Why Body Love and Weight Loss Go Hand in Hand

There is a wide spectrum of opinions out there. On one end we have those that believe if you love your body you shouldn’t want or need or even desire to change anything about it.

On the other end of the spectrum are those that believe you need to shame and hate and criticize yourself to motivate change. That if you’re not a size 0 then you should be.

It’s very black and white. Both sides are essentially saying “you can’t love your body and want to lose weight.” It has to be one or the other. Pick a side.

My opinion falls smack dab in the middle of this spectrum. I 100% with all my heart believe you it’s okay to love your body and it’s okay to want to lose weight. In fact, after coaching for 3+ years I’m beginning to see that you can’t lose weight permanently unless you love your body.

HERE’S WHY:

First of all, we don’t take care of the things we hate.

And weight loss is all about taking really good care of your body. Feeding it what it needs when it needs it. Moving it, keeping it clean inside and out. If we hate our body we sure as heck don’t want to take care of it. Sometimes we might even purposely try to punish it.

It’s like this yellow refrigerator I once owned. Man, I hated that thing. It was ugly, stained, drawers were broken, and duct taped together, it didn’t have an ice maker or a water dispenser. It was ugly and I hated it. I wanted to get rid of it and trade it for a new stainless-steel state of the art refrigerator.

Guess how I treated that refrigerator.

Not very well. I would slam the door closed while the drawers were open. I rarely wiped it out. It would make loud noises and I wouldn’t call a repair man to look at it and fix it. I didn’t care what happened to it.

Eventually, probably due to my neglect. It died past the point of fixing and we bought a new refrigerator.

And it was nice!!! I loved it. And guess how I treated it? If you guessed the opposite of the yellow refrigerator you’re totally right. I carefully open and shut the drawers. I wiped it out frequently. I buffed the fingerprints off the door and made sure it was maintained well.

This is kind of a silly example to prove my point which is when we hate something, we don’t take the best care of it and when we love something we do. We want to treat it well. Unlike my yellow fridge, once our body goes out, that’s it. We only get one.

The second reason why body love and weight loss have to go together is because when we loathe our body, we get in a hurry to change it.

The sooner we can lose weight and get the figure of our dreams the better. So, we go looking for a quick fix not a permanent fix. See the difference. Quick fix weight loss or fitness programs do not address the root issues. Yes, you might lose some weight on them, but I guarantee you’ll gain it right back plus some. And let’s not forget to mention that once you do lose the weight, chances are high you’ll still not like yourself. That’s because loving your body doesn’t come from what it looks like. Body love, or body image if we want to call it that, is not how your body measures up to “societies standards”. It’s your perception of your body – It’s your beliefs, your thoughts, and your feelings about how you experience your body. Essentially, It’s your view of your physical appearance.

I keep over=-emphasizing you and your because it also isn’t what other people think of your body either.

A lot of people think once they lose weight, then they will like themselves or even love themselves, but body love is an inside job and nothing on the outside can “fix” it.

You know just as well as I do that people can tell you you’re pretty, beautiful, skinny, whatever all day long and if you don’t believe it yourself, it changes nothing.

This is because a positive body image can only come from you –

You are the only one who can create it, and everything you need to create it resides within you. It is created by the way you choose to visually see your body and How you feel about the way your look, your actual thoughts and feelings about your body.

The third reason weight loss and body love go hand in hand is because when you’re self-critical it feels terrible. It creates terrible feeling emotions which make you emotional eat. Which just exacerbates the problem. Overeating is not love. Feeding your body food when it doesn’t physically need it is punishment.

Think of it this way. Is it love to force-feed your baby? He’s sitting in the highchair so cute and innocent and you try to feed him food and he’s not interested in it because he’s not hungry. How loving is it be to keep forcing food down him? Hint: It isn’t!!!

When we overeat and feed our body more than it needs for fuel, it’s a punishment. Permanent weight loss comes from a place of love, not hate.

We could flip the switch and talk about dieting and starving yourself skinny. It’s the same thing. Both are punishing not loving.

You can’t hate yourself skinny. It’ll backfire on you every time! The weight will eventually return, and you’ll hate yourself even more.