I have this vision of myself where I’m looking radiant and beautiful, I’m stylishly dressed and completely in command of my life. I’m happy and successful and have the most amazing experiences with wonderful people.
It’s a lovely vision, but doesn’t actually have much basis in fact. In reality, I’ve just quit my full-time job and I’m scrambling to build a business to replace that income. I spend much of my life in track pants with no makeup and bed hair. I’m stressed, scared and scruffy. And I’m sooo fat!
Everything I read tells me that healthy habits are what’s important, not the size of your body, and I do want to feel more confident. But its not so easy to just stop hating my body. I’m finding it very difficult to just turn off my internal dribble about the size of … well, you probably know how it goes.
TAKE SMALL STEPS
Darla Breckenridge, MS, a psychologist specializing in binge eating at Green Mountain at Fox Run, in her article When Body Love Feels Phony on the Weightless blog says if you have a long term history of self hate, then aim for body neutrality rather than body love. Trying to make the leap from hating yourself to loving yourself in one go is going to seem strange and well, phony.
Instead consider it a scale with complete self loathing at one end and complete self acceptance at the other. So long as you’re moving up the scale then you’re moving in the right direction. Aim to feel better and step outside the negative self talk a little bit at a time.
Here’s how:
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Acknowledge that the negative self-talk is there.
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When you hear it, breathe as a way to create the space so you can move from reaction to response.
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Validate the body hate. Say, “I know you and though you might be trying to help me, I’m going to try it a different way.”
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Practice progressive affirmations, starting with body neutral ones and growing into body positive ones, as you feel ready. An example might be starting with the neutral statement, “It is important to take care of my body,” and moving onto, “I bless my body with love,” when it feels authentic.
Well, that doesn’t seem too hard. I can do that.
