Most women I work with come to me because they want to lose weight. I’m here to tell you that you CAN love, appreciate, accept and respect your body AS you release the weight. Not only that, if you want to let go of your weight PERMANENTLY, you’ll want to make loving and appreciating your body NOW a priority.
Here are 4 reasons to start loving and appreciating your body NOW.
1. It’ll reduce your stress. Negative self-talk and self-judgement causes stress in the body. Stress increases the cortisol in your body, which makes the body really good at hanging on to extra body fat, especially around the midsection. We cannot diet against our body’s survival mechanisms.
2. We’re after a feeling, and our core desire is to feel GOOD. Losing weight, or dropping inches does not guarantee that you’re going to love your body. Bodies change, and it is possible that your body doesn’t look exactly how you imagined it would when you lose the weight. Being a smaller size doesn’t make you immune to negative body image. When you practice feeling good along the way, you guarantee that you’ll feel good when you lose the weight too!
3. Hating your body and feeling a strong emotional reason to get the weight off as fast as possible can lead to crash diets, over-exercising, and undereating in an effort to lose weight which damages the metabolism and makes it even more challenging to maintain a healthy body weight.
4. It’s a waste of life energy. When you look back at your life you will remember the adventures, the time spent with friends and families, the challenges you overcame, and the legacy you left. You have a lot to offer the world. Imagine how free you would feel if you had a peaceful, balanced relationship with food and your body, and there was no ‘on track’ and ‘off track’.
There is a way to have it all: to focus on life and to eat foods that you love. It’s not a quick fix of ‘eat this, not that’ and it may not be as sexy as the promise to drop 10 pounds this month.
But it’s worth it. And I think you’re worth it.
-Tanja x
