Hello, my lovely friend!
Today, I want to help you make peace with your body in “her” current state so that you can feel better and you both can support each other towards permanent weight-loss.
Why, because self-loathing is never helpful.
However, in this situation going to super positive, doesn’t work either and this is why you would quit or never even begin this. What this tool will do for you is help you in making peace exactly where you, so you’ll be way more energized and supported on your path towards losing the weight. The other part, it will be a journey you can actually enjoy and find strength in.
Here’s my story with the tool that I’m sharing with you.
For a long time, I was always between 25-30 pounds over my current weight.
When I would hear, “you need to love your body no matter what” seemed impossible. Then it was followed by think positive thoughts.
All of that felt very fake to me, and I wasn’t buying into this woo-woo stuff because when I tried it, it didn’t work.
And guess what?
It was fake because when you think a thought that is not believable to you, it will be just that for you.
So each cycle of my weight-loss attempts was spent feeling rushed, strained, and anxious.
Then on top of that, if I did manage to get to my goal (usually I would quit halfway through), my happiness was very brief because I always felt like I was white-knuckling my results.
If that is you above, I want to invite you to a whole different approach.
I want to show you how you can feel better in the now so that it will motivate you on your path towards your natural slim weight and most importantly stay there.
What? Yes! You read it correctly.
First I want you to do the following:
- List out all the thoughts on a piece of paper about your body and your weight.
- Read them out loud.
- Next to each thought, write down how you feel when you hear that.
- Does this thinking motivate you or make you feel worse about yourself?
Self-loathing is never helpful. In fact, it pushes us to quit and overeat. This is why I want to draw your awareness to how your thinking about your body has not been serving you.
But because I want this to work for you, to jump from these current thoughts to super positive ones, is not the answer either.
Why? Because if the thoughts are not believable to you, you can try to make them positive, but it will be such a far jump that you’ll give up very quickly.
But there is a way that can work for you that takes facts and begins with framing it with better thoughts/feelings than your current state around your body.
The concept is called laddering up.
Picture a ladder.
The bottom rung is your current thought/feeling and the top will be your ultimate thought/feeling that you will want to have for your body.
You use the ladder to move up your thinking if ever slightly to work first to get to a neutral thought.
A neutral thought is one that is neither positive nor negative, and the feeling that you get from it is peaceful.
You’ll use your new thoughts/feelings as your replacement thoughts for any past thought that has been painful and as you can see has not served you.
The goal is to climb the ladder with the next thought that will be believable to you and will be better than your current thoughts.
The KEY: has to be believable to you.
Kind of like this:
- Original painful thought
- Slightly better feeling thought than the most painful thought
- Neutral thought
- Better than neutral thought
- Positive thought
Keep it neutral!
Real-life example:
- My body is fat, and I need to lose weight.
- When I read that out loud, I feel “fat,” inadequate, and discouraged.
- Neutralized:
- I have a body, and I’m working on losing my extra weight.
- My body is carrying extra energy on it that I’m working on losing it.
- I have a body, and each day I’m working on taking better care of it.
Your turn:
- Take the thoughts that are causing you pain that you wrote out earlier.
- For each thought write out a neutral statement, that’s neither painful nor positive but relaying facts like a reporter.
- Make sure it’s believable to YOU.
- The goal here is to move up in how you are feeling and a neutral place will give you the feeling of peace, calm or just indifferent.
- Practice thinking those thoughts around yourself and your body.
PRACTICE replacing old negative thoughts about your body with new thoughts that you’ve picked. Don’t stop. Your future self will thank you.
My loving words to you before I close is that your body has done nothing wrong. It has merely followed that what you’ve decided to feed it or not. Making peace with your body is the best move towards a kind and compassionate form of self-care that you can make.
Email me if you want further support with this and I’ll send you my worksheet.
Love to you,
Kasia
