I’ve struggled with body image for a long time as most females do throughout life regardless of shape. I find that sharing my experiences help other women relate and feel understood. Along the way I’ve analyzed my feelings as well as found some solutions and I’d love to share those hurt emotions, thoughts, and solutions with you guys in an effort to relate and connect. I hope that you continue to follow this journey and share alongside me in the area of learning to love your body.

From media, family, social influences and even the medical group we are sent messages and information about our bodies. Some of these body messages are positive, most of them are not. Being a thin girl my entire life I often heard comments about how lucky I was to be thin or not worry about my eating. Even well meaning comments like that had a not so positive effect on my thoughts regarding my body. Now that my body had been labeled an “ideal” body type or shape I was then put into a fear of not always having it, or doing something to mess it up. These weren’t the only struggles I dealt with being thin, I often heard about how much I probably didn’t eat or how much more everyone else thought I should eat. These sort of messages often came from adults and began from about the age of 11-12 or younger. I struggled to not have a response as you can imagine to any of these comments, on one side if I thanked anyone for their comment, I then felt conceded. Having no positive response ready often left me with a default of trying to find things about my body that I didn’t like so I could say  “yeah, but xyz is no good”.

Working on loving my body is a process I believe I will work on for the rest of my life as I’m sure my body is going to continue to change forever and I’ll need to learn to embrace it with each change. Starting birth control at age 17 was one of the first changes after puberty my body experienced. I noticed a water weight gain that I was not fond of. I quit taking hormonal birth control after that as they also caused me emotional irregularities. The next body issue I dealt with was pregnancy, I received tons of comments about my size being too small which made me feel guilty about the health my body was providing for my unborn child.

Me 3 days postpartum, the paleness and tired longing in my eyes is real 🙂

After pregnancy of course comes postpartum in which felt like a blur due to not enough sleep amongst caring for the needs of a newborn throughout the day. Through postpartum I felt so many mixed emotions about my body. On some days I felt great that my breasts were changed in a new and larger sort of way due to breastfeeding but they also hurt and leaked and I often emitted an aroma of dairy all the time due to breastmilk leaking onto my shirts or bras. My shirts didn’t fit the same during postpartum, my pants squeezed my extra fluff on my hips in a new way. I was glad that I had a newborn to focus on so that I wasn’t able to concentrate on the bags under my eyes or the soggier than before skin on my tummy. Having gone through pregnancy twice means repeating all of the pregnancy and postpartum feelings once more over. Now I’m where I am today, more loving and accepting but still working at full acceptance.

The first thing I began to do to love my body was stop comparing to other people. Resisting the urge to compare sounds easier said than done but is still a daily struggle. I know nothing of their genetic makeup, nothing of how they spend their time, their health or any other thing that might help contribute to their physical appearance. It was so easy to see other people’s nice tight belly, rounded rumps or perky breasts and think thats out of my reach those and things are better than my own.

It was around that time when I noticed how often I was comparing to others that I realized how infrequent I was paying attention to my own body. I wasn’t filling my own body image cup, not only was I not filling it but I hadn’t even realized how much repair it needed from all those outside influences. Now when I say pay attention to my own body I don’t just mean staring at a mirror (although I was avoiding that as well) I mean that I wasn’t preparing myself food in a way that felt like I was showing myself love by making a healthy nutritious breakfast, lunch or dinner. I wasn’t doing any sort of physical exercise nor was I focusing on my body in general in any way.

I knew my own body needed more attention than what I was giving to other people’s bodies. My body needed my love and my admiration. I began with small steps, finding out that dairy was causing me stomach pain resulted in me cutting out dairy and making conscious choices about what I put in my body.  Even though small, each time I decided to curb away from something containing dairy that I knew would upset my body I felt like I was honoring my body, I was protecting it. Protecting my body gave it value and more value than any stranger had offered about my size. I also began working out very lightly and slow to start off but eventually enjoyed (on certain days) the challenge of pushing my cardio limits with HIIT workouts. I honestly workout probably once a week, but just that little bit helps me remember I’m a work in progress and I deserve respect and compassion for where I am in life.

My challenge for this month is to start staring more often in the mirror. I think everyone does this for at leas t a few seconds but when we hit that uncomfortable block we generally walk away. I’d like to stay there a little longer through that discomfort and begin speaking or writing on my mirror 5 things a week that I love about my body or that my body has done for me. What about you guys? Is there anything you do to actively care for your own body? Or body image?

Lakota

I am a stay at home mother of two, who loves to create in every form, from cooking, to henna, to painting or sculpting, creating with my hands is my passion! I love to dance and let loose when the music flows right. Being outside is a special kind of therapy I think humans need more of as well as mindfulness! I love all things new and adventurous and am always looking to experience more of life 🙂