Body Image Is A State Of Mind

Have you ever had the experience where you looked in the mirror in the morning and thought, "Damn I look great today!" Then, as the day moved on and perhaps you got some bad news or you had a lot of work and an increase in stress and suddenly you looked in the mirror again and thought, "Ugh I wish I weighed 5 pounds less." Our body is exactly the same. It hasn't changed. What has changed is our connection and compassion toward ourselves. The new heaviness we are feeling is not necessarily because of our body but because of how we are mentally processing external events.

Have you ever said to yourself or a friend, “I feel fat today.” Fat is not a feeling. Fat is something that is in our body that we need to be alive. Fat is something we eat. Fat is not a feeling. So when we hear these internal thoughts of I feel fat or I wish my body was different, we can pause, breath, and start to get curious around how we are actually feeling in the moment.

Perhaps we are feeling tired, mentally heavy, sad, frustrated, angry. In naming how we are feeling and stating out loud I feel fear, I feel tired, I feel stressed, we embrace our human experience the way that it is and release our body from being the battle ground of fighting our emotions. We can separate how we are processing our life from our body image and that no matter what is happening externally you can deeply know and trust that you are still wonderful and beautiful just as you are.

Every moment is a new moment where we can catch our internal thoughts and ask ourselves is this the most loving and nourishing thing I could say to myself right now? If the answer is NO then the power and choice is within you to re-shape those thoughts to ones that feel more loving to you just the way you are.