Loving your body is a radical, if not seemingly impossible, notion. From our friends to our families to the media we consume, we're taught that our bodies are things to fix. Your mother complains about her cellulite, so now you "know" cellulite is bad. Your favorite magazine touts "five quick fixes to beat that belly bulge!" and now you "know" that anything less than a flat stomach is bad. Your best friend complains about the lack of space between her thighs, and suddenly you're realizing that having legs that touch is something you really don’t want.
We're spoon-fed beauty standards that so many of us don’t—and will never!—reach, and instead of realizing what utter nonsense these standards are, we hate our bodies for not being enough.
Not pretty enough. Skinny enough. Toned enough. Athletic enough. Curvy enough.
For most of my life, I’ve bought into this idea. I’ve believed that my body wasn’t worthy of love because it wasn’t “perfect.” But no matter how much weight I lost, or how much mascara I wore, or how many miles I ran with the goal of “being slim and toned” instead of “being healthy and strong,” I never found any real happiness with my body.
All hope is not lost, however, because since I’ve started actively pursuing self-love and body acceptance through a few small but important activities, I’ve begun to find an appreciation for (and even a fondness for) my body—just the way it is.
You can’t love something you don’t even know, so get naked. It may seem silly, and can be very hard at first, but it’s hard to love your body when you don’t really spend any time with it. It’s easy to turn your body into your enemy by thinking of it as some imperfect thing you should be ashamed of and that should only be seen after careful concealment by clothing.
The way to get past this? Take off those clothes! Spend some time when you get out of the shower looking at yourself in a mirror. Get comfortable with the skin you’re in, and before you know it, seeing your bare body won’t be something that makes you want to cringe and hide. It will just be natural.
While you’re at it, ditch the self-deprecating mentality. The mind is a powerful thing. If you keep telling yourself negative things, eventually that’s all you’re going to believe. But if you nix those thoughts when they pop up and change them to something positive, you will start to see a difference. Instead of thinking, “Man, my stomach looks pudgy in this shirt,” try telling yourself, “I am so cute and strong, and I am rocking this shirt.” Fake it ’til you make it is a real thing, folks.
(This goes for those “humorous” self-hating tweets, too. Stop retweeting things about being trash and start retweeting positivity. Trust me, a change in mindset can go a long way.)
Take selfies. Take a lot of selfies. Take selfies when you feel on top of your game. Take selfies when you feel like a sack of potatoes. Wait a few days. Compare the two. Realize that the only thing that’s different is how you felt, not how you looked. Proceed to post all of your selfies on every social platform because, hey! You’re super cute and totally deserve to be seen!
So much of our focus tends to be on how our body looks, rather than on what our body can do which leads to that toxic mindset of only being good enough if we look a certain way. Spoiler alert: that’s not a good way to love yourself. Shift your focus to your body’s abilities. Think of your body as this awesome tool that allows you to run and jump and dance and sing and draw and hug your friends and pet dogs and drive your car and do every other thing you love to do. Thank your body for giving you whatever abilities you have. It’s amazing, and so are you!
One of the worst things you can do is to compare yourself to someone else, so stop it. Your body is totally unique. It will never—and should never!—look exactly like any other. Realize that other people can be beautiful, but that doesn’t mean you’re any less beautiful because you’re different. And remember: nobody else looks like you, either. Embrace the things that set you apart, even if you think they're "flaws," because they're totally yours.
Along those lines, accept your flaws. Accept every part of yourself just as it is right now. That's not to say that you can't work to be the best version of yourself, because there's nothing wrong with that as long as it's something you truly want, and you're doing it in healthy ways.
But why sit around hating yourself if you don't have to? Acknowledge that you are who you are, that this body is the only one you have, and that you can either waste your time being critical of it and tearing it down, or you can make up your mind that you're going to do your level best to love every part of it, no matter what.
The journey to self-love is different and complicated for everyone, and as with most valuable journeys, it probably won’t be linear. No matter how much confidence I’ve gained, I still have setbacks. Some days I feel like none of my clothes look good on me. Some days I feel like my face needs a pound of makeup to be decent enough to show in public. Some days I just feel gross.
But those are the days when I compliment myself a little more frequently when I take a few extra selfies, and when I remind myself just a bit more that my body is amazing and does so much for me. It’s not a perfect solution, but you know what? Eventually, it works.
