3 Frightening Myths About Body Image...

...that often scare people away from doing the work.

Body image can indeed be scary stuff, and it's often misunderstood. The misunderstanding of what body image work entails entails often exacerbates the fear and holds us back from achieving the peaceful relationship we all deserve with our bodies. Grasping the realities of these misunderstandings and myths can be a huge step towards overcoming them. Here are 3 myths you can start reframing today:

1. Body size is an indicator of health. If I don't care about my body's size, I don't care about being healthy.

NOPE! If you’ve never read Health at Every Size, you absolutely need to. This book and its author, Linda Bacon, focus on eliminating the misconceptions that correlate weight and body size with health. This mentality is actually more damaging to our lives than whatever weight we are carrying. Our focus should be shifted from a diet culture that promotes weight loss to feel good about oneself, and instead relearning that one can be healthy regardless of size. Lessening emphasis on body size and working towards a more acceptance based stance opens the door to experiencing more health than ever before.

2. I'm not healing the relationship with my body if I still struggle with negative body thoughts.

Negative thoughts will not simply go away with the snap of a finger and it's important to remember that everyone has shitty body image days. This work takes patience. Let your relationship with your body grow over time, as it's unrealistic to expect it to go from all bad to all good immediately. Plus, it's unrealistic for us to expect it to stay all good all the time. The relationship with the body is just like any other relationship, perfectly imperfect. It takes time to develop trust, earn safety and build intimacy. Sometimes there will be ruptures, but the follow up repair will only strengthen the relationship in the long run.

A great way to start to cultivate a healing body relationship is to work towards replacing or following up a critical body image thought with a thought of gratitude and awe (great for all you logical types!). For example, instead of "I wish my stomach was flatter" how about my heart beats 100,000 times a day without me even thinking about it or asking it to". Think about and start acknowledging what your body does for you daily, instead of what you wish it did or could do. Remember, your body doesn't understand that you think it "should" look or feel different.

3. I don't feel like being "body positive" or loving my body is possible for me right now, so I can't do the work.

Very untrue. This is where body neutrality comes in. Body neutrality isn't about loving your body. It's actually not really about your body at all and takes the focus away from your body and shifts to a more human and holistic dynamic, what makes you YOU.

It's a HUGE task to go from hating your body to loving it. Body neutrality can be a fantastic way to take pressure off of hating and objectifying your body. The aim is not to love your body but to commit to respecting your body enough to continue to take care of it in the dark moments and that your worth lies in the content of who you are, not what you look like.