"I definitely have body issues, but everybody does. When you come to the realization that everybody does — even the people that I consider flawless — then you can start to live with the way you are." - Taylor Swift
DOES THIS SOUND FAMILIAR?
You have set yourself a weight loss goal.
You begin to severely restrict your food intake.
You feel miserable and have no energy but desperately want to reach your ideal number on the scale.
You reach your goal weight or are very close to it, but you still aren't happy.
You feel like it isn't enough just yet.
You feel the need to lose just a little bit more before you can feel good about yourself. You then think back to a time when you weighed less and thinking "I looked so good back then"
But when you think about how you felt about your weight back then you realise that even then, you never felt good about your body or your weight.
You realise that it doesn't matter how much you weigh - at any weight you just aren't happy with your body. You still feel that you have just that little bit more weight to lose...
WHAT IS THE REAL PROBLEM?
Ultimately, how you are feeling isn't about the weight at all.
Your thoughts that arise may be needing to lose weight, needing to look "better", or needing to change your appearance. It certainly seems as though their worries and thoughts relate to their weight. However, when you reflect on how you have felt about your body throughout your entire, you may come to realise that whatever your weight was or is or has been, have never felt good enough and you have never been able to truly accept or embrace your body.
How you are feeling has nothing to do with your weight, it is much more to do with you being very harsh and critical about yourself regardless of what you weigh, look like, achieve professionally, or do in your personal life. If you continuously talk to yourself in a very unkind and critical way, you will never feel good about yourself no matter what you do or look like.
If you were to stop and tune in to that little voice that you use to talk to yourself daily in your own head, do you tend to be kind and compassionate to yourself or do you tend to be very unkind, harsh and mean? Constantly being unkind and critical traps you in a vicious cycle of always feeling the need to change and never feeling good enough.
Therefore, the true underlying factors of all this is actually a very poor body image and self-esteem. If you continue to talk to and coach yourself in a harsh and unkind way, you will never really give yourself permission to just be happy.
WHAT CAN YOU DO TO FIX THIS?
Instead of trying to punish yourself thin and never feeling good enough, learn to love yourself to a place of wanting to nourish your body.
When I'm coaching clients, I help them adopt a more compassionate internal voice and to treat themselves with much more kindness and compassion. When my clients make this shift, not only are they able to feel happier, but they also feel good about their body and their food choices because they naturally want to nourish, nurture and take care of themselves and their bodies.
If you would like support in changing how you feel about your body and improve your relationship with food, book a free consultation with me today.