Loving your body is one of those things you are supposed to do. You are supposed to cherish it. You are supposed to appreciate it. You are supposed to enjoy looking at it in the mirror. We are all supposed to do these things. Hell, I’ve written a whole book on them. Have you read Sexy by Nature?
Right? I’ve worked on body love so much I even know how to help you do it.
I do.
From all of that experience, I know that there are good ways to do it, and there are bad.
I (obviously!) do it all the good ways. I love my body because of what it does, and because of gratitude for what it provides to me — like the abilities to breathe, and to laugh, and to be happy. I love my body because it is my home. I love my body because it does its best to make me healthy. I love my body because the number of things it does right far outweigh the number of things it does wrong. I do not love my body based on shallow, transient characteristics like the circumference of my abdomen or the semi-linearity of my almost-white teeth. (I do, admittedly, really enjoy having orange hair.)
I love my body in all the right ways and for all the right reasons.
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Yet…
(there’s got to be a “yet,” right?)
Yet.
Sometimes I do not love my body.
Sometimes, in fact, I hate it.
Sometimes I fear it.
Sometimes I resent its limitations so fiercely I dig my nails into my mattress and sob until I run out of breath.
Here is why:
My body works, but not the way it is supposed to.
My body sleeps, but never for more than four hours at a time and sometimes not at all.
My kidneys process potassium, but at a much lower rate than other peoples’ do.
My heart beats, but faster and harder than a healthy heart beats.
My skin protects me from the outer world. It looks pretty good these days. But one sweaty workout, one bite of vegetables fried in butter, one handful of nuts, one small period of fasting, one ten-minute exposure to UV rays, and I will most certainly have acne the following morning.
My eyes work, but are photophobic, which means that I get migraines from any lights brighter than a desk lamp. I always wear sunglasses outside, and sometimes I even have to wear them inside. This is not a whole lot of fun in ballet class.
My metabolism burns, but slowly. Just one “off” day and my pants are noticeably tighter. If not careful, I’ll put on five pounds in a week.
My ovaries now work better, thanks to serious efforts and healing on my part, but I also experience weight gain and quite depressing PMS like clockwork every 27 days.
My muscles contract, but those in my back more than other people’s, which means I get headaches if I have poor posture or sit down for too long.
My eardrums are great at detecting quiet sounds. Their sensitivity can be helpful. It can also be oppressive, since loud sounds and pressure from the wind give me headaches. I always have a pair of ear plugs on me in case I need them.
My body works, but is limiting.
My body works, but I cannot necessarily fix it.
My body, in fact, often stops me from being able to visit friends and relatives. It prevents me from enjoying meals that my friends make. It forces me to leave all rooms with fluorescent lights. It doesn’t let me sleep. It makes my heart beat too fast. It gives me anxiety. It makes me chronically exhausted. It erodes my faith in my ability to ever be able to have a stable health and happiness.
In these moments, do I love my body?
Well, deep down, yes. I know that it is my only home. It is my shelter, and my partner. It does many good things. I do know this.
But sometimes its just f*cking impossible to feel it.
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It is my firm and loving opinion that it is unrealistic to demand of ourselves that we always feel positively about our bodies. My solution is to stop doing that.
I don’t put any pressure on. I do my best. Life is hard. Health is hard. I no longer need to be perfect, in this as much as in other things. I simply cannot do it. As much as I do genuinely love and appreciate my body, I am a human being who struggles. I have good days and bad days. On bad days, I am so unhappy with my body it physically aches.
And to be honest, since I have accepted the pain and frustrations and patience required for living in my body…
it has all gotten easier. Permitting my negative feelings space has allowed me to heal. I’ve got at least three degrees of acceptance here working in my favor. I enjoy thinking of myself as intelligent, so let’s call it Meta-Acceptance. It’s 1) okay that my body is so delicate, 2) also okay that I don’t like that my body is so delicate, amd 3) also also okay that I don’t like that I don’t like that my body is so delicate.
These days when I’m scared or pissed off about my body, I let myself be angry. My mom will call me and I’ll say – hang on, I’ve got a big cry to let out, I’ll call you right back. And I do it, and I’m unhappy, but I’m fine, it’s actually all fine. I go back to the tasks and rhythm of my Monday. The more I have accepted these moments and feelings, the easier they flow through me and out of my life.
It’s kind of nice.
…Even though (!) the point of this post has NOT been to teach you a lesson on how to heal.
Sure – yes – acceptance has been powerful. Woooo. Go acceptance!
What I really want to do here more than anything is to “come out” – so to speak. It is to be a blogger who cares about body love, who has literally written the book (one of them) on it – and to still be someone who isn’t always overbrimming with joy and love.
More and more acceptance all the time, sure. Stuff is what it is, and that’s that. But life as a human animal is hard and imperfect, and here I am saying, do your best to be loyal to and embrace your body, but – well. Whatever. If you don’t always feel it, more power to you. You need more than just the easy stuff to make life worth living anyway.
It’s all okay. Good day, bad day, how much you are capable of accepting limitations. Whatever.
Sometimes I don’t feel love for my body.
No big deal.
If these thoughts resonated with you, you will probably really enjoy my book, Sexy By Nature. All my thoughts on body love and acceptance can be found there.
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I wanted to reply to the last post but got to shy to do so – this one also hits home as right now I’m pregnant so a lot of weight issues I ‘can’t control’ so to speak with the summer heat, water retention is no joke. I can love my body at the best of times but boy did I ever just let er cry too the other day after seeing a picture of myself at the lake looking more huge rather than pregnant and I still have 10 weeks to go… I wanted to say yesterday that my hubby used to chase all them ‘pretty and thin’ girls but found they lacked something in their personality. Now I’m not ugly but not bombshell, and if I work hard on the body I could make it nice but my legs will always be more filled with muscle and fat rather than sticks, we have our issues right now with this pregnancy and as much as he keeps repeating “it’s just the pregnancy” I get scared that he would want to revert back to his previous ‘wants’ because I’m so not clearly fitting the bill. Anyways, a tad of a vent/rant instead of a comment, but thank you for these posts.
Stefani, I so appreciate your transparency in this post! I work with so many women struggling with body image, and, yeah, it’s impossible for me to expect them and/or myself to love and embrace their bodies and mine every. single. day. Unrealistic. Our body’s are imperfect, and they’re going to let us down… not to mention how our mind affects how we perceive our bodies and ourselves. Thanks for shining some light onto the truth you shared.
Great post, Fani! I am also “guilty” of hating certain things about my body and same as you, these are all internal things, health related. Of course I am pissed that I am not able to wear skirts and dresses in hot summer days, because my inner things are so fluffy that they brush against each other while sweating like pigs and it is pretty painful, even though I am not otherwise fat or overweight or having weight issues, it is JUST this part of my legs. But to be honest I learned to blame it on ME, the person that I am, because my lack of discipline and self-sabotaging make me unable to fix this problem by regular exercising and clean diet. I mean, I eat paleo, but lately I allowed myself to loosen up more than I should in sweet stuff (baking is my passion and yes, I like to eat it all…). I learned NOT to hate my body for that, in this case I do separate my body and my “spirit” I would say, but it was hard for me to learn this. My body is doing the best it possibly can with the tools I AM GIVING IT. And when I give it crap, it can only work so good.
Your book helped me so much in all of this.
I have super painful periods, I can’t even get out of bed on a first day and I am so exhausted by the pain that I sleep all day, but I can’t really sleep because of the pain and the only option that works for me is Ibuprofen, which I HATE to take, but I have to to be able to function. I usually have to take a day off of work because of that, which sucks when it is every month. So I am happy when it comes during the weekend.
I have crooked teeth and I am too shy to show them when smiling. I mean, my face is quite pretty, but everytime I show my teeth, I feel like it is scary and unappealing. But again – it is my fault, because I refused to wear braces when I was a teenager, because it was NOT COOL and kids teased me for that, and my parents were not strict enough to push me into wearing them or paying for the ones that you can’t take off. I learned to love my crooked smile, I will probably never appear in a toothpaste ad (bummer, right?)and I will not have a BIG LAUGH photo in my wedding album, but hey, my teeth can bite or even open a stuck bottle, which in life is way more useful 😉
Little things like bad haircut that I did to myself with Ikea scissors and it will take at least a year to look normal again piss me more than anything major, because it was ME who did it and instantly regreted it.
I am glad I can learn from you on how to accept certain things.
And I love this line from Jessie J’s song – IT’S OKAY NOT TO BE OKAY. :))
<3
Thank you for this post! Acceptance of our bodies is the most difficult “obstacles” to overcome. My sister and I have been talking about this recently.
Thank you for this. It is sometimes hard to give ourselves permission to feel frustrated for our body’s limitations (as you know a lot of mine are the same as yours). I will always end any responses with an optimistic statement, and my friends will reply with, “no, but how are you REALLY handling all of this?” I don’t want to seem like a whiner or a faker especially because a lot of all that I am experiencing is invisible to the rest of the world. We tend to have more compassion for those with physical limitations than ones that we only learn about through others’ descriptions (think society’s stigma of mental illness vs. cancer). What has helped me a lot is my job. I work as an occupational therapist with older adults who are living with a myriad of critical conditions. Many of them cannot walk, some cannot speak, and others must have their food pureed for them so that they can safely swallow. Just yesterday a patient of mine said “you don’t know how lucky you are to be able to walk around like that. Treasure these days.” Spending time with these people reminds me that my powerful body is responsible for their safety and wellbeing, and my strengths are picking up where their limitations leave off. I think that is the key. Using what we CAN do to make a difference for others (such as how you use your empathy and knowledge to fuel your blog), and not being afraid to express and ask for help or comfort regarding things we struggle with or CAN’T do.
Hey Stefani,
“Long time listener, first time caller,” as they say. You and I have very similar body image issues, although I’m a bit older than you are. Just wanted to say that you are so right: it us *absolutely* okay to be someone who’s a passionate voice for self-love, self-nurturing, and self-respect (both inside and out), but to not 100% love your body every minute of every day. I think the key is that, when you have those self-loathing moments, that you don’t fall into the trap (like I usually do) of feeling that your *self-worth* is somehow directly determined by the size or shape of your body.
I cannot begin to tell you how many years I’ve spent as a semi-hermit, not wanting to go out, not wanting to participate in the world, because I was ashamed of how I looked and was *constantly* comparing myself to other girls and women. And you know what? I looked JUST FINE! I always have. No, I’ve never been a size 2, but I’ve never needed to buy a second seat on an airplane, either, if ya know what I mean. 😉 (But even if I did, so what?!)
I spent so many nights alone, feeling worthless, while women two and three times my size were out there meeting people, having fun, having nice experiences — in short, making a *life.* For whatever reason, I let body image issues hide me away from humanity. I lost my entire 20s to those feelings and have already lost a good chunk of my 30s. Life is too short. I still fight the demons, but the “bad days” aren’t quite as bad as they used to be.
Your work is really so important. Your messages need to keep being out there — and it’s *fine with me* if you don’t love yourself *all the time.* It doesn’t make you a fraud; it makes you real.
Hi Amy! Thanks for finally calling in. Its good to know another fighting spirit in the community. 🙂
Of course! I know it makes me real. No problem with that. I want other women to know its cool, too, most importantly.
I am struggling w this whole issue right now. After being very lc/ketogenic for 13 months something snapped and my body slowed down. I cannot seem to get back to vlc or lose the 15 lbs I gained in past fee months. I am more depressed than ever. Wouldn’t wish this on anyone.:(
Yes yes yes yes yes. I am feeling this post so much right now. It’s one that I think we ALL need to write and read and acknowledge: being told all day long to love your body is great, but it doesn’t always make things better.
I’ve been frustrated as hell because I’ve been backsliding hardcore in my own health since Paleo FX…feeling sick, weak, bloated, and broken sucks. And that’s okay. Because we learn to sit with it, learn to be patient with it, learn to find that place between resignation and absolute love (more elusive than the G-spot?)…and life goes on. I think maybe that’s the most important part. Life goes on. Damn, I feel lucky.
Sending you tons of love and healing and happiness from CA <3
I knew you’d chime in on this eventually. Thank you, love. 🙂
Some of these problems are symptoms found in people recovering from eating disorders, just so you know. I know you used to be quite a bit thinner than you are now so you may still be recovering from some of that.
I’m in full-blown recovery right now, am bloated, exhausted, have (I hope) overshot my set point with a large pad of fat around my middle, am often short of breath, and my heart rate is high. I’m assuming that it’s a phase as I recover, since a lot of people go through this in recovery.
I don’t hate my body or accept it. Mostly I just keep apologizing for not feeding myself enough all those years, for not knowing how to listen or understand what was going on. And I’m grateful I’m recovering now.
As I read this I got a lump in my throat. I am also guilty of hating my body. I have also had melt downs asking “why can’t I be ‘normal’ “. I feel like it has held me back from certain things. I feel like it has caused me a lot of stress trying to follow special diets and explain to others why I can’t eat certain things. Constantly trying to find a remedy that will work for me.
I’m finally getting to a point of acceptance and I have found that it has allowed me to move forward. It has allowed me no longer feel stuck, to no longer feel bad about my failures and feel truly grateful for my health as it is. Your post really hit the nail on the head and i bet a lot of people can relate. Again great post!