Developing a Healthy Body Image

You’ll receive many great benefits from appreciating, respecting, and learning to love your natural body shape.
You can love yourself just the way you are while still working on becoming healthier and moving toward the size and shape you prefer.
Try these strategies to increase your comfort with your body:
1.  Appreciate everything your body can do for you. Consider that your body can climb, run, walk, dance, sleep, laugh, dream, and myriad of other things. That’s impressive.
2.  List the top 5-10 things you love about your body. It might be your hair, eyes, skin, bellybutton, and feet. You know what parts you like. Take a few minutes to think about it or ask your friends.
3.  Acknowledge that physical beauty is only skin deep. That applies to certain physical attributes. However, the physical beauty caused by vibrant health – from eating nutritiously and exercising – is inside and out. The beauty of your personality can also cause others to see you as a great beauty, even if you notice flaws.
4.  Keep your thoughts positive. We all have the power to choose our thoughts. Think positive things and avoid letting the internal criticism creep in.
5.  Wear clothes that make you feel good. We all have stuff we like to wear. Go with the clothing that makes you feel like a million bucks.
6.  Realize that society’s role models for the physical ideal are impractical. Most of us could not look like a male or female fashion model regardless of how much work, time, and money we spent. It’s simply not possible. Those people are one in several million. It would be like the average person trying to play center in the NBA.
7.  Think about the most impressive people throughout history. Ask yourself how much their body or appearance mattered to their success. Do you think it mattered at all? The most important accomplishments in history were not accomplished with beauty or brawn.
8.  Ask yourself how you’re benefiting from disliking your body. Is it making you shy, miserable, or less effective? Is it keeping you from being able to focus on creating the fulfilling life you desire? Chances are, all the results of your disdain are negative. This realization can help put you back on the road to thinking more positively about yourself.
9.  List 5 reasons why it is silly to believe that the more slender or attractive are happier. You can certainly think of 5 without too much effort. Every group of people has members that are unhappy. That includes the beautiful people.
10.  Exercise because it feels good. Don’t exercise for the sole purpose of losing weight. Enjoy moving your body and lifting your mood by naturally releasing your endorphins with exercise. If you need to lose weight, the accompanying weight loss is a great bonus!
Take some time to implement these tips to help you enjoy and appreciate your body more. It’s important to keep the whole issue in perspective. Focus on the positives and avoid any negative thoughts about your body. Think about all the incredible things that your body does for you each and every day.
Once you’re able to stop focusing on whether or not your body looks “perfect,” you can move forward with things that are most important to you, like creating the life you desire in the here and now (not “someday when you look different”).