Are you a woman struggling with a fat and ugly self-image? When swimsuit season rolls around, would you rather die than load up your thighs? Locked in an embrace with your lover, is “Lights out, honey” your mantra? That may mean that you feel really uncomfortable with your body. You’re not alone. Many women struggle with a negative body image. Because so many girls are unhappy with their bodies, the diet industry is getting fatter and fatter, earning more than $60 billion a year. That’s because diet organizations make money when they make you feel fat and insecure. When you look in the mirror, do you love what you see? Research shows that nearly 4 in 5 American women today say they hate their bodies. That’s 80% of the female population in the entire United States. You are one of them?
Why can’t you see yourself as you really are?
The truth is that we do not really see ourselves or our bodies as we are, or even as others see us, because we are only seeing our interpretation of reality, not what is really there, because we cannot observe ourselves objectively. Our perceptions are colored or filtered by our experiences. If his family was a blue family, they gave him “blue glasses.” If your family and experiences are part of an optimistic group, you’ve been looking at the world through “rose-colored glasses.” We are all different depending on how our experiences have shaped us. Our brains are always making sense of everything we experience. The important thing to keep in mind is that it doesn’t matter what color of glasses you’ve been experiencing the world through; it is just a starting point. You don’t have to get stuck with those faulty perceptions. It may be time for an update.
Self-image: the mirror in your mind
Inside each of us we have the equivalent of a huge computer that stores all the experiences of our life, in your memory. This is known as the subconscious mind. The subconscious mind is not an actual part of your brain, but is said to be present in every cell of your body. This database in you contains a collection of beliefs and experiences that is known as your self-image. Determine how you feel about who you are, your body, your life, and everything you believe is possible. To be happy, truly happy, and live a fulfilling life, you must have an adequate and realistic image of yourself that you can live in harmony with. You have to be good enough for yourself. This will give you a good strong sense of self-esteem. This is an image of yourself that you can trust and believe in, like and admire, respect and honor.
When your image of yourself is intact, you feel good and you are a confident person. When something happens that shakes you or threatens you, you become insecure. If you have been abused or hurt, criticized or mocked, you may still feel the impact of that emotional pain, depending on the meaning you have given to the experience, you may tend to feel shame and find yourself hiding your light. That’s just because it feels like the safest option for you. If you are trapped in a body trap, hating some part of yourself, it is because you believe that you are that negative, shameful, disgusting, unworthy, fat, ugly, stupid or incapable image that you can have of yourself. Is not true!
And unless you are able to see yourself differently, no diet, no exercise, no amount of praise, or anything else will make you believe something that a part of you isn’t ready to believe. In order to change these limiting negative core beliefs and feel different about your body, without doing anything radical like cosmetic surgery or dieting, you have to change the image you have within yourself. The good news is that this self image or subconscious mind is completely impersonal and unbiased to the information it contains. So if you don’t like how you look or how you feel about your body, all you have to do is direct your subconscious mind or self-image in a new direction.
Dr. Maxwell Maltz, Plastic Surgeon Performs No-Scalpel Facelifts
This incredible discovery of the power of self-image and the extent of its influence is attributed to the work of one man, Dr. Maxwell Maltz. Maltz was a plastic surgeon in the 1960s. At 61, he wrote his first book called Psycho Cybernetics, which became a self-improvement phenomenon, selling more than 30 million copies to date. Today, he can’t pick a self-improvement book or program that isn’t based on his groundbreaking discoveries that teach how to change a negative self-image. Maltz said that “one’s self-image changes, for better or worse, not just with the intellect, not with head knowledge, but with ‘experience.’ That means for you to think and feel differently about your body, you have to start being able to ‘see’ yourself doing things differently.
In essence, their ideas focus on visualizing your goals. It is truly the secret behind “The Secret”. Here is the origin of how this all came to be. Before writing Psycho Cybernetics, Dr. Maltz noted that many times after a successful cosmetic procedure, his patients remained obsessed with their blemishes that they had agreed were already well corrected.
After examining many cases, he noticed a parallel. Every one of those patients who felt that cosmetic surgery did nothing for them had very low self-esteem. They felt that deep down there was nothing that could be done to correct their shortcomings. One day, Dr. Maltz had a brainstorm and realized that what they needed was a perception correction. He made a deal with one of his clients named Jack, who was obsessed with his crooked nose. Dr. Maltz said that he would not consent to operating on Jack again until Jack took an intermediate step. Dr. Maltz offered to teach Jack how to recreate his distorted image of himself through a visualization process. He explained that it would take 21 consecutive days to complete the process. After that time, if Jack was still not satisfied, Dr. Maltz would do the surgery.
At the end of 21 days, Jack was so happy with his nose that he didn’t even want to have surgery.
My experience of going from body hate to body love: So many sighs about my big fat thighs
In my experience, before I made the decision to stop dieting, I spent years obsessing over the size of my thighs. No matter what size I was, I swore I must have the biggest thighs in the world. No amount of weight loss or exercise was enough to alter my distorted perception of my body. When I finally decided to stop dieting, because I had an image of myself as a fat pig with no self-control around food, I lost all control, seemed like I could never stop eating, and gained 35 pounds.
One day, standing looking at myself fat in the mirror, I had an epiphany and realized that I had to accept myself and my thighs as they were, or continue to live a crazy life hoping and praying that the diet and exercise will change them. . I knew that I could never again live under the tyranny of diets, so the alternative was to learn to love myself now. Because I made that decision, I now know for sure that the problem was never the size of my thighs. It was all in my head. It was the low self-esteem and the poor image of myself that I carried with me on a daily basis. It was those angry thoughts, those nasty words and criticisms that were yelled at me as a child. Because those memories were so emotionally charged, every time I looked in the mirror or remembered something related to how I felt about my body, those tapes replayed in my mind and I became my own worst critic. That angry voice that had become mine was the reason why I couldn’t stop eating. I knew I had to change the way I talked to myself and find some compassion and gentleness within myself. It started with making the decision to stop dieting and vowing that I would learn to trust myself again.
Today, now that I am no longer worried about following a diet or watching my weight, and I know that I can trust myself around each and every food, I have more respect and appreciation for myself as I am: Andrea, the person. Food is no longer my master and I am no longer its slave. As I continue to take steps to befriend my body and love it at any size, I notice that it keeps shrinking and getting smaller. I’m not trying to lose weight. I just am, and I’m doing it in the least invasive way possible.
I love knowing that I can eat cookies, chips, ice cream, and pasta at home and be surrounded by tons of goodies and not feel the need to eat them when I’m not hungry. I love having the feeling of power that comes with being able to put a bag clip on my fries and put them back in the cabinet, knowing I don’t want to eat them anymore and they’ll be there for later. And on the increasingly rare occasions when I eat a little more or a lot more than my body wants, I know there’s no reason to beat myself up, feel disgusted, or blame myself because I didn’t do anything wrong. Forgiveness is not necessary.
When I overeat, it is simply an indication to me that something deeper hurts. And by taking care of that, discovering what it is, managing those wounds and treating myself in the most loving and gentle way possible, the desire to abuse myself with food disappears. Let me tell you everything I’ve learned along the way. I am full of information that I want to teach you. Let me help start you on your way to adopting new non-diet thinking so that you too can start loving your thighs or any other part of you at any size.
Here are some tips to help you change a fat and ugly self-image:
1. Watching body-affirming television TV shows like Lifetime’s How to Look Good Naked are instant mood lifters. Hosted by Carson Kressley, former co-host of Queer Eye for the Straight Guy, Carson focuses on helping women go from hating their bodies to loving them. I like to think of it as a 60 minute makeover. With Carson at the helm, you’ll cry with laughter as you learn to see your body in a more loving and compassionate light.
two. look for role models Find a woman who has the same body type as you and who is already doing what you want to do. If you hate your thighs and wish you could feel comfortable going to the beach and wearing a swimsuit, find a woman who is already doing it and ask her permission to ask her a few questions. Tell her that you don’t feel comfortable and that you really want to understand how to think more like her so that you can like your body more. Ask her what makes her feel comfortable. What does she think about when she is at the beach? What motivates her and many other questions you may have.
3. get support Spend time with other women who are also committed to appreciating their bodies.
Four. Study Role Models Read books about women with your shape who like their bodies. This is a less assertive but nonetheless effective way of accomplishing the same goal as talking to another woman and asking her questions.
5. stop looking at the scale Do not let anything or anyone tell you how you have the right to feel. Step away from the scale. Save it or throw it away. Stop judging yourself by that filthy sheet metal.
Lastly, and most importantly, you are not your thighs, your butt, your frizzy hair, or your sagging breasts, or any other body part. You are much more than what you see. Start imagining how you want to be, when you’re the size you choose, and instead of focusing on dieting, eating less, or doing anything to make that happen, just do the things you would do if you were that girl. . You, go Juicy Woman! I believe in you! You?
