I used to really hate my body. No matter how much weight I lost, it never felt good enough. In this post I delve into the exact strategies that I learned to stop hating my body, that enabled me to get out of my own way and get on with my life.

 

How to stop hating your body

 

 

 

The above photo was taken sometime in early 2013. I thought I was fat! Yes, fat.

I was trying to eat “clean” aka paleo.

I thought about food non-stop.

I was bingeing and purging.

I had an exercise addiction.

I was weighing myself a lot.

I often turned down invites out to eat.

Every time I binged, I felt guilty and worried about weight gain, so I purged and hated my body and myself even more.

 

Quite frankly, I was miserable.

 

It felt like I was trapped in body jail. My body and mind tormented me.

No matter how much I restricted my food and worked out – my body never looked the way I thought it should.

Thankfully, I can now see that my weight was never a problem. I was never fat.

Even though that’s how it looked and felt in my head every day for almost two decades. That’s what living with an eating disorder can do to your mind.

You don’t see yourself correctly. You forget women are supposed to have hips and curves.

It wasn’t until about three years ago that I realised what my body problem was.

 

I couldn’t accept myself as I was.

 

Our perfection and thin-obsessed society certainly don’t make it easy. Well-meaning comments by loved ones didn’t help either.

I also thought if I could just get my weight down to a certain number all of my problems would go away.

The hard truth was, even at my lowest weight I was never happy. Just two more kilograms. Just two more kilograms. I’ve got to get to the magic number.

Eventually, I hit rock bottom. I was physically, mentally, emotionally and spiritually exhausted and could not keep living like this. I felt like I was slowly killing myself and wasting my life away.

Something had to change. It didn’t happen overnight. But with a whole lot of digging deep, lots of false starts and lots of help, I somehow came out the other side.

 

 

But now…? Now I accept my body the way it is. I feel neutral about my tummy rolls, cellulite, love handles, and rosacea on my face. I never thought I would feel this way about my body.

I now describe myself as happy and liberated! The feeling is so good that I’ve committed my life to help other women find peace with their bodies.

Accepting your body doesn’t happen overnight. If you’ve been hating your body for years (if not decades), it’s going to take a little or a lot of time to heal that relationship.

But it’s possible and worth it because when you accept and appreciate your body, you take better care of it and balanced eating and regular movement stops feeling hard and starts feeling easy. Here’s how I did it:

 

Three ways I learned to stop hating my body and feel confident and carefree in my own skin.

In no particular order…

 

1. Be realistic – You can’t go from body hate to body love overnight.

I get asked this question often and the answer is: it didn’t happen overnight, it took a lot of time, energy and effort. It’s not the answer I know women want to hear, after all, we are human and we love a quick fix.

Quick fixes don’t deliver life-long results. We all know that. They mostly deliver weight cycling (loss and gain) and an unhealthy relationship with food.

I invested in professional support.

I tried for years to do it myself by reading books, talking to friends, doing short do-it-yourself courses but nothing worked until I found the right help and support I needed to heal and transform my relationship with my weight and body image.

The good news is, big change is possible and your journey to body acceptance can start right now.

 

2. Do not compare your body with another woman’s

I call it – Compare and Despair!

“if only I looked like that” used to be a regular part of my vocabulary every time I left the house.

The comparison comes from our need to self-evaluate. How do I measure up to her? The reason why we compare is that we live in a competitive world and we undervalue ourselves.

Look at my big house.

Look at me working on location in the Maldives.

Look at my gorgeous family.

Look at my beach body.

Look at my “perfect” life.

It’s all so fake and materialistic but we all have major #FOMO (Fear of Missing Out!).

We are constantly thinking “how do I measure up?” It’s no wonder our default thinking is to constantly self-evaluate.

You throw a little insecurity into the mix and you have an issue ripe for the picking. I can’t tell you how many arguments with previous partners I’ve had because of my insecurities and comparing my body to another woman’s.

It’s the thief of joy, it’s exhausting and our partners hate it. I say this with the deepest compassion, please stop it, right now.

 

3. Stop the fat talk

Honestly, how far has berating and hating your body got you?

Maybe it kicked your butt into gear and motivated you for a few days or a few weeks. But if telling yourself you’re fat, ugly, and disgusting was going to get you the body of your dreams, it would have worked by now, right?

Negative self-talk about your body won’t make you healthy, happy or lighter, or help you love your body. Dissing it actually makes it harder to look after yourself properly, consistently.

If you’re out with your girlfriends and the topic of diets and weight keeps coming up, gently suggest you talk about something other than your bodies. There are literally millions of other interesting things you could be discussing, connecting and laughing about with your besties.

The New York Times wrote a great article on Fat Talk and how damaging it is, here>>.

Because you’re more than a body. Remember that.

 

Choose one of the above actions that you can implement in your life that will move you towards less body hate.

Life’s too short to be at war with your body.

If you need help and support to unshackle yourself from the chains of body hate don’t hesitate to reach out to me here