Latest / Unlearning Beautiful / Ep. 45 What Is Your Focus on Your Body Costing You?
Transcript
- 1015: We can spend so much time thinking about our bodies, trying to change them, worrying about how we look, thinking about what we should or shouldn't eat. And it can be easy to not realize just how much of our time and energy is going into that. When thinking about how this focus on our bodies can take us away from other things. It can keep us busy trying to quote unquote fix ourselves while we're not paying attention to what's actually going on in our lives or What we really want for ourselves. And I don't say this to suggest we're doing anything wrong. There are reasons why we get caught up in these patterns. And often there are ways we've learned to cope with things that feel difficult. But I think it's worth exploring what this focus on our bodies and appearance is costing us and what we might have more room for when we're no longer spending so much of our lives trying to change our bodies and how we look. Let's get into it. Welcome to Unlearning Beautiful, a podcast for women tired of trying to look good enough and ready to feel good from within. I'm your host, Christina Bruce, here to help you let go of the pressure to look right or do it all right, and reconnect with your inner guidance, your natural work, and what truly makes you feel fulfilled. Because the freedom you're craving was never in how you look. Like to begin by exploring why we get so caught up in focusing on our bodies and our appearance. It's so normal in this culture to do that. It's almost like talking about the weather. We've just grown up in this culture where preoccupation with our body and our appearance is so normal. And especially for women, because there has been a long history of valuing women for how they look. More than anything else. Our bodies also change the most throughout our life. So that can really preoccupy us. We can come to believe that if we just lost the weight or we get our eating under control, we'll finally feel good in our clothes, we'll feel confident, desirable, accepted, and safe. And many of us have had the experience of that being the case, or else we wouldn't keep doing it. But when it becomes challenging, Challenging to keep our body a certain way, or we're always just waiting for that thing to finally be okay, to just feel okay in our clothes, to just get the diet right, it really can end up becoming a distraction and an impediment in our life. But when other things in our life feel so big and the world feels so out of control, focusing on food, focusing on our body. gives us something concrete to work on. It gives us a sense of control. We can see a tangible result and that can feel satisfying. But for some women, these patterns can become so deeply entrenched that it turns into disordered eating or an eating disorder. And then it doesn't really become a choice or something we're doing to help ourselves. It ends up taking over our lives and becomes a problem in and of itself. Even if it isn't full-blown to that extent, I still think it's really worth looking at even the lighter, quote unquote, normal ways that we're so preoccupied with body and food and appearance. To be clear, there is no shame or judgment in these patterns. It's so widespread. Like almost everybody's doing it and it's really understandable why we would do it. Because sometimes our fears are really based in reality. You know, people will treat us differently because of our appearance. Personally, I had that experience of being seen as more desirable by men when I was thinner or even women complimenting me on how I looked. And then when I gained weight, all of that disappearing. So it's not to say that there's no basis in reality. We can take these experiences and end up creating this much bigger story around it that often lives in our subconscious. These feelings of like, I have to look a certain way in order to be loved, or I can't gain weight and still be desirable. Or if I don't control my food, then I'm gonna be out of control and I'll never find another way to feel good about myself and in balance. These running stories that often are not in our conscious mind. It's not like we're thinking that thought out loud. We're not thinking to ourselves, I'm not worthy or valuable if I gain weight or look old. But it's running underneath. And those stories really dictate our lives and how much time and attention we're focused on our bodies. Now you might want to ask yourself, what do I believe will happen if I stop trying so hard to control my body? You know, what am I hoping will finally be different? If I look the way that I want or I weigh this particular weight, it can really pull up those deeper beliefs that we have, driving it underneath. And like I said, these patterns make sense, especially when we've been taught that our appearance is something that we need to manage. But this way of coping with that, this way of managing that can come at a cost. And I think we often underestimate just how much time. And mental space and energy, this body preoccupation takes up because it becomes so familiar. It's like the analogy of the hum of a refrigerator. You don't hear it until all of a sudden it stops and then there's this quiet. And you can think, wow, I didn't even realize that sound was happening. It can kind of look like waking up and then you're immediately thinking about your body or what you ate yesterday and how you're gonna compensate for it today. Or you're getting dressed and then you don't quite think you look right. So you've tried on several outfits and now you're criticizing yourself about how you look, and already then you're starting the day feeling uncomfortable. None of these moments necessarily seems big on their own, but together they occupy quite a lot of our attention. And it's not just the time, it's the emotional energy. It's the little frustrations, the self-criticism, the doubt, the Constant monitoring and worrying. When we look at it and we start to bring attention to these patterns, we can start to wonder how much of my day am I actually present for? How how much am I actually relaxed or am I just caught up in this worry? And how much more room might I have for other things if my appearance and food and working out wasn't constantly something that was on my mind or running in the background? And sometimes the cost goes beyond just the everyday moments that we're missing. This focus on our body can overlap with bigger things in our lives that are asking for our attention. Now, I'm not suggesting that everyone who struggles with body or food is unhappy in their life, but I am inviting you to notice: is there a way that this is taking from my life? instead of giving to my life. Are there some bigger areas in my life where I'm using the focus of diet and weight to cover up things like being unhappy in a job or if the idea of changing a career feels overwhelming. Maybe there's stuff happening in my relationship that isn't working and really could use some addressing, but that feels scary or I'm afraid of the conflict or some grief that I might have to face. And sometimes It might not even be that big. It's just that we struggle to slow down. We struggle to feel present or bored. There's always this kind of restlessness that we've got to do something. We face these situations. There is a level of uncertainty that we have to deal with. Am I going to disappoint someone or lose something or have to start over? Focusing on our bodies and food can feel more straightforward in comparison. There's always another plan to follow. There's always another goal to pursue, another procedure we can do. We can stay so busy working on ourselves without having to confront a question that may be much harder to answer. And I think there's another side to this. It's not only about what we might be avoiding, but it's what we might be. Missing. When we're consumed by constantly feeling like we have to change ourselves and fix things about ourselves, we can lose touch with what genuinely interests us and excites us. I really don't believe that our deep soul desire is to be a certain gene size, but we can get so consumed by that. So much energy goes towards fixing the lines on our face or the little blemishes. quote unquote that we think that we have, that it crowds out space for wonder and contemplation and seeing what else do I actually want from my life? Are there interests you've never explored or creative ideas that you've pushed aside or experiences that you'd love to have? Sometimes those desires can feel scary. We're afraid of something that we want not happening or we wonder Could I actually do this? And so we dampen it down. We don't let ourselves get in touch with what we really want because maybe we were told, you can never have that, or that's impossible. And so it can be easier to fixate on these smaller goals that consume so much of our time and energy because let's face it, our bodies are always changing. So we could be consumed with this for the rest of our lives. And it's tricky because we get this sense of accomplishment when we lose that weight or quote unquote eat right. We feel good, we feel disciplined, we feel successful because we're pursuing something that's measurable. What happens when the thing that maybe we want is harder to measure? If it's like I just want to feel more happiness or I want to feel more ease or we're not really sure what it is that we want, we won't create that space to go there because there's that uncertainty and it feels uncomfortable and we can't guarantee that we'll succeed. So sometimes it's easier to just keep working toward a familiar goal than to risk going after something that we might genuinely care more about. And we also might have this idea in our mind that, well, I can't pursue that if I look this way or if I'm that certain size. That's really just a belief. And the thing is, is that we don't have to wait until I feel attractive enough or confident enough or comfortable enough to begin pursuing these things. And in fact, many people will say that confidence and the comfort, it comes after. It doesn't come at the beginning. And while I'm not suggesting that we need to explore some really Big, deep, meaningful purpose in our lives. It's about making space to just discover what feels more meaningful for you, even in the day-to-day, and giving yourself permission to just rest and have some space. I think so many of us have been conditioned in this culture that we need to do, do. And we're action-oriented. And it actually feels scary to rest. It feels threatening, like, Unless I'm doing something, something bad's gonna happen or nothing will change. And yet, so many of us have spent our lives completely in doing an action mode. And yet there is value in space. That is where inspiration comes from. We can take an action that is more fulfilling to us when we have that moment of rest than if we're constantly caught up in thinking and in the doing. It could just be I want more time to read or going for a walk in nature instead of feeling like you have to do a hard workout. I feel like those are the moments that they start to accumulate that really bring change in our life. We don't need to just discover that we're in the wrong career, that we've abandoned our dreams. It doesn't be big like that. It could just be simply that I'm desiring more peace, I'm desiring more freedom, I'm desiring less mental noise. And those are the things that we often use the external things like changing our body or the GLP ones because they do give us that. They quiet the mental noise. But the trouble is when we feel like we need to depend on it and that we think there's no other way that we get stuck with it. And then we might end up feeling like we need to live with or deal with other problems that come from that. Where I really feel like there is a different way that we can go about that. Where we don't need to d depend on something external to us in order to experience more of that peace and freedom and quiet that mental noise. What if changing my body wasn't the thing that needed to happen in order for me to start living the life that I truly want? But we need to be able to step back and create space to kind of ask that question first. And feel safe enough to let go of that coping mechanism, which has become body fixation and food fixation. So this isn't about solving everything today. You can just start to begin by noticing when you're having these critical thoughts, when you're feeling these emotions, when you're fixated on the food. And can I just take my attention away from that for a moment? Can I just make some room instead? You can ask yourself if I wasn't so focused on my body or food. What would I spend that time or energy on? Is there something in my life that I've been reluctant to acknowledge or explore or change? And something that we often don't ask is what would I like to experience more of? We sometimes don't ask ourselves that because we can come up with a blank slate. And you don't need to force it, but you can kind of drop it and then allow yourself to contemplate it, just noticing what excites you, what interests you, where is there a curiosity? And then what's one small way? That I could move toward it now. It can be really small, just in this moment. Do I want to go for a walk or do I want to read? Clearly, those are things I like doing. Maybe it's do I want to go to a concert or a movie or whatever it might be. And sometimes the first step might just be simply recognizing how much energy has been going towards trying to change yourself and becoming curious about what else might matter to you. And if you do start to notice this is uncovering a bigger issue in your life that you know needs addressing, you don't need to tackle that all at once. This isn't about like, now I have to deal with all of this. You can take it one step at a time and get some support where that's needed. So if you're listening to this and recognizing how much of your life is being taken up by thinking about your body and you're ready to make that shift into lessening that noise in your head. This is the kind of work that I do with my one-to-one coaching clients. We work on changing your relationship with your body, building that self-trust and getting curious about what you really want so that you can spend less time trying to quote unquote fix yourself and more time living that life that feels meaningful for you. And that can often feel scary. We're afraid to let go, but we work on that together. I support you through. the fear that comes up and help you to build the capacity to be able to handle that so that you can start to move forward into what feels better for you. And you don't have to know exactly what it is that you want in order to take that step. Sometimes part of the work is figuring that out, especially when you've spent so many years invested in dieting and and looking a certain way, it will take a little bit of time when you create space to see what else wants to come through for you. So if you'd like support in this, you can learn more about working with me through the link in the show notes. I'd love to be able to support you. I want to leave you with this thought for this episode. You don't have to wait or try to love your body or feel completely confident to start making these shifts in your life. You can begin now. Just making room for the little things that interest you. Being more present with the people you love. It's the fixation on our body and what we think is wrong that covers up the happiness, the ease, and the peace that is really here right now. Thanks for listening to Unlearning Beautiful. If this episode resonated with you, follow the show and share it with another woman who's ready to see beauty and herself in a new way. And if you feel moved. Leave a rating and review. It will help this show reach more women who need to hear it. Remember, you're already everything you've been trying to become. Enough, worthy, and free. I'm Christina Bruce. Until next time.