Inspired

Good evening bloggies!

I have been inspired by Caitlin (whose book, Operation Beautiful came out TODAY!!! 🙂 YAY!!!) and by other bloggers like Katie (whose post I love!) to post about accepting, appreciating, and loving our bodies and ourselves.

Many of us– dare I say… all of us? — struggle or have struggled with body image. I’m going to be honest here: I struggle with my body image all the time– and I hate that I do. There are good days and there are bad days. But when will it end? How can I make myself stop mentally beating up on my body forever? Is it possible? I think it is.

Of course, I am a work in progress, I don’t have this down, not even close, but I’m using this special week:

to try to help myself to love me forever, and maybe to help you too.

So what will it take?

Part 1: Ideal Weight, Happy Weight, Happy Body Image, and all those good things: I’ve come to believe that if I feed my body healthy and nourishing food, and if I get in good exercise most days of the week, that should be my happy weight. There’s nothing else I can really do when I think about it. From what I’ve heard, restricting and dieting only lead to problems later.

But how do I make peace with this body? What if I still don’t like it? Don’t love it?

Part 2: Positive Thoughts: Truthfully, there is part of my brain saying “Liza, you sound so hokey right now with this positive thoughts stuff.” But in all honesty, it’s something I’m trying to work on because I think it can really turn people’s lives around. Instead of looking in the mirror and scrutinizing every cell of my body, I need to think to myself about how strong my legs are– they carried me on a 4 mile run. I need to look at myself and think, “Wow, look what you can do.”

I need to think to myself how thankful I am that my body is able and healthy and working and doing everything it is supposed to do. One of the most miraculous things I’ve realized being a science major is how microscopically intricate the human body is. And if one tiny thing wasn’t doing what it’s supposed to do, we’d be in trouble. It’s amazing. It’s amazing that for most people, most of the time, everything runs perfectly. How about that for loving your body?

This is all easier said that done– I know this and feel this. But maybe, if we can just put our judgements aside every now and then to realize how incredible our bodies are, little by little we’ll chip away at that negative body image and see how beautiful we are.