3 Ways to Love Your Body Better

Did you know that at any given time over 90% of women have at least one negative thought about their body every. single. day!  Yup! Every. Single. Day.  The relationship you have with your body is important.  Just as important as any other relationship.  Perhaps that is a new to you!  You are in a relationship with your body?!  Your body image is your relationship with your body.  It is how you think and feel about your body and how you believe others see your body.  Are you one of the 9 out of 10 women who think negatively about their body?  Do you want to improve your relationship with your body?

In this article I will share 3 ways to improve your body image and as a result your self-confidence…so let’s dive in.  I call these the 3 Bs to improve your body image.

Be Amazed

What is your body?  Your body is a gift from God.  It is the vehicle that your spirit travels in as you move through your mortal journey.  And you know that your body was designed in the image of God’s body.

Because you have a body, you get to experience hot and cold, wind and rain, laying still and running, hunger, fullness, cries for help and the sounds of laughter, sunrises and sunsets, the smooth sweetness of ice cream and the crisp salty-ness of chips salsa, and we get to feel all 3,000 plus emotions available to us.  3,000!  Wow!  Not just the basic 5 of mad, sad, bad, glad and afraid!  Our bodies are pretty dang amazing.  Whether or not you like your body…it is amazing.

One I thing that is extra amazing is your skin.  It is the largest organ of the body.  It weighs about 10 pounds and when stretched out would cover 16-22 square feet.  It keeps important things in and harmful things out.  That one part of your body is amazing.

I encourage you tomorrow morning before you get dressed or before bedtime tonight to strip down to naked and stand naked in front a full body mirror and be amazed.  Look into your own eyes and give yourself a wink while thinking to yourself – this is my body and it is amazing!  Notice your toes and feet – how they connect you to the floor you are standing on.  Notice your legs - even with the bumps and lumps - your perfect amazing legs.  Then notice your hips and tummy how they are shaped and love them.  Go all the way up noticing and being amazed at the complexity of your body. 

It is okay to giggle a bit.  Let’s be honest, love you Heavenly Father, but bodies are kind of funny looking.  There are lots of interesting and funny looking parts to our bodies. 

Be amazed rather than annoyed.  Smile at yourself rather than frown.  Love on your body by simply being amazed by it.

Be Grateful

Let’s move to the next B of improving your body image.  Put your clothes on and grab a blank piece of paper and a pen for this one.  But, hey if you are enjoying the nakedness – stay that way!  😊

You are going to write your body a letter!  This may seem a tad weird to you but hang with me.  Journaling is the way to get what you are thinking out of your head and on paper in front of you.  If you get hung up with the word journaling – you can call it whatever you want.  A diary, log book, observations, minutes, record – don’t let what you call it stop you from the work of thinking about what you are thinking.  Taking it out of your brain so you can look at it.

 What does your letter contain?  Your letter will have 8 sentences or short paragraphs.  I know you are now wondering how long with this take?  I’d say set aside 10 minutes.  Give yourself and your body the gift of 10 minutes to express gratitude to your body.

Here we go!

Start your letter by writing Dear Body.
And then finish each of these sentences…

I’ve been meaning to tell you…

I admire you for…

I’m thankful for…

I remember when…

You have shown me how…

You told me…

I’m grateful for…

I love you because…

I wrote this letter to my body just this morning.  It was so powerful.  By the end I was in love with my body.  I had such gratitude, compassion and love for my body. 

The sentence or short paragraph that surprised me most was the last one.  I love you because – I’ll share what I wrote to my body. 

“I love you because you are my friend.  I do all of my life with you.  You have been there through all of it – every joy, pain, win, loss, discovery – all of it.  I love you for that.”

One more I want to share…maybe it will help someone by knowing they are not alone.

“I’ve been meaning to tell you I’m sorry for being so mean and judgmental about and to you.  I’ve been mean in overfeeding you and under loving you.  I drop into judging you when I compare you to other bodies.  I’m sorry.”

Oh, my goodness, what a great letter to write!  Write it all out.  Discover what you think and feel about your body. 

Once you have what you think and feel out on a piece of paper in front of you, you can then take a look at what you are thinking and discover the areas you might want help with so that you can love your body better.  I promise the easiest way to get authority over what you are thinking and believing is to dump it out of your brain onto a blank piece of paper.

Be Curious

For the last B I want to share a parable with you.  The parable of Great-Aunt Venice. 

I admired my great-aunt, Venice.  She was this beautiful lady with snow white hair who lived alone in a quaint house in Utah.  She was classy, kind and spunky.  I saw Venice about once per year when I visited family in Utah.  Other than this once yearly visit, I didn’t have contact with Venice.  So is surprised me one day when she called me!

She called me to tell me that she thought my hair looked horrible.  Somehow, she had been shown pictures taken at a family function she could not attend and she thought it was important to call me to tell me she thought my hair looked horrible! 

I am not exaggerating!  That is exactly what this old woman did.  She didn’t beat around the bush she came right out and told me my hair looked bad, it was way too blonde and looked – well bad.  

I remember telling her that it wasn’t really THAT blonde – it just looked that way because of the lighting in the picture.  I also remember thinking to myself “crazy old woman!  Who does that?  Who calls someone to tell them their hair looks horrible? Why do old people think they can say whatever they are thinking?”  😊

Anyway, just two months later I was on a business trip and sitting in a coffee shop alone having breakfast.  This coffee shop had mirrors on all the walls.  As I sat there eating, out of the corner of my eye, I saw this woman sitting across the restaurant and thought to myself…she is fat!  Oh, honey you need to lose some weight and look at her hair – it looks horrible.  Way too big and blonde!” 

And then I realized…I was looking at my own reflection!  It was me.  The woman with too many pounds and too blonde hair was me.  Aunt Venice was right!  My hair did look horrible! 

In that moment I remember the thoughts that went through my mind.

1.     Not only was Venice right about my hair she was also kind in that she didn’t call me out on my weight.

2.     My next thought was one of wondering…why hadn’t anyone else told me my hair looked bad and I had gotten so fat?

3.     How was I going to change this?! 

The 3rd B of body image is to be Curious.

Rather than being mad about what I saw in the mirror I became curious.  I had questions.  Why hadn’t anyone else told me and how could I change what I saw?  And why hadn’t I noticed my weight and hair myself?  Why hadn’t anyone told me?  I asked my sister and best friend.  They told me two things…they didn’t want to hurt my feelings and they thought I liked my hair that way. 

The most important curiosity was how I was going to change what I saw.  When I saw the reality of myself out of the corner of my eye, I knew what I wanted to change – my weight and my hair – what I was curious about was how.  And I also knew that I had already known my hair looked bad and my weight was out of control.  I just had been ignoring the truth, the reality.  I mean come on…I kept buying bigger clothes…no mystery there.

I invite you to be curious about your body.  Allow yourself to see the reality of your body.  Is there something you want to change – because you want to love your body better?  For no other reason than you wanting to love your body better. 

Ask yourself, what do I already know about how my body works that will help me improve my body?  When I allow myself to see the truth in pictures or mirrors what do I see that I am over doing or under doing that I want to change so I can love my body better and show it respect by allowing it to shine forth. 

Please don’t misunderstand me…I am not talking about morphing yourself, cutting and sucking yourself into a version of the human body that doesn’t really even exist for some reason outside of you. 

I’m talking about how you can optimize the God given gift of your body by being well groomed (without too blonde too big hair), conscious of your posture and keeping a smile on your face. 

I’m talking about treating your body with love…not over feeding it and under moving it.  I’m talking about you loving the body God gifted you and being a steward over that amazing gift.  Ask God to help you.  I do this.  Sometimes I loop him in on my eating protocol and ask him to help me stick with it…to even help me be interested in other things rather than eating something. 

You can take the body you have and be curious about it.  You can explore and discover ways that you can make the changes you desire to magnify and honor your body for no other reason than you love your body and want to honor God, thanking him for your amazing body.

Now what?

Let’s review the 3 Bs of a positive body image.

Be Amazed.  Your body is one of the gifts God has given you.  Revel in that gift.

Be Grateful.  Give yourself and your body 10 minutes to write your body a letter. Take a look at what you wrote down and then consider challenging the parts of your letter you want to clean up so you can love your body better.

Be Curious.  Rather than being mad about the reality of your body, be curious.  Be willing to be open to change and improvement as you love your body better.  Be curious and explore ways that you can change what you want to change.  What do you already know that you can put back into practice to help those changes take place?  Be curious instead of mad about your body.