Let’s close our eyes and imagine a world where mirrors and body shaming don’t exist.
How does that make you feel?
If we could adopt a life where we become less dependent on social media, social pressure, and comments, we could create a life where we are less harmful to ourselves.
Our mind and body connect like a domino effect, what you say to one reflects on the other.
According to NCBI 69-84% of women exhibit body dissatisfaction, which leads to dieting and eating disorders, overexercising and other weight control behaviors.
Have you ever wondered how external people can affect how you perceive yourself as well, including family and friends?
That feeling of having to be perfect or have a certain body shape as someone else, comments, or behaviors shapes how we perceive ourselves.
We should always be careful how we manage our words, we women tend to be very sensible when the subject of how we look comes to any conversation.
We judge and compare how we look instead of celebrating those little flaws that make us unique.
The more we compare the more dissatisfied we are with our bodies.
Sadly dissatisfaction with our bodies can sometimes lead to physically, and emotionally unhealthy lifestyles.
Dieting…
Dieting and exercising aren’t the solutions to look like we want, research shows that even moderate dieting increases the risk of developing an eating disorder when we don’t get the result we want.
Dieting is not sustainable, you can’t do it for the rest of your life, instead focus on eating a balanced diet, including a wide variety of foods so you can nourish your mind and body, exercise regularly do something that you enjoy (it could be yoga, dancing, swimming, anything that works for you).
When we become flexible with ourselves we tend to get the results we want.
Stressing our body creates this cape that shields us from losing weight.
The same comes with overexercising to change our body shape, according to NASM, when we overexercise the fatigue associated with overexercising has effects on our mood and energy levels causing irritation, sleeping problems, anger, and lack of enjoyment.
In the long term, according to CDC, we can develop rhabdomyolysis (a medical condition where our muscle tissue releases protein and electrolytes in our body causing heart and kidney problems).
You can also increase the risk of injuries and muscle strains since we don’t give our body time to heal.
We should be focusing on developing a healthy relationship with exercise that is focused on maintaining a healthy weight.
The damage we create on ourselves regarding our body image takes time and effort, we have to be patient with our progress. Here are some tips that can help you negatively in this journey.
Also, there are psychologists, dietitians, and other health professionals that focus primarily on body image that can help you to improve your relationship with food and physical activity.
HOW TO IMPROVE YOUR BODY IMAGE
- Don’t be afraid to talk about your feelings, share your experiences with other people, your battle is someone else’s battle.
- Right down patterns that have guided you to be dissatisfied with how to look and reflect on those actions.
- Make a promise to treat yourself with compassion, and learn to listen to your body.
- Throw away your weighting machine, weight is relative.
- Respectfully exit the room with negative body talk on the table, you own your body, not anyone else!
- Focus and learn to appreciate the good things about your body, we all have flaws, and celebrate your qualities and emotions, rather than focusing on appearance.
- Give yourself a break, we all have ups and downs, learn how to back up when you take a step back, applaud your baby steps and be proud of your achievements.
- Start by doing any exercise that you enjoy and seems fun to you without obsessing about losing weight, instead do it for your mental health.
- Eat and exercise to improve your health, not your body shape.
- Don’t be afraid to ask for help, your emotions are the most important factor of yourself.
“Just because we have acne, tummy rolls, and chafing thighs doesn’t mean we need to be fixed. PERIOD!” - Mike Zazon
