It sometimes feels like no woman would admit to being OK with her body. We are constantly inundated with imagery and products that point to what’s wrong with our bodies and how we can fix them. We live in a culture that generally celebrates one ideal of beauty. These external, along with internal messages and events that happen throughout our lives, really all combine to form our body image.  In the end, it’s so normal that you’d end up feeling bad about your own body and wonder how to improve your body image.

Society works hard to perpetuate this message. Going on the latest weight loss plan seems like the fix to everything. Need to feel like a good-enough mom? Lose weight. Want to get ahead in your career? Show your determination through shrinking your waistline.

Unfortunately, when you live your life feeling as if the shape and size of your body is wrong and needs to be changed, it directly impacts your ability to feel like a whole and valuable person.

As women, we’re conditioned to believe that whatever we’re really needing can simply be fixed just by losing X number of pounds. But what this really does, is make us feel absolutely stuck where we are and forever in a state of body hatred. We come to embody the belief that we are eternally flawed and will never be good enough.

Holding onto body dissatisfaction means holding onto the belief that you are unworthy. It also causes you to avoid taking the sometimes uncomfortable, but essential steps towards finding and embracing your real self-worth.

Maybe you’ve told yourself that you’d love to get out there and date again after a breakup, but you really need to lose 5, 10, 20 (whatever number you’ve decided) pounds before you can do that. Or maybe you’re avoiding plans with friends or disconnecting intimately from your partner until you “lose the baby weight.”

If you’ve convinced yourself that this ideal body is what’s missing and there’s no way to be content with where you are, you know the feeling of being stuck in the anxiety of this nowheresville. Eventually, you wind up in a place where nothing seems possible and no choice seems good enough, because you’ve decided you will never be content with your body as it is.

It’s true that so many women struggle with the constant need to “get a better body” and it absolutely makes sense why you would. But maybe you’ve noticed how this is getting in the way of truly letting you live your life.

If you can learn how to stop obsessing and start accepting and feeling better about the body you’re in today, you’ll be one step closer to living at peace with your body and the ultimate goal of celebrating your true value.

Keep reading to discover the steps to improve your body image today.

Feeling Badly About Your Body Keeps You Disconnected

Continuing to feel like your body needs to be “fixed” keeps you in a state of constant disjointedness from yourself and others. With each “I’d do that if only if my body [fill in the blank]” excuse you are creating more reasons to continue to live apart from the things that are really important to you.

It’s also clear that remaining focused on how you aren’t happy with your body can be a convenient stand-in for focusing on things that feel uncomfortably unquantifiable. However, living this way has the potential to be extremely isolating and, ultimately, unfulfilling.

Making Peace With Your Body

Although you are finding it hard, even impossible, to feel good about your body, you have the potential to start using compassionate self-care to move towards respecting your body and improving your body image

When we chose to focus on these acts of compassionate self-care, it is truly possible to stop hating your body all the time. It might take some time and some practice, but you do have the opportunity to integrate these small acts into your everyday life in order to eventually achieve lasting peace with your body.

5 Steps Towards Body Peace

Yes, you might be feeling like it’s impossible to ever get out of this rabbit hole of hating your body. The key to getting on the path to improve your body image is beginning to treat yourself with acts of self-compassion.

Self-compassion and self-hatred simply don’t mix. When you begin to follow these steps, you’ll be on the way towards a more peaceful relationship with your body.

Here are my self-compassion focused tips for feeling more comfortable in your body that I suggest you put into practice today:

1. Ditch the Scale

I’m almost positive that rarely has anything good ever come from regularly weighing yourself and obsessing about the number. Notice the way you feel when you weigh yourself.   The truth is that for most people, stepping on the scale usually makes you feel like shit. So why make yourself go through this?

Self-compassionate step: Remove the scale from your house. Tell yourself that you are worth so much more than the number that’s coming up on there. If you take this to the next level, I’ve had a lot of fun with clients smashing their scales into pieces. Try it and see what happens.

2. Stop Dieting

We participate in diet culture because we are told that punishing our bodies through food is somehow our ticket towards happiness. But isn’t that a little messed up? You can’t hate yourself happy. Depriving your body of the food that it NEEDS and ENJOYS through dieting is an act of punishment against your body. It’s far from an act of self-love or respect.

Self-compassionate step: Learn to eat in an intuitive, attuned way. [Pro-tip: read Intuitive Eating by Tribole & Resch). As an eating disorder and body image therapist, I encourage people to banish food rules and get clear on how diet culture messages have infiltrated your way of thinking. Question who stands to profit from your unhappiness ($$$). Get mad about it, and then start eating in a more self-compassionate way.

3. Stop Comparing Yourself to Others

Does scrolling through Facebook or Instagram make you feel crappy about your body? Maybe you do a lot of comparing yourself to other moms at school drop off? When we compare ourselves to people who we think “have it all” or have the body we want, it only breeds more self-hatred.

Self-compassionate step: Notice when you are falling into the comparison trap and use a positive self-statement. Tell yourself that you are your own unique person who should never be measured against another. And don’t compare yourself to celebrities, because that’s just not fair. Lastly, I’ll frequently remind my clients that you have no idea what someone’s life is really like, even though things look a certain way, especially on social media. You deserve to find peace with you and you alone.

4. Wear What Fits You

What happens when you walk into your closet and you find a rack full of items that no longer fit or no that no longer feel good on you? If you’re like most women, you want to have clothing in your closet that reflects your personal style, which you feel good in, and that actually fit! Your self-confidence takes a hit when you can’t make that happen when you leave items lying around taunting you to fit back into them.

Self-compassionate step: Give yourself a closet overhaul. This sometimes means removing the items of clothing that just don’t fit you today, or putting them aside for a while if you are really struggling with that.  I often help clients make plans to go shopping for some basics in the size that you’re in right now.  Well-fitting clothing can go a long way in helping you to feel good on a daily basis.

Oh, and btw, bodies are meant to change. Your body is allowed to change throughout your lifetime. Realize this and develop some self-compassion for your process, whether, you’ve just had a baby, are going through menopause, or any one of a myriad of life phases.

5. Move Your Body to Feel Good

Contrary to what we are taught by diet culture, going to the gym for the sake of burning calories or punishing yourself for eating something “off-limits” is not going to help you to feel better about your body. All this mindset does is continue to perpetuate the feeling that you can achieve happiness if you can only change your body size.

Self-compassionate step: Work towards thinking about movement as a way of feeling good in your body and celebrating its abilities. Find some simple acts of joyful movement to add to your routine, such as dancing or swimming with your kids. Along with this, challenge the black and white thinking that says you need to go to spin class for an hour or burn X number of calories for your workout to be “worth it.”

Taking self-compassionate steps to feel improve your body image can go a long way in helping you to feel content with who you truly are as a person. You absolutely have the capacity to achieve lasting peace with your body. Give me a call now or click on the button below to schedule your free 15-minute consultation and find out how I can help you on your journey towards body peace today.