself to focus on those aspects. Those are the ones that are going to lead you away from hate and dislike and toward acceptance.
The truth is that you have parts of your body, they look this way now, there are things your body can do, and you get to live because of your body.
So would you rather spend your days feeling hate and dislike or feeling acceptance?
That’s what it really all comes down to – deciding how you want to feel.
How you feel is directly affected by how you think so you can think nasty thoughts about your body or you can think the neutral truth.
I suggest pursuing acceptance because to me, it feels way better than hate and dislike.
“Take care of your body. It’s the only place you have to live” – Jim Rohn
