April 22, 2010
Talk Nice to Yourself
A sign in front of a church that I passed read, “God loves everyone, even the unlovable.” I had a good chuckle over the absence of judge-not-lest-ye-be-judged attitude.
But, I guess they were just being honest. It is hard not to find the actions of some so repulsive that we judge them unlovable.
At the core, those “unlovables” are actually suffering from a lack of true self-love. And that lack of self-love is manifesting in their actions. The world can be a pretty frightening place as a result.
But what about when we, the sort-of-lovable, sometimes-less-than-perfect, manifest our lack of self-love?
It can be a vicious cycle that can be directly tied to weight gain.
We start gaining weight because we don’t love ourselves enough to pay attention to ourselves (including loving our bodies) and give ourselves the time and attention we deserve. The weight gain leads us to even less regard for our bodies, and our bodies then become the easy targets for our negative thoughts.
This doesn’t feel good, and we don’t want to think about it, so we disconnect further from our bodies, and we gain more weight. Do you see the cycle here?
Hating your fat thighs or your flabby arms may be enough to get you started on a diet, but it will not sustain you. Sooner or later you’ll reject dieting if it manifests from a point of self-loathing, because self-loathing (obviously) doesn’t feel good.
But (you ask) isn’t the opposite of self-loathing – that is, loving and accepting your body at this weight – going to lead to more weight gain, or at least being unmotivated to take off the unhealthy weight?
No. If you’ve learned how to respect and love your body, you’ll be able to replace the self-loathing with self-love. Self-love will lead to self-care, which will lead to a reasonable diet and a reasonable weight. But if you haven’t taken time to learn to practice loving yourself, you’ll be left with a void. No matter what your weight, you’ll still be talking negatively to yourself. Nothing will be good enough, and you’ll probably just return to that disconnection.
How can you practice self-loving while your body is still less than perfect? One way is to take an inventory of all that IS right about your body. Start with your toes and work your way up. Be thankful for everything. Think of the possibilities just in your feet. You have 52 bones there! Ten toes for balance. Soles that act as shock absorbers that can take up to one million pounds of pressure in an hour of strenuous exercise. Work your way up your body. Include your internal organs and tissue. When you get to your head, think about your amazing brain, eyesight, a good voice, a full head of hair and thick eyelashes. The list of things for which to be grateful about your body is endless.
Be thankful your body has carried you through, in spite of the fact that you’ve abused it. Be thankful it has the ability to recover from the abuse you’ve heaped upon it. Be thankful you can both gain and lose weight. Love your body for how well it has served you.
The topic of self-love makes us uncomfortable. So does actually talking nice to ourselves or about ourselves. But this can change. It must change.
Get out a pen and paper and take the inventory about your body. Use affirmations (talking to yourself in an affirming voice and positive way) to speed along the process of your dreams coming true.
Soon the negative voices will start to sound off-key and, just as soon, mistreating your body will start to feel out of place also.
We give a lot of lip service to love, now let’s practice what we preach, toward ourselves. Let’s work on approaching dieting from a point of self-love, not from self-loathing.
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