Monthly Archives: August 2016

Why Self Care is So Easy to Preach but Hard to Do

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Finding it hard to make time to write in your journal? Sometimes self care practices can feel isolating because we are already spending too much time on our own.

Finding it hard to make time to write in your journal? Sometimes self care practices can feel isolating because we are already spending too much time on our own.

Self care is the big thing these days. It’s replaced eating kale and drinking smoothies as to what clues everyone else into the fact that you’re into “wellness”. Everyone is doing it! Or everyone means to do it. Everyone is at least thinking about doing it.

Yeah, you know you should meditate, exercise and write in your journal. And healthier eating is definitely something you want to do. And someday you’ll have time for epsom salt baths and dry brushing too. It’s been a zillion years since you connected with nature and last time nature connected with you it left a welt the size of a quarter and you had to take benadryl for 3 days. Self care is totally on your priority list!

But no matter how many times you think, “I’m totally going to start doing that” (Tomorrow. Ah, Monday! Um, maybe next month?), another big chunk of time passes without you having made any time for self care practices.

 

What gives? Why is self care something we preach often but so hard to do in reality?

 

Two reasons come to mind for me.

  1. Because it’s not really a priority for us but we think it should be a priority because according to the media and all the women who actually go to the yoga classes you wish you could drag yourself to, it’s basically what’s going to keep us sane and healthy and not making time for self care is tantamount to to giving the middle finger to your health.Along the same lines:  YOU aren’t a priority in your life. Your job, your family, your volunteer work or school obligations, your DVR queue, heck, even social media comes first. There’s no room for self care because you are not high enough up on your priority list. The only way you’re going to start making room for it is if you move something else further down the list.The only way to have self care find a way into your life is by changing your priorities.How to change this. Make a list of how you spend your time. Account for every hour or half hour of every day for a week. Laundry, dishes, preparing meals, time in the car, staring out the window etc. put everything down on paper. When you see where all your time goes, it might make it easier to find something you can stop doing (or get help doing!) or something you can do less of and that is where you can make room for self care. But first you have to acknowledge that you deserve a place at the top of your priorities. What can you stop doing? What can you do less of? Is there anything that is taking up a big chunk of time that you are surprised by? Can you change that? Are you willing to change that? Compiling a list like this and analyzing what can be changed can help you find a spare 30 min to an hour to add in some form of self care. Start there and when you see the benefits of that small bit of time, you may be motivated to look for more.

    Meditation is a powerful tool to connect to your higher power, but can sometimes be a lonely place to be if you are feeling disconnected.

    Meditation is a powerful tool to connect to your higher power, but can sometimes be a lonely place to be if you are feeling disconnected.

  2. You’re going through a period of isolation or disconnection. As beneficial as self care stuff is to our lives, most of the stuff we do for self care is a solo practice that gets us deeper into our heads and sometimes that’s the opposite of what we need!Maybe you work a lot of hours in a private office, spend a lot of time in your car, work from home, spend all day caring for others, or have very limited social time. All of these things can start to make you feel isolated and doing self care practices that bring the focus on “you” can make you feel even more so. The last thing you want to do when you spend a lot of time alone is sit quietly in your own head space! That’s sometimes why we turn to food, drink or our electronic devices more than we want to – we’re seeking the comfort and the “feeding” that human relationships and interactions can give us and we are trying to substitute it for other things. We just can’t feed disconnection with those things and they will keep getting in the way of a self-care practice until we get some true self care by interacting with others!In this case, the only way to make yourself want to do solo practice self care stuff is by starting with one of the most basic self care needs – and that is social interaction!How to change This. Go have some fun and conversation with other humans! What is your soul hungry for? How connected to others to you feel? Do you have several people in your life that you connect with regularly? Go out and connect with them. Schedule time with your girlfriends. Have brunch with your siblings. Find an event that interests you in your area on meetup.com and meet some new people. Maybe you want to connect in a way that gives back to others? What about volunteering at a soup kitchen or senior center, or becoming a Big Sister/ Big Brother? You could also become a mentor for someone in your field. Friends don’t live nearby? Try video chat.

    When you connect to others deeply and regularly, you’ll find meditating, journal writing or exercising is something you’ll start to look forward to (and you’ll actually be able to do it).

I’ve gone through both of these myself – as a solopreneur the isolation one comes up regularly! I’ve found it really hard to stick to a meditation practice lately (even my doctor suggested I use an app and set a timer, but I just couldn’t get myself to do it). I know the benefits of meditation and I’ve had success doing it regularly during different periods in my life, but lately, asking me to sit down and meditate felt worse than going to the dentist! I finally realized it’s because I’m already alone in my own head too much! How and why would I want to spend even more time there? Haha! I’ve been making an effort to have more time with other people during the week, whether it be a networking event or a walk or lunch with a friend and it really helps me feel better (and more interested in doing other things that are good for me).

What is your experience with self care? Do you find it challenging to stick to a routine? Are you making yourself a priority and is self care truly a priority for you or just something you “think” should be a priority? Have you been spending too much time alone lately? Is isolation or disconnection something you have been feeling? What is something you can do this week to feel more connected to others?

Why A “Diet” Remains Appealing When You Decide to Stop Dieting Forever

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pexels dietsSomething interesting happens when you step off the diet train for good and decide to try a non-diet approach, like mindful or intuitive eating. “Normal” eating. Using your body’s hunger signals to determine when to eat. Being a conscious and thoughtful eater.

Before you start, you’re kind of excited to start this new journey and put the painful, up and down diet cycle behind you. No more counting calories. No more “this food group is bad, this one is good”. It sounds so freeing. You envision feeling relaxed around food and no longer spending hours upon hours thinking about what you should eat, how much you ate and what you can do to “undo” what you just ate.

You figure non-dieters have it easy and you can’t wait to be one of them.

But then you start. You take on one non-dieting skill at a time and soon you find your brain talking you out of this new mindful approach and trying to rationalize going back to dieting.

Don’t believe me? Read on – if you’re ever started to go down this path, you will recognize yourself in the following paragraphs!

You start keeping a food journal that is based on what you eat and what you were feeling when you ate.

You begin using a hunger scale to determine how hungry you actually are and how much food you need to eat to feel satisfied (versus full). You start using that hunger scale to notice when you are just a tiny bit hungry versus super hungry.

You begin to use mindful eating at each meal. Taking in your meal not just with your mouth, but also with your other senses. Eating slowly, methodically. Noticing how your food smells. What it looks like. The sounds it makes when your teeth make contact with it (does it crunch? snap? squish?). How it feels on your tongue. Whether you like it or not. How it makes you feel once it’s in your body.

You start to notice ALL THE THINGS. Or at least you are trying to. Your brain is SO FOCUSED on noticing things it never noticed before.

Then you begin noticing how uncomfortable it feels to be paying this much attention to food in a different way. While previously you spent too much time thinking about whether a food was good or bad, would make you fat or thin or if it was high or low calorie, now you are spending a ton of time paying attention to the reaction your body has when you eat (or before you eat) and all the physical details and sensations (so many details and sensations). It’s a ton of effort to keep your mind focused on these things, when before, when you were on the diet train, you used mealtimes as a chance to distract yourself from whatever you didn’t want to deal with. You are starting to think maybe you weren’t spending as much time thinking about food before as you thought you were!

Maybe dieting is easier than this!! Maybe this whole “normal” eating thing is a pain in the butt and you don’t want to do it. You don’t want MORE work around eating. You are doing this because you want it to be LESS work. MORE natural. Why does this feel so unnatural??

Returning to dieting seems like a way out of the discomfort you are feeling now. It will be easy, you think! I’ve done it for so long – I don’t even have to think about it. It will feel like “home”. I was crazy to think that this mindful approach to eating was for me – why the heck would I want to spend so much time thinking about my eating habits?! You feel more uncomfortable and unsettled now, than you ever did in dieting.

Processed with VSCOcam with e3 preset

Processed with VSCOcam with e3 preset

The appeal of going back to a “diet” resides in the fact that diets “end”. Every diet we start, has an end in mind. No one goes on a diet thinking they will be on that diet forever! That’s the reason diets fail – because we can’t sustain them forever – but it’s also the strong appeal of them. An ending diet means returning to unrestrained eating! Being able to eat whatever you want, when you want, as a reward for completing the diet and reaching your goal weight (or whatever your goal was). I can totally eat 1200 cardboard tasting calories for 8 weeks if it means looking bangin’ in a swimsuit and being able to eat nachos and ice cream when it’s all over.

A diet is “easy”. Once you learn the ins and outs of the program you choose, it feels like second nature. You can focus on the good foods and avoiding the bad foods. You don’t have to think about how you feel or if you feel hunger. You just know it’s time to eat a 1/2 cup of low fat cottage cheese at 10am and celery sticks with 1 tsp of peanut butter at 3pm. No thinking! It’s easier! You can’t believe you thought dieting was hard!

Okay, stop.

This backtracking our brains do is totally normal! At the beginning, a more mindful approach to eating, to return to normal eating is incredibly HARD. You haven’t eaten normally or mindfully since you were a child and you have been using food to distract yourself for decades. Bringing your attention to your food and eating is going to make you feel like running for the hills in the beginning. It might feel terrifying, unfamiliar, annoying and like a big fat waste of time. But I promise that if you commit to learning how to do it, wholeheartedly, until it becomes your new normal. . . it won’t feel hard anymore, or at least not all that hard. Being present in a world where we are always refreshing the page to see the newest post is a challenge and will remain so. But you will start to feel the value of being present and the benefits of paying more attention to your eating (benefits like better digestion and less binge eating) and those far outweigh the effort it will take you on a regular basis to eat this way.

Let’s go back to the fact that diets are appealing because they end and then you can eat whatever you want again. This is your brain lying to you. It wants to do what is easier. It doesn’t want to have to work hard at something new. No, really, it is. Under the guise of a diet, “it ends and you can eat what you want again”, only to have to go back on a diet and continue the cycle again. It’s familiar. With mindful, “non-diet” approaches to eating (ones that focus on hunger and being present), you can eat whatever you want, whenever you want. You don’t have to be on a diet and wait for it to end to do that. Mindful approaches to eating give you the freedom in that once you learn what your body is signaling to you and how to eat to satisfaction, you can choose any food you want – because you will stop eating it when you have had enough. “Enough” becomes a lot less when we pay attention to it. Don’t buy into the fallacy that you have to be on a diet that ends to eat what you desire. This is one reason we struggle with food so much to begin with – all these rules about what we can eat and when.

You can eat whatever you want, whenever you are hungry and honestly it will not be potato chips and cookies as often as you think it will be. We only think we’ll go crazy on those things because they are off limits now. You don’t need a diet to end to have that freedom.

Stay the course. Keep working through a non-diet approach until there isn’t so much resistance around doing it. When you find yourself quietly enjoying a meal with all your senses, without the crutch of distractions and notice that you’ve had enough. You’re there. And a diet won’t have the same appeal anymore.

Keep your eyes open for a special offer coming soon! In September I will be making a special (limited quantity) offer to those of you who are new to coaching, that will make trying it more affordable! Make sure you are on my email list so that you don’t miss this offer when it’s ready! Joining this list automatically means you receive my free eBook Healthy Eating Shouldn‘t Be a Workout:  Real Life Strategies to Take the Confusion Out of Healthy Living (includes recipes, snack and meal ideas, ways to save money and more!).

How A Coach Can Actually Help You

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Think of coaching as a tool you can learn to use on your own to navigate through life - like using a compass or celestial objects in nautical navigation. You don't need a coach forever - but you might need one to get you going.

Think of coaching as a tool you can learn to use on your own to navigate through life – like using a compass or celestial objects in nautical navigation. You don’t need a coach forever – but you might need one to get you going.

If you’re on social media at all today, odds are you’ve seen a million shiny posts and advertisements from coaches telling you they can change your life, help you reach your full potential and if you’re a coach, they’ll help you have your first 6 figure year (cue the eye roll from my fellow coaches!)! If you see these posts regularly, odds are you are someone who is interested in the self-help genre (which is why these ads and pages appear in your feed) and you are probably, at the very least, a little curious about what coaching is and what it can do for you.

The way these big coaching gurus talk in their ads and videos would make you think that they have some major secret, some big piece of the missing puzzle that you don’t have. The profession of coaching is a little shrouded in mystery. But what exactly do coaches do???

There are a lot of different types of coaches out there: career coaches, life coaches, health coaches, nutrition coaches, accountability coaches etc. They’re all a little bit different because of what their focus is, but assuming they’ve gone through a coach training program of some kind, they are going to work from similar tenets of coaching. You should know that coaching isn’t a regulated profession in the US and that means someone can call themselves a coach without any type of training or education. On one hand, this is a good thing – there are many career and life paths that can make someone an incredible natural “coach” without a specific training. But on the other hand, there are wackos out there who are trying to sell products that could be harmful or they are calling themselves a “coach” but operating far out of the scope of practice of coaching by trying to diagnose or treat clients like some highly regulated professions do. Please know that a coach who has been trained properly and who has your best interests in mind will not and can not diagnose, treat or prescribe. I’m getting a little off topic but just know I’ll get into that in more detail below!

I really want to talk about how as a “coach” I can actually help you reach your goals because every so often, I get an email from someone who is having certain symptoms and want to know my thoughts about it. Or they want to drop 20 pounds and want me to create a meal plan for them. And I have to tell them that I’m not the right person to help them with that stuff. I can help you understanding your emotional eating and help you move away from chronic dieting with targeted lifestyle changes and support. I can’t provide therapy and I can’t “fix” you.

My value as a (health) coach isn’t to diagnose you (I can’t do that), prescribe a treatment plan (I can’t do that) or give you detailed meal plan (I won’t do that). It’s not even to fill you up with knowledge about getting healthier or about how you should change your life. And it’s not about giving advice (believe it or not, I rarely give advice to my clients).

Before you wonder why in the world you would hire someone like me, let’s go a little deeper here.

You already know what to eat, you already know what you “should” be doing to feel better, have more energy and live a longer, healthier life. You probably are already aware that you are eating emotionally and that you need to feel your feelings to stop it. You probably already know that the non-stop diet you’ve been on since you were 11 is making it impossible to eat normally as an adult. But knowing all these things (that we are bombarded with daily) is not the same as actually being able to put them into practice. You can know things on an intellectual level and still feel like there is a missing piece.

Sometimes we need an outsider to help us see what that missing piece is.

My value as a coach is helping you change your habits. I can show you how to actually fit these things into your life. I can help you understand and navigate past your self-sabotage. I will help you transform one small step at a time. I can hold you accountable when you’re not being accountable to yourself.

I’m not a doctor, dietician or personal trainer. And I’m not trying to be (and no other professional coach will pretend to be either!). I am a master of implementing lifestyle change. I’m a master of adapting habits.

Many people see their doctor, a dietician and a personal trainer to make life style changes – yet often they still lack a piece of the puzzle to get where they want to be. Your doctor tells you what you need to do to get healthier. Your dietician tells you what macros you should be eating and how many calories and then your personal trainer will work your body in the right way for your goals. But if you don’t do what your doctor suggests and you don’t buy and prepare the foods your dietitian recommends and you don’t show up for your personal training appointment, you’re going to be exactly where you were when you started. A coach is the missing piece that helps you actually do these things.

A coach is also someone who can help you learn to listen to the voice inside you. That voice that you or others have shut down again and again to the point where you aren’t even sure that’s “you” anymore. A good coach helps you figure out your own answers instead of giving you the easy answer. I’m not here to be your best friend. I’m here to help you get out of your own way.

And how do we do that? Not with meal plans (remember, you know what to eat), pills or workout plans. But instead with:

Support (both the loving and tough love kind).

Accountability (ever notice it’s a lot easier to get something done when someone else is depending on you to show up?).

Guidance (I may not dole out advice left and right but if you are on a dangerous or unhelpful path I’ll let you know).

As an objective Sounding Board (I’ll help you weigh pros and cons without inputting my own opinion)

Ideas and solutions (for fitting it all in, getting out of your own way and dissolving excuses).

Provide tools and exercises to help you understand why you work the way you do, help you get unstuck and see the potential possibilities (yes this will often include writing!).

That’s how I can help. Not with diagnosing, treating or prescribing. Not with telling you how to live your life. Not with putting ideas in your head.

If you need an analogy (and we all know I love analogies), think of it this way:  You have a ship loaded with supplies ready to cross the Atlantic (we’re time traveling here – this is before modern GPS!). You may even have a crew on board, ready and willing to sail with you. But you don’t know the first thing about navigation (and your crew is too busy to help you with that). I’m the one who can teach you how to navigate using celestial objects. I can teach you to use a compass. I’m the one who can give you the tools necessary to get yourself from A to B  over and over again, on your own. You don’t need me to make the trip – that’s all you. But I can give you the support and tools to make it a reality.

One of the things that was most appealing to me when training to be a coach was that in coaching we believe that people have all the answers inside of them already and our job is to help bring that out in them. People are already whole, complete and sometimes just fall off track because they have lost the ability to hear and see themselves fully. Coaching can help you connect to yourself again so you always know the right answer for you.

Still interested in coaching but afraid to pull the trigger? Keep your eyes open for a special offer coming soon! In September I will be making a special (limited quantity) offer to those of you who are new to coaching, that will make trying it more affordable! Make sure you are on my email list so that you don’t miss this offer when it’s ready! Joining this list automatically means you receive my free eBook Healthy Eating Shouldn‘t Be a Workout:  Real Life Strategies to Take the Confusion Out of Healthy Living (includes recipes, snack and meal ideas, ways to save money and more!).

Two Tips to Building Body Confidence

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Body confidence doesn't come from what you look like. It's how we use our bodies and what we do with our thoughts that make the biggest difference.

Body confidence doesn’t come from what you look like. It’s how we use our bodies and what we do with our thoughts that make the biggest difference.

There was a time when I thought my lack of body confidence came from being overweight. I remember thinking (on every diet) that things were going to be so much better when I was thin. I thought I’d suddenly have the confidence to do things I’d never tried before, I thought I wouldn’t self-conscious or awkward anymore. Every piece of clothing I’d put on would look amazing and I’d never have a zit again.

Haha.

It wasn’t realistic at all, but if you’ve ever spent a good chunk of your life moderately overweight you may have had similar delusions!

I made it to “thin” around 2006 and let me tell you, all the body image issues I had when I was a size 16 were still there when I was wearing a size 4. In some ways, they felt magnified. I still saw myself as a large person. I’d look in the mirror and see so much more that needed to be worked on. (See the poor quality black & white photos below.) My skin was now “loose” and appeared “flabbier”. My stretch marks, while faded, were almost more visible. It was so hard to appreciate what I had because it looked different than the perfect image I had created in my head. I picked and tore apart my body on a daily basis – always finding something wrong with it.

My weight has gone up and down drastically several times since 2006 and I’ve learned a few things each time but probably the most glaringly obvious thing is that body confidence has nothing to do with your size or shape. It has nothing to do with your weight.

Attempting to take body "progress" pictures back in 2007. I weighed about 139 lbs here but still felt bad about my body.

Attempting to take body “progress” pictures back in 2007. I weighed about 139 lbs here but still felt bad about my body.

You can be heavy and have confidence in your body. You can be thin and have confidence in your body. Your body can still be a work in progress and you can still feel confident in it. You can also accept your body as it is right now and feel confident. It’s not dependent on what the scale says.

There are 2 things I do now that have made the biggest difference in my body confidence – regardless of the current size of my body. One of those things is moving my body in ways that I love and the other is to stop paying attention to negative thoughts about my body. I’ll go into more detail about each of those below. I hope you’ll try these in your own life!

 

Move your body in ways that you love.

I remember spending hours and hours on the elliptical at the gym, bored out of my mind and barely working hard enough to raise my heart rate. It was hard to keep myself going when I didn’t enjoy what I was doing and also I wasn’t really seeing any changes in my body. Exercise is so much easier to do when you find things that you love doing! Take a dance class, try CrossFit, barre classes, start a walking group in your neighborhood, join a hiking group on meetup.com. If you have an internet connection, all it takes is a quick search to find free exercise videos you can try from the comfort of your living room. You don’t have to go to a gym if that doesn’t excite or motivate you. When you find movement, exercise or activity (we can call it whatever you want) that is fun and challenging, you’ll want to do it.

I’ve found that I love barre classes for how graceful they make me feel and because they strengthen my core without having to spend hours on my back doing crunches. I love riding my bike because it’s a little bit like flying and I enjoy the wind on my face (perhaps I was a dog in a past life). I love seeing how far I can travel in a short amount of time and love knowing that it’s all powered by my strong legs. I love strength training with heavy weight because it makes me feel strong, powerful and like I could kick anyone’s ass.

Lately, John and I have been spending some of our free time hiking and while it’s challenging, I’m always amazed how much better my body handles it at 38 years old and 158 lbs than it did when I was 23 and 220 lbs. Yesterday I tackled a hill on a bike ride that used to kill me – even a few years ago I dreaded it every time – so much so that I sometimes thought about doing a different route so I could avoid the hill (hills are not my favorite) but I blew up this hill yesterday like it was nothing!! I couldn’t believe how easy it was for my body now and it felt great.

John and I moving our bodies in ways we love (despite what the look on his face says).

John and I moving our bodies in ways we love (despite what the look on his face says).

I get my body confidence now from what my body can DO. It is no longer dependent on what it looks like. Yes, doing all these activities definitely changes how my body looks (I thank barre for my smoother inner thighs and weight lifting for my shoulder/bicep definition) but it’s not the sole reason I do them. It’s not even the most important reason. I get a major thrill in being able to do things physically that might have previously been out of reach for me.

I can do a chin up from a hanging position. YES! Just a few months ago I was excited that I could do most of one as long as I jumped up the first 1/3 of the way. Now I can do one without that boost! Holy crap, I never thought that would happen. This is MY amazing body and it’s strong.

I can carry a ton of grocery bags from the car through my garage and basement and up the stairs into the house and not be winded and do it again and again.

I’m thankful that my body can do these things (and aware that my health allows the possibility). I get excited to challenge it in new ways. How can I not be confident in this vehicle which allows me to travel everywhere I want to be and do everything I want to do? How can I not feel good in it? Why would allow myself to feel anything other than awe, appreciation and love towards it? When I do physical stuff that I love doing, it makes it far easier to love my body. Seriously, it’s the BEST.

There’s a great side effect that comes from focusing on what my body is capable of and not what it looks like. I couldn’t do the things I do if I wasn’t eating properly. If I don’t eat enough, I won’t be able to complete my strength workout. If I don’t eat a good balance of protein and carbs, I won’t be able to bike 20 or 30 miles. If I eat crappy today, I won’t feel so hot on our hike tomorrow. Focusing on the amazing things my body can do and what I want it to be able to do makes eating well so much easier. And eating well means I have less bloating, less insane cravings and my clothes fit better.

 

Notice how much you think about what your body looks like and then stop doing that.

How many times a day do you mentally criticize it?

How long does it take you to find something to wear each day that doesn’t make you think terrible thoughts about yourself?

How much are negative words directed towards your body a regular part of your routine?

When I say “stop doing that”, I know some of you are rolling your eyes at me. “It’s not that easy Andrea!”. I know it’s not. It’s not easy to stop doing it if you think there is nothing you can do about it. This is just the way you are, right?

I’ve said it 1000 times and I’m going to keep saying it until we all feel empowered with this idea:  We don’t have control over the thoughts that pop into our heads but we DO have control over what we do with those thoughts. If a thought about our thighs, our belly, our stretch marks appears, we can either go look for evidence that the thought is true or we can choose to ignore that thought and move about our day.

Yes, you CAN ignore these negative thoughts about yourself. Think of these thoughts as a heckler in a crowd you are performing in front of (as a comedian, an actor, whatever). You can choose to listen to the heckler and let him affect your performance, you can choose to engage with the heckler and give him the attention he’s after and again distract and affect your performance OR you can ignore the guy and do your thing. You could even ask him to leave! Have him escorted out – it’s your show!

We don’t have to indulge or engage with the heckler. Those negative thoughts you have about your body are hecklers. Don’t give them extra attention. The less you pay attention to those kinds of thoughts, the less loud they will get and soon you’ll find yourself “performing” at your very best. Totally focused, prepared and unable to be flustered by any thought that shows up.

Not engaging with these thoughts does take practice. It’s a matter of noticing when they happen and then paying attention to what you do with the thought. At first you’ll think that you aren’t doing anything with those negative thoughts – the engagement and indulging of them has become an automatic habit and just like any other habit, it takes effort to break. When a thought appears, like “Ug, my stomach looks so disgusting in this shirt!” pretend it’s one of those choose your own adventure books you had as a kid (those were the best!!!). Which path are you going to choose? And where do you think you might end up?

I’ll give you another analogy (since I love them). The obnoxious political posts on social media. You’re scrolling through and read a post from one of your relatives spouting insanely ignorant and divisive rhetoric. It infuriates you. In fact, you feel anger bubbling up in you as soon as you  read it. You can A) Start typing furiously away, blasting their post with counting facts one by one or B) You can continue scrolling by without responding (or even “hide” the person and their posts so you don’t have to see it again).  The first time you choose B and don’t respond, you might feel bad. You might keep thinking about it and wanting to go back and say something. You may even find yourself venting to someone in your real life about the post or the person. But if you ignore this kind of stuff again and again and stop responding to it, you’ll find that it becomes easier to do with time. My facebook is a whole mess of obnoxious posts from people with different beliefs that me and I just don’t engage anymore (because it’s healthier for me). I used to get into lots of arguments with people online – I felt like I couldn’t NOT say something. Now it’s easy to just move on.  You can do the same thing with negative thoughts about your body.

The cool thing that happens when you stop getting down and dirty with those negative thoughts about your body is that you realize you don’t even need to replace the negative thought with positive thoughts. You don’t have to do affirmations if those don’t speak to you. You don’t have to write love letters to your hated parts (though it won’t hurt!). By ignoring the negative stuff, neutral becomes the norm. Your body becomes your body, a vehicle to use to live your life and not something that warrants consideration for how it looks. Aren’t you just glad your car starts in the morning and gets you safely where you need to be? It doesn’t matter if there is a little rust on it or some bug guts squished on the window – it’s purpose in life isn’t to be shiny and pretty and perfect. It’s purpose is to take you from A to B safely.

That’s it for today. Two ways I’ve built up my body confidence that have nothing to do with dieting, losing weight or being thin. What makes you feel confident in your body? What is your favorite thing about what your body can do?

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