Thoughts on body image
I have never met a woman who is happy with her body.
I meet and teach women every day. They differ in shape, size, skin colour, age and stage. Some are doctors and some are runway models. Some are pregnant, some are post-partum, some are struggling to conceive. The one thing they have in common is that they find it all too easy to make negative comments about their own bodies, typically veiled as a joke. A client once said to me, “can we swap bodies for a couple of months, so you can whip mine into shape.” She didn’t realise that I too stand in front of the mirror and wonder what could be “improved.”
If I have learnt anything on this topic, it is that there is no physical goal that, once reached, will give you a feeling of peace with your body. If you think “I’ll be satisfied once I reach this certain number on the scales”, you wont’t be. The finish line will simply move further away.
The need to look a certain way is ultimately just the need to be loved and accepted. Humans are relational creatures, we are intrinsically motivated to act (consciously or subconsciously) in a way that makes us feel like we ‘belong’. So if we operate under the belief that if we are more beautiful, or have a particular physique, we will be more accepted and adored by others, we will constantly be conjuring up ways to achieve that physique. What the body ideal “of the day” is changes by the decade, as promulgated by the media.
So the starting point to fostering a better relationship with yourself is to accept that when you have bad body image days, it is not because there is something ‘wrong’ with your body, something that needs to be ‘fixed’ or ‘changed’. Rather, you are having a bad body image day because you are human, and it is your instinct to want to belong and be accepted.
Here are some journalling prompts that can help you begin to reframe the way you see yourself and your physical body:
Write a list of all the people in your life who love you. Ask yourself, why do they love me? What about me are they grateful for? Write down ALL of the reasons you can think of. Once you have done this exercise, check to see if your physical body made it onto paper. I suspect not.
Write a list of all of the parts of yourself that you do like, both physical and spiritual. Shift the focus away from what you don’t have to what you do have.
Write a list of all of the things that you love to do. Pilates, of course, but maybe also hiking, cycling, dancing, walking, sex. Thank your body for enabling you to do the things you love. I often say at the end of class, “let’s give thanks to our body for allowing us to move in the way we just have, not everybody is so lucky.”
As morbid as it seems, remind yourself that some people are fighting their own bodies just to stay alive. While your body is working for you, their bodies are working against them. Those people are not worried about the last 5kg, or the size of their breasts, they are worried about whether they will have time to live our their dreams.
Emma x
