Struggling to start loving your body? Here are some effective ways tips on how to accept your body and love it for what it does for you.
What would you say if we asked you to define your relationship with your body?
Do you and your body exist in a harmonious and mutual relationship based on love and collaboration? Or are you two enemies engaged in an intense tug-of-war, desperately vying for the ultimate control?
Would you say that you love your body and are grateful for everything it does for you?
You see, our bodies are complicated structures, and yet they shouldn’t be this hard to love. Yet, whenever you want to start loving your body, you are confronted with a variety of social and political oppression.
We live in a culture that teaches us to dissociate from our bodies at best or completely hate them to the point it’s unhealthy at worst. From an impressionable age, people are trained to rebel against their bodies, avoid listening to their needs, and force them into submission. We deny ourselves certain foods to maintain the ideal body weight. We deny our bodies adequate rest to work out. We withhold all our desires to achieve a goal and then withhold again to maintain that goal.
In such difficult times, loving your body is almost a radical act. To learn how to love your body, you need to shut out the outside noise and truly connect with yourself. You need to understand your body’s needs and feel gratitude toward it.
Sounds tough?
We have got you covered. In this blog post, we have curated a comprehensive list of 13 effective and non-intimidating tips on how to start loving your body. Let’s dive in!
How Do You Learn To Love Your Body?
1. Start by becoming more self-aware.
One of the first steps in learning how to accept your body is to become more self-aware. Self-awareness means being more in touch with yourself and your body. Being self-aware means consciously taking note of the messages you send to your body.
If you want to learn how to love your body when you hate it, this consciousness will play a vital role in the whole process. For instance, if you don’t like the way a specific part of your body, you might fixate on it regularly or feel like everyone is talking about how you look. When such thoughts arise, it’s essential that you take a step back and look at them more objectively.
This will help you understand your triggers and identify the root cause of your body image issues.
2. Acknowledge that you don’t have a good or healthy relationship with your body right now.
If you are struggling to start loving your body, it’s OKAY! In fact, you have more company than you realize.
Why?
We live in a society that teaches us to hate how we look and makes us fixate on unrealistic body standards. So, if you grew up unaffected by this policing, you are the exception, not the norm.
But what’s essential is that you become aware of this relationship. Now, the acceptance isn’t always easy. Acknowledging that you don’t love your body is difficult. But once you start acknowledging, you start making real progress.
In short, be honest with yourself. It really helps.
3. Ditch the perspective that looking a certain way will help you love your body.
To understand the complex relationship you have with your body, ask yourself these questions:
- Why don’t you love your body?
- Why do you want to look different?
The answer will likely be to gain social acceptance and have more people like you. We are ingrained with the idea that looking a certain way will help us gain more social validation, love, and acceptance.
Unfortunately, it’s a myth. The way you look has anything to do with loving your body. And to learn how to love your body at any size, you need to ditch these ideas. The more you internalize these lies, the harder it will be to love your body.
Instead, accept that you deserve to be loved, irrespective of your appearance.
4. Stop worrying about what others think.
A lot of hatred and dislike for our bodies is drawn from what other people think about us. We are sold by the social standards of beauty. You constantly feel that people judge you for how you look, dress, laugh, or even breathe.
So, if you want to find answers for ‘how to learn to love your body,’ forget what other people say about you. Your love and appreciation for your body shouldn’t depend on what others think about you.
And if we were being completely honest, no one is paying nearly as much attention to our supposed flaws as us.
5. Identify your triggers, especially on social media.
Most of the time, we don’t understand that we have a problem. We have lived our entire lives thinking that how we feel about our bodies is normal. The ideas are so internalized within us that they almost become second nature.
Therefore, to learn how to accept and love your body, identify your triggers. Start from your immediate surroundings and relationships. Do any of your friends comment obnoxious and unhealthy things about your body? Are you following people who make you feel guilty about how you look? Are you obsessed or affected by unhealthy social media trends?
If you have answered yes to any of these questions, understand that these factors significantly contribute to your body-image issues. So, start consciously assessing your triggers so that you can proceed to eliminate them eventually.
6. Be kind to yourself.
Remember what your grandmother used to say?
If you can’t say something nice, try saying nothing at all.
And this is golden advice when it comes to figuring out how to start loving your body. If you can’t be naturally kind to your body, start by consciously being unkind. Don’t pass the mean comments or judgments. Before you say something nasty, consider whether you would say the same thing to your loved one or friend. No, right?
7. Make social media work for you.
Given the amount of time we spend on social media, it’s almost impossible not to include it in the process.
While social media scrolling can be pretty counterproductive to the whole process of loving your body, there’s something you can do about it. Try to cater to your social media specifically in a way that promotes body positivity. Follow people who make you feel good about your body.
Think of social media influencers, body positivity enthusiasts, and just ordinary people who make you feel confident and good about yourself.
8. Challenge your self-criticising, unhelpful thoughts.
Have you ever caught yourself in the middle of an “I hate how (insert body part) looks” thought? As humans, we are pretty good at picking ourselves apart. And it’s pretty difficult to replace these negative thoughts with something genuinely positive.
Therefore, the best way to learn how to feel better about your body is to start challenging these negative thoughts head-on. Try to get to the root of the idea. If you can’t be positive, aim for neutral. You can work your way up eventually.
9. Don’t fixate on societal standards of beauty.
As mentioned above, society has developed certain (useless) beauty standards over the years. These standards are now continuously used to judge, ridicule, and discriminate against individuals. Therefore, if you really want to figure out how to feel good about your body, distance yourself from these standards.
The goalposts of these standards continue shifting, and you’ll never be able to wholeheartedly love yourself if you fixate on them. Therefore, focus on what makes you feel happy. Indulge in activities that motivate you rather than obsessing over something imaginary and unrealistic.
10. Identify what your self-love language looks like.
Like our love languages with our partners, we all have a specific and different love language with our bodies. Therefore, to learn how to accept your body, it’s essential that you identify this self-love language.
Your love language will help you understand how you can show love, affection, and gratitude toward your body. It will also help you identify the activities that make you feel good about your body. Your love language also means having healthy support systems you can rely on during challenging days.
11. Set clear boundaries with friends and family.
While having healthy support systems is great, it’s imperative that you set clear boundaries with people who don’t make you feel good about yourself. To start loving your body, it’s essential to stop, avoid, and confront anyone who body shames you or makes you feel terrible.
It’s important that you are upfront during these conversations. While it can get incredibly tough, telling the other person how their comments make you feel is necessary. If the conversation feels too intimidating, write them a note or a message. If the negative comments continue, maintain a healthy distance.
12. Focus on being healthy.
People often try investing in a healthy lifestyle for reasons other than being genuinely healthy.
Therefore, to start loving your body, it’s essential that you focus on being healthy just for the sake of it. Eat healthy, sleep and rest adequately, and indulge in healthy movements. Don’t push yourself too hard just to attain a certain goal. Focus on the journey and try to make a healthy lifestyle your routine rather than a path to achieving something secondary.
13. Get professional help.
Admitting that you need help and really asking for it is tough. However, bottling everything up inside you will do you no good either. Therefore, if you’re struggling to figure out how to love your body, getting professional help can be highly beneficial.
A skilled mental health professional can help you identify your triggers, address unhealthy thoughts and behaviors, and guide you toward actually loving your body.
Conclusion:
If you are struggling to start loving your body, you are far from being alone. We live in a world constantly judging us for our appearance. Therefore, it can get incredibly difficult to learn how to accept your body and truly love it.
However, there’s a lot you can do to feel better. We hope these 13 ways to love your body will help you get started in the right direction.
If you need professional help to figure out how to love and accept your body, it’s possible to get it right from the comfort of your home. To learn more about online therapy platforms, click here.
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