How to improve your body image
There are a few topics that I feel extremely passionate about, and this one is big for me. Getting over negative self-talk is something I spend a lot of time speaking to clients about. I think it is everywhere and I know I struggle with it as much as the next person. But when it comes to having a bad body image, it can be extremely hard to overcome. Especially in this day and age.
Mindfulness is very popular at the moment. It's a term to describe being present, being in the moment and being aware. Meditation is a mindfulness practice and one I have spent many nights trying to figure out how to do properly. One of the many reasons I use meditation is to help me relax before bed. It seems to help me in dealing with anxiety by calming things down, it brings me into my parasympathetic state. If you are like me and go 100 miles an hour at everything, drink a gallon of coffee and love training, then chances are you are a pretty stimulated person. This can come out as anxiety. I get moments where I overthink everything, I am overly analytical and I think about a million things at once, struggling to focus on anything while being completely overwhelmed. The physical sensations of anxiety also seem to be present and heightened when I am not getting proper sleep, so the urge for most of us to drink more coffee increases… but it is the worst thing we can do. (I joke about a gallon of coffee by the way).
So I needed to find a way to calm my brain, and this is where it is good to understand the two parts that make up the autonomic nervous system. (Oh and bare with me, I’ll get back to meditation soon and how this will help your body image.)
You two different states that you’ll switch back and forth from, you have:
Parasympathetic Nervous System: This is known as Rest and Digest. It’s called this because this is the state you need to be in to get adequate rest, it slows down your heart rate and breathing and allows energy to go towards digestion.
Sympathetic Nervous System: This is known as your “fight or flight”. This is what helps you to control your response to stressful situations. The fight or flight kicks in when you are stressed/anxious or when something traumatic happens to you, it is strong and overpowering.
Meditation helps us get into a parasympathetic state. It calms us down.
The world is so fast-paced and I feel like there is always a small level of stress at all times. Emails from your boss on your day off, training stress, financial, relationships, personal and family problems. On a daily basis we may have to deal with 100 different problems and all of these can add to how stressed we are.
This low level of stress can keep us in a sympathetic state. If any of you suffer from anxiety, you will be used to this state. Heart racing, sweating, eyes dilated, increased breathing. All of these things happen to make us more alert to the danger around us. But what if these dangers aren’t real? What happens then? What if these dangers are in our heads?
Do this for me. Close your eyes and think back to a time when you were extremely scared or panicking. This could be that feeling you had when your Ex broke up with you, or when you slept through your alarm and woke up to the noise of your boss calling you.
Spend a minute just reliving that situation, the thoughts and feelings and what it felt like at the moment.
Notice what happens to your heart rate, to your breathing, to that feeling of anxiety.
And now take a big breath in, and slowly breathe out, breath out for 10 seconds, and do this a few times while relaxing the muscles in your arms and your face. You will of gone from your Sympathetic nervous system, into your Parasympathetic nervous system.
That is what meditation helps us do, it helps us calm down. But it also helps us be aware of our thoughts. I think of meditation as going into a third-person mode on a game. First-person would be as if you were looking through the eyes of the character in a game, but third-person is where you can see the whole character from head to toe, moving around, and can witness what he is doing. When I meditate I try to take the same approach.
I focus on my hands or my breathing and every now and again I notice that my focus has drifted from my breathing to a thought, a thought of “I should have said X to that person” or “I need to do y with my website” or “I need to make sure I book that holiday” - The beauty of the meditation is becoming aware of those thoughts, noticing them, then watch them drift off as I return to my breathing.
Meditation teaches us that we are not our thoughts, we are separate from them. And I believe the same is for our bodies. We are not our body, we are a third person, we can witness our thoughts and feelings but be disconnected. We can witness what we look like and the strength we have, but we are still separate. This is the approach I like to take when thinking about body image.
Understand that your body is unbelievable. It can do incredible things. The human body can turn into Eddie Hall and lift 500kg from the floor, or it could be Mo-Farah and run a gold medal 10km race. Both are humans, but both people have achieved completely different things with their bodies. You are the same. Your body is a tool, it is a machine, it is a 3D printer. All you need to do is give it the right fuel, and the right instructions and it can create whatever you want.
If you were to build a house there would be a step-by-step way to do it. If you were to bake a cake, there are instructions. Ikea flatpack furniture is the same. And so is your body.
You can create the body you want, by doing the right things to it.
You are not your body. Your body is one small part that makes up the whole of you. You are the actor in the film who can move at normal speed while everything else is in slow motion. You are Keanu Reeves. (COOL). - You are not even the thoughts you have. You are the person who can witness those thoughts. So to think that your worth comes from the way you look is ludicrous.
Unfortunately, society is a funny thing. It tells us how to act constantly, everyone has an opinion of what you should do and how you should do it. Media and social media puts beauty on a pedestal and it tells you that you are not beautiful enough. You need plastic surgery because Kimmy K has it. You need a slim waist and a big butt, like Mrs Incredible. You need to drink this fit tea and have lip fillers. So, it’s no wonder you have times when you look in the mirror and feel a little inadequate. The world is telling you that you are. That external noise becomes our self-talk. But we need to break that. And meditation is one way.
A change of mindset must go along with this.
You are not your body. You are beautiful the way you are and there is nothing wrong with who you are or the way you look. But if you want to change the way you look, because you are currently unhappy or feeling self-conscious, then no one should tell you you can’t. You’ve all heard of Fat shamming? Fit shaming is a thing as well. I helped a client lose 20kg and his friends kept taking the piss out of him for wanting to change. Crazy right?
If you feel like you should change the way you look, you shouldn’t, you don’t have to. But if you want to change, you can. Just know your body is a blank canvas that you can turn into the Mona Lisa if you want to. The beauty of you comes from within, and the change you make has to come from a place of love, not hate.
So meditate, learn you are not your body and every time you comment negatively about the way you look, counter that argument, remind yourself you are beautiful and take control.
