Hello my beautiful friends. I wanted to share some of the principles I teach my clients - and teach you how to achieve peace with your body where you’re at today, and moving forward through the different stages women’s bodies go through.
Health and wellness goals are a beautiful thing.
But as women's bodies change over the years, it can affect a woman's self-esteem. I want to set you up for SUCCESS as you approach your health, wellness, and weight loss goals if you’re pursuing them, so I’m going to walk you through a few steps on how to do that, especially after having children and perhaps not loving how your body looks this summer.
There’s a huge lack of this among those of us who have a tendency to be a little hard on ourselves. Feeling good about how far you’ve come, feeling good about your accomplishments, and just feeling good enough in general in your body.
One of my mentors recently told me to acknowledge all that I have put my heart out there on the line for, and I want to help you do the same.
He had me do this exercise, and I’m going to encourage you to do the same, write down all the things your body has accomplished throughout your life.
And he said to start with the little things, like how I learned how to walk. And then I learned how to ride a bike, and a scooter, and I thought of my childhood and all the fun I used to have in my body - playing in the sunshine and feeling carefree. Riding a horse, swimming, learning to ski down steep mountains, biking up them, and the list started to grow and grow.
And as I did this list, I started to feel so proud of my body for all it can do, for how it has seen me through all these years.
Why do we have such a hard time celebrating the good things about our bodies? And I don’t even mean out in the open, I’m talking about privately in our own heads.
We do this because we confuse self-criticism with self-awareness. They are not the same thing. In other words, I see women identifying with their self-criticisms thinking they need to keeping thinking those thoughts in order to motivate change.
We know how important it is to be nice to ourselves, but we sometimes believe without our knowing, that our self-criticisms are just TRUTH, and that if we stop thinking them, we’re just making excuses or letting ourselves off the hook.
Holding yourself accountable and being self-critical are not the same thing.
How to counter this? Take some time, do this exercise, and write down all the things you are grateful for what your body can do and how it’s taken care of you, start from when you were small.
Some of us have chronic illness or disease that might come up in your thinking, but I would invite you to take your cues from one of my friends, her name is Sarah Frei, I had her mom on the podcast a while back, she recently became a parapolegic after being hit by a drunk driver, she was in a terrible car accident her senior year, and I recently saw pictures of her water skiing, she doesn’t have her legs anymore, AMAZING, and she travels, she just went to Paris, her attitude teaches us that we are too in our heads about what is wrong with our bodies.
Or - my darling 16 year old son - some of you know - and some of you don’t - he has been losing his hearing gradually since childhood, and now he’s losing his eyesight - he’s gradually going deaf and blind - he has Usher Syndrome - and he teaches me how to seize the day, to enjoy what he can while he can - who knows if he’ll always have this amazing attitude - but for now, he enjoys his body, he’s proud of what he can do, he does artwork, he swims on a swim team, he walks our puppies rain or snow or shine, and he skis with me as his point person down the hill, and I ask him sometimes if he ever thinks about the future and how to plan for it - he says yes, but he focuses on today and what he can do today, and he’s just going to enjoy it.
From the mouths of babes, right?
Sarah and my son are in their teens.
And we lose the tendency to enjoy our bodies as we get older. So we have to cultivate a sense of enjoyment and pride in our bodies, on purpose. Allow yourself to enjoy it in all of its amazingness, even though it isn’t perfect.
This is body peace. Sarah isn’t naive, neither is Joseph, they don’t turn a blind eye, they know more than anyone, but they seize the day.
And we can too.
This is at the heart of experiencing body peace.
What I work towards in private coaching with my Intuitive Eating clients, is what I call Authentic Health.
So step Two is to take some time and answer the following questions. You’ll know when you are achieving Authentic Health by how you answer the following questions: Are you ready?
These questions are really powerful questions.
The goal is to help you see when you are making choices aligned with your health and wellness goals that fit your authentic and unique body.
You’ll know you have likely achieved it if you:
Let’s talk about Black and white thinking: what it is and Why it’s a problem:
First of all, what it is - is an extreme way of thinking that only gives you two options: success or failure / good or bad / worthy or unworthy / and it messes with people.
When eating thoughts are black and white, there is a lot of shame and a lot of morality tied to food.
So as you approach your nutrition goals, if you want to experience body peace, you’re going to have to make food neutral - sugar is neutral - broccoli is neutral - they aren’t good or bad. They just have different nutrition qualities. And when you think of food like that, you start to choose foods that are more aligned with your nutrition goals.
If you think in black and white and tell yourself sugar is bad, then when you crave sugar, you’ll start to feel bad for craving it, you’ll start to identify with the “bad” food and if you eat it, you’ll feel so much shame and think YOU are bad. NO!
You can shift this dynamic by de-escalating the morality of sugar. Just make sugar neutral and tell yourself that sugar in and of itself isn’t bad, it just becomes more compelling when we tell ourselves we can’t have it or we shouldn’t have it.
Do you want to know the fastest way to crave a certain food? Tell yourself you can’t or shouldn’t have it.
This is brain science.
Diet mentality feeds cravings and goes against the way the brain is wired. We set ourselves up for failure by thinking all or nothing, black and white.
If you begin to feel you are a bad person based on how you eat, you’re likely to create self-punishing behaviors with food.
This is the opposite of body peace.
I want to help you achieve more body peace my friend.
When we can identify our own black and white thinking, and then see the thinking through to a more neutral place, where the morality of food isn’t attached to our self worth, we achieve mind / body / food peace and weight balance in sustainable ways that serve us for years and years.
No more body drama. It’s time for body peace.
I’m going to walk you through what mine looks like as an example. There are ten principles. I’m going to keep it brief. I hope you’ll fill in what this can look like for yourself as we move forward. I can help you.
Here goes:
And that’s what body peace is all about.
Really imagine what this could look like for you. Imagine if you felt neutral about food, no more food drama, and you had so much trust with yourself, you weren’t afraid of events where all the rich foods are being served, you felt so grounded and you know you can enjoy how you nourish your body, you’re not afraid to eat a salad or a smoothie either, you know that you are so connected to what your body needs, you honor your nutrition from a place of body respect.
I help the women I coach with get super clear on what that looks like for YOU, and it won’t look like anyone else’s authentic health. And it’s so exciting to think in terms of what is possible to discover this for yourself. You might have some self-doubt come up as you imagine this, but as you practice, my role is to show you your blind spots, and you’ll get better and better and better at trusting yourself. I help you apply these principles to your needs, especially when it gets hard, I’ve got you!
This is some of what I offer when coaching with me, it is included in the Dare Greatly Society, it’s all about helping you enjoy yourself more. I want you to have an extraordinary life and make yourself proud being your unique self.
I hope you’re so proud of yourself for being here, in the dare greatly community, for listening to the podcast, for doing the work we do here. It’s inspiring. But here's the truth: one of my goals is to be an example of what is possible with body peace. Because the alternative feels terrible. And I’ve turned that around for myself. And I’m proud of that. Good job me.
I’m on a personal mission to be an example of what is possible for the younger generation.
5️⃣ things I try to do to instill confidence in the younger generation (my own kids and my teenager clients) to model growing older with grace (that can actually help YOU today!)
And let me tell you, these five things challenge me to counter the messages from the media!
1️⃣ Speaking about the good things my body has seen me through over the years. Noticing the changes without criticizing them. "I love how my tummy carried four babies. Isn't that amazing when you really stop and think about it?"
2️⃣ Resisting talking about nutrition all the time. Why? Food is amazing. It is fuel, that's it. Sugar is fine. Broccoli is great. The end.
3️⃣ If life takes a turn in a direction I didn't plan, it's not the end of the world. Nothing has gone "wrong." It's beneficial to plan on things not going as planned. I say things like, "well, that's not how I thought it would go. But life is a grand adventure, full of things to learn and grow from. I'm up for all of it."
4️⃣ Not commenting on being scared of getting older, “I hate these wrinkles, it sucks to get old, I yearn for the time when I was younger.”
5️⃣ Allow for myself to change. Allowing for it with openness vs. fear and anxiety. Speaking to how normal it is to change and drawing parallels with the natural world, (a flower's life cycle, the changing leaves, etc.)
The younger generation needs to see realistic points of view on these topics. You with me?!
Thank you everyone for being a part of this journey with me. Let’s be the world changers. Let’s make ourselves proud and show the next generation what it looks like to have body peace. Let’s show the next generation of women. Our daughters and our granddaughters. Let’s work together toward more body peace. This is going to be fun.
Have a beautiful day my friend.
In this free mini course, I'll take you through the Emotion Coaching framework I've taught hundreds of moms and dads for cultivating more peace. Plus you'll discover how to shift the 'frustration habit' and parent from a place of trusting yourself more.