How To Stop Hating Your Body
Body image issues run rampant in our culture, but no amount of surgery or weight loss is going to fix your relationship with it. Here's how to stop hating and start loving the body you have.
We often think of love and hate as emotions but they are not. Love and hate are actions that create emotions. Consider what happens when you meet someone you really like. Someone who has the potential to be a love interest. What do you do when you meet that person? To begin with, you probably begin to spend more and more time talking or communicating with that person. You probably also try and carve out as much time as possible to actually spend with that person. You may even spend a considerable amount of money to be with them if they don’t live close to you.
What’s interesting is that early on in relationships, people don’t really consider all the time, money and energy they are investing in their relationship. Partly this is because science tells us that early in a relationship, our brain is producing lots of chemicals that produce a kind of “high” that is what we generally refer to as “love.” In spite of how it may feel, however, your brain doesn’t just produce these chemicals when you’re near a romantic interest. It also produces many of the same chemicals when you are with friends or family with whom you share any type of emotionally intimate relationship with as well.
What’s interesting is that science will also tell us that these “feel good” chemicals of an early relationship will fade over time, but it also tells us they don’t have to. By the time most people reach adulthood, they have experienced the phenomenon of either falling completely out of love with someone they once basically worshipped and adored or had something they still worship and adore tell them they are no longer the object of that person’s affection. So what happened? How can we experience this highest of highs, only to have it come crashing down on our head?
The answer is that love is not an emotion, it is an action. When you first meet that special someone, you go out of your way to make them a priority. You invest time and energy in talking to them and being with them. You drop what you are doing to answer their call/FaceTime request or text them back quickly. You avidly follow their social media and like or comment on almost everything. You may even regularly initiate contact or communication. You might buy them little gifts or cook them dinner or bake special treats for them. In short, you invest heavily in your relationship.
Over time, as you start getting more comfortable in the relationship, however, you may stop making them a priority. Phone calls, FaceTimes and social media interactions dry up. Other things begin to take priority and then you can’t understand why the feeling suddenly start to wane. Every relationship has a cost that is meant to be shared by two people. As long as you are investing in the relationship, it continues to grow and thrive. When you stop investing, it starts to wither and die. Sometimes, one person can keep a relationship going for years even though they are the only one investing. Eventually, however, one person simply cannot keep a relationship meant for two going.
So what does all of this have to do with your body?
Feelings follow action
You can’t just stop hating your body, you have to start loving it. But love is not a feeling, it is an action. You have to actively start loving your body. Keep in mind, however, your body and your person are pretty much the same thing. I think you’ll find that people who hate their bodies also hate their selves and people who hate themselves also hate their bodies. In order to start loving your body, you have to start loving your whole “self” and vice-versa. Many people confuse narcissism with self love but narcissism is actually a form of self-hatred. Narcissists are needy af, but when you learn to truly love yourself, you actually stop being so needy.
Needy people are only needy when their needs aren’t being met.
When you learn to love yourself, you stop being needy because you no longer need from others what you are capable of giving yourself.
So how do you do that?
By now I am hoping that most people are familiar with Dr. Gary Chapman’s 5 Love Languages. According to Chapman, we all give and receive love in different ways. He calls these different ways in which we most naturally give and receive love “languages.”
The five love languages are:
Words of Affirmation
Acts of Service
Receiving Gifts
Quality Time
Physical Touch
The truth is that relationships are relationships are relationships. The same things that go into building and developing good relationships with others are same things you need to have a good, healthy relationship with yourself - and your body. The same things that help you develop good relationships with a partner, mate or spouse are the same things that create good parent/ child relationships or even good business relationships.
One of the things that Chapman talks about in his book is that most people recognize pretty quickly what their love language is, but some have a very difficult time figuring it out. He states that this is generally for one of two reasons. Either people have been loved so well in so many different ways that they don’t know what their own innate language is; or, they don’t even know what it feels like to be loved let alone what their unique language is.
The truth is, however, that whatever your innate language, we all feel the most loved by having the most “languages” spoken to us. As you can see by the list of languages, each is an action of some kind. Speaking words of affirmation. Giving gifts. Touching. Committing acts of service. Spending quality time together. So, how do you start to love your body? You start to act in a loving fashion towards it. Preferably in all five languages. Here are some ways to do that.
Words of Affirmation: Stand in front of a full-length mirror (naked if you can manage it, but it’s okay if you can’t) and begin to speak words of life to your body. You can thank your feet and your ankles for taking you all the places you need to go. You can thank your knees for helping you kneel down on the floor with a child or sit with your best fur friend. You can thank your hips and thighs for helping you walk, climb stairs or run. Find a few body parts you genuinely like and tell them what you like about them. Try and continue doing this throughout the day. The more you make this a consistent practice or habit, the more you may find yourself being grateful for - and therefore “loving” - your body.
Acts of Service: Do nice things for your body. This might include getting a mani/pedi or massage but it can also be things like taking a bath with candles or taking the time to fix yourself a nice dinner and plate it like you would if you were having company. Taking care of your body is not just eating right and exercising. Taking care of your body is taking care of your “self.” Ask yourself this: do you think your kids, spouse, friends or loved ones would feel loved if all you ever did was make sure they were fed and got some exercise? Do nice things for yourself and your body.
Gift Giving: When people have body image issues, they tend to go one of two ways. They either stop wearing attractive clothing altogether or they tend to push and shove and force their body into tight, restrictive and sometimes even painful clothing full of wires and cages. Instead, buy nice things for yourself or dress yourself in your prettiest or best clothing. Don’t save all your nicest and best clothing for someone else or for when you feel better about yourself. Don’t buy clothing that is too small as an incentive to lose weight. Buy clothing that makes you feel good about who you are now. Buy and wear nice underwear for yourself. Also remember, people who’s love language is gift giving don’t need expensive gifts. Pick flowers for yourself because you deserve them. Give yourself the gift of pretty nails or a home facial just because you (and your body) are worth it.
Quality Time: Most people are familiar with the idea of “paying yourself first.” As hard as that may be to do with money, it’s perhaps even harder to do with your time. Every week or every month, try and take your calendar and block out “me time.” If you are a single mom, that might involve making arrangements with another mom to trade off sleep-overs or after school kid care. If you are married, that might mean having certain days or times when you “single parent” for each other. The bottom line is, however, that if you don’t make it a priority to spend some quality time with yourself, you’re going to have a hard time having a good relationship with yourself.
Physical Touch: Too often in America, we only think of physical touch in relationship to sex. The truth is we have nerve endings all over our body that respond to touch by releasing oxytocin. If you’ve ever raised a litter of puppies, you know that they all pile on top of each other. If you share space with more than one cat, you may notice that they will often squeeze into very tight spaces together. Human beings, and most likely animals as well, derive a sense of safety from the activation of these nerve endings, which means physical touch can even lower anxiety. Whether it’s snuggling with a child or your best fur friend, getting a massage or even just giving yourself a foot rub, touching your own body or snuggling with someone else can not only help ease pain and anxiety, but help you better love the skin you live in.
Just like any other relationship, you can’t wait for your body to be perfect to start loving it. It will never be perfect enough and the more you try to “beat it into shape” the more it will rebel. Your body has a way that it was meant to be that may or may not fit in with the way culture tells us it is “supposed” to be. Stop fighting to turn your body into someone else’s ideal of beauty and just learn to love it for what it is the way it is. Your body will thank you and so will the rest of you. You can’t love yourself and hate your body. Your body is an inextricable part of you.