External Dissatisfaction Heals Internally

Body love is extremely important to touch on. I will start with the fact that this may feel triggering for some to read. This may be something extremely challenging to face. Just know, I am going to be very intentional with how I discuss it and stem a lot from my own experience. Everyone is on their journey and if I can help make yours easier, I will. If I can help you feel even the least bit seen in your struggle, I will.

This is for anyone who has questioned how they looked. Sat in the mirror and fretted if you were “good enough” to walk out the door, to be seen. Worried if how you showed up would be accepted and appreciated or judged and shamed. This can be the smallest form of questioning to the extreme which leads to any form of disordered eating. 

I struggled to accept who I saw in the mirror for a long time. And this isn’t just a weight thing because in a variety of sizes, I questioned myself, I judged myself. I critiqued every aspect of myself. I pushed my hips down, I squeezed my legs back to make them look smaller, I sucked in my stomach until I lost my breath. I spent way too much time trying to envision my body looking different. 

Appreciating how you look isn’t necessarily a bad thing. Wanting to look nice is normal, it is ok, but when it becomes toxic and brings negative thoughts about yourself, there is space for a new approach. It all starts somewhere. For me, as a 90’s gal, I feel like it started with making sure your ponytail had zero bumps and the rage that followed when your hair wasn’t cooperating. When all of a sudden you get to a stage where all of your friends start fretting about the way they look. And for many of us, it becomes a down spiral until we can become conscious enough to allow ourselves out of the vicious cycle. 

I was recently asked by someone, “how can I start accepting what I see in the mirror? What do I do if I still don’t like what I see?” My first response, be gentle and kind with yourself. This change will take some time but it is possible. My next response, getting to a specific size is not going to magically dissolve this mindset. 

For me, I had the unrealistic expectation that every problem with myself would evaporate when I got down to a certain size. Boy, was I wrong. I stepped on the scale and saw that the number was one that I desperately strived to reach for years. Yet, when I looked in the mirror, I still questioned myself. 

Here are a few things I found:

-External validation. I was seeking approval from other people. I thought I would be accepted or find myself in the relationship I desired if I was a certain size. I thought I would magically leave for a social event with confidence because I was my dream size and how could people not accept that? 

The lesson: it wasn’t up to other people to determine how I showed up. No amount of acceptance from them would actually make me feel accepted. That was up to ME. I honestly had no idea what people thought when I showed up. Yet the reality was, I was the number one person picking apart my appearance, not the people I was with. 

-Letting criticism be the truth. A secret that took me a long time to allow in, even if someone did pick apart my appearance to themselves or with someone else, that was actually their own insecurities trying to pick me apart to make themselves feel better. Yikes, mind blown. How many years did I crumble when someone said mean things only to reveal it was their own lack of self worth trying to run away? (Even worse, how many times did I secretly judge someone in order to just make myself feel better?)

The lesson: This is something I had to journal through a lot. I had to actively work through the negative comments said about my body in order to release them. I cried my final tears over them then moved to rebuilding (I am a crier and crying is ok. Never be ashamed of tears, those are emotions wanting to leave your body). When I caught myself beginning to think thoughts about someone else’s appearance, I also addressed that. What about myself was I not accepting? What of my own insecurities were driving these thoughts about someone else?

-Going inward to flip my mindset. When I looked in the mirror and feared what people would think, I was crippled with shame. First of all, as I mentioned, I reminded myself that if someone is judging how I looked, it very likely had nothing to do with me. So why did I care? What internal shame did I have? When I would criticize myself, I had to begin rewiring my brain to love and accept myself. It took time. It took countless times telling myself it was ok to accept who I was and how I looked. It was safe to feel confident in my own skin. I was released from the need to be perfect. 

The lesson: releasing perfection allowed the space for me to love myself without seeing perfection. I am in the best shape of my life yet still rock cellulite that used to keep me from wearing shorts. My belly still reveals that I have grown three babies. I am convinced that I may never do a pull up and my arms still jiggle, and that's ok. Let me be clear, I am not trying to shame myself here…my intention is to prove that I have parts of myself that have taken me a long time to accept. It didn’t take them disappearing to learn how to love myself, I love myself no matter what I see in the mirror. The external appearance has zero importance if internally you still feel like crap. 

-Picking apart how I looked was actually revealing a whole lot more beneath the surface. I put all of my attention on how I externally looked because I had zero control internally. This took me a while to wrap my head around. Unconsciously, I was trying to control my looks because I thought it was something that would be easier to control. In reality, my mental and emotional state was shit. I had no control over my mindset. I was emotionally unstable and mentally drained. I ran from it by trying to control everything externally (including my appearance) to run from the chaos inside. 

The lesson: I wasn’t doing things to FEEL my best. I ate foods that worked against me more than they worked for me. I let negative thoughts run the show. I was blindly going through life with zero conscious and consistent habits. When I put my focus on adjusting and improving those three things, the internal battle became easier to face.