Everyone has “fat” days. You get dressed, notice your pants are fitting a little tight, and suddenly you swear you can see that donut you had for breakfast yesterday, and the dessert you ordered while out with the girls last weekend. For many of us, this can lead to a spiral of negative, stressful thoughts: “I have no self control.”, “My new diet starts Monday!”, “I look and feel gross”. We live in a world of constant comparison, cattiness, and superficiality. Unfortunately, women are most often the targeted demographic–too fat, too skinny, too tall, too short, too wide, too this, or too that. While it is good to set healthy goals and seek improvement, it is not good to be in a constant battle with your body.
Regardless of whether or not you are actually overweight, your body’s worth cannot be determined by a scale. The scale reflects your body’s relationship with gravity, but what it does not tell you is how you aced your last exam, how comforting you were to your best friend the last time she needed a shoulder to cry on, how helpful you were the last time your mom was sick, how hard you work at your classes/career, how you have the strongest downward dog in your yoga class, or how much you make those around you smile and laugh. By using a scale as the only measuring tool to quantify your worth, you are excluding the most important variables.
If your clothes seems to be playing tricks on you, if the mirror behaves cruelly, if you start to obsess over the reading on the scale, ask yourself these questions to get your groove back:
– When was the last time my body did something STRONG?
– What was the last project (work, school, or personal) I completed with SUCCESS?
– What do I love most about being ACTIVE?
– What was the last HEALTHY CHOICE I made? (mental & emotional count too!)
– When did I last CHALLENGE myself?
– What body parts do I LOVE?
– What are my 3 BEST QUALITIES?
– If I was listening to a friend tell me how much she hated her body, what would I say to HELP?
A second strategy is to use “word replacement”. If you are self-conscious about your thighs being too thick, replace the word “thick” with something else that they are–strong, fast, healthy, anything else but your negative adjective! It may sound cheesy, but nothing works like the power of positive thinking. Showing gratitude to your body for what it does for you will help you get past your imperfections, your insecurities, and most importantly your scale.