Latest / Unlearning Beautiful / Ep. 33 Can You Make Peace with Your Body and Still Want to Lose Weight?
Transcript
- Kristina Bruce: Can you make peace with your body and still want to lose weight? For years, I firmly believe the answer was no. But over time, through coaching women and my own personal experience, my answer has become more nuanced because I don't think the issue is wanting to lose weight. Rather, it's believing your body has to change before you're allowed to feel okay. Let's dive in. 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. Why do we actually want to lose weight? I believe there's two reasons for this. The first is that most of our weight loss desires aren't really about the weight. They're about believing that you'll finally like yourself more, or you'll feel attractive, you'll feel more confident, or people won't judge you, or you'll finally feel like you're enough. And that's where our cultural conditioning comes in. Because we have been conditioned to believe that thin equals beautiful, that thin equals disciplined, that it equals healthy, and that fat equals lazy, unhealthy, and unattractive. That's conditioning, not objective truth, because different cultures believe differently around beauty standards and health. And over history, there have been completely different ways of viewing bodies. So before we even get into this conversation about wanting to lose weight, we have to recognize this lens that we're looking through. Here's the thing: if we require our body to change in order to feel okay, we're postponing peace because peace can be felt now. It actually doesn't come when or if. That's only what we believe is the case. And we see this happen in all different areas of our life. We're waiting until we have the right body to feel good enough, to have the perfect relationship, to have the career, to have the money, the house, to be seen in high esteem by other people, to finally have the approval of our parents. We're waiting for all of these things outside of ourselves to be okay. In order for us to feel okay. But that's a losing game. Because while we might have one area going well in our life, another area is going wrong. Or while this person might think good of us, somebody else thinks bad of us. And that's why it's so stressful. Most of us in this culture are running around constantly trying to keep all of these balls in the air just so that we can finally feel okay. And yet the reverse. Is what is true. Feeling okay and feeling at peace comes from within now, regardless of the circumstances around us. That's why I'm sure you've seen two people in a very similar situation, and one person seems to be unaffected and the other person is really affected. Yet the same thing is happening. It's because the internal state is different. Now, there's many different reasons for why our internal state is different. But when we realize that it's the internal state, that we actually have to deal with what's going on within, not without, that's when we're going to make real change and actually feeling okay in ourselves because life is going to be throwing at us things that are out of our control all the time, including our bodies. We could be doing everything quote unquote right, giving our best efforts, and yet it still is going to change. Or it's not working in the way that it used to. And so when we need our body to be a certain way in order for us to feel okay emotionally and mentally, we're in a losing game. We're postponing peace. Peace isn't something that your body gives you or your circumstances give you. It's something that you bring to your body and to your circumstances. Can I ask you a quick favor? If this conversation is resonating with you, would you take a minute to leave a review for the podcast? It helps more women find these conversations, but even more than that, every time I read a review, it reminds me why this work matters. If this episode is helping you, you could even just write, this podcast helped me feel more at peace in my body. I'd love to read it. And it might just help another woman know that feeling good in her body is possible too. Now you're probably thinking, but I genuinely don't physically feel good in my body. And this is where things become more nuanced. You very well could have gained weight and are in a larger body, and now you notice you're feeling more pain. Your energy isn't as good. Your mobility has decreased, and you're physically feeling heavier. Those are very real experiences. And our culture immediately tells us the problem is your weight. If you just lost weight, then you will feel better. And what's even more convincing about that is you have probably had that experience. You probably have lost weight and you did feel better. And so you're saying, well, I have to get back to that place in order to feel good enough. But was weight the whole story? It wasn't, because weight loss never happens in a vacuum. It's not like one day you just woke up and you were 30 pounds lighter. We have to look at everything that was happening that coincided with that. What was your life like? What circumstances were different in your life, mentally, physically, emotionally, environmentally? What were you doing differently then that you're doing differently now? Is it even possible to do what you did then now? Or has your life so significantly changed that there's other priorities requiring your attention? Something that we often romanticize and miss is we think that everything was so great when the weight was lower. And yet were we constantly worried about gaining weight? Were we worried about food all the time? Were we living in constant restriction? And actually we weren't really feeling that great about ourselves? If we're Requiring the weight to be the thing that needs to change in order to feel better. We could feel trapped because our life has changed. Maybe we're 10 years older now and we can't do things exactly the same way. But that doesn't mean that you can't feel better physically in your body. In fact, I believe the whole purpose of this is to feel as best as you possibly can. When we really feel like weight is Part of that issue, it makes sense why you want to lose weight. And I don't think it's wrong to desire that. But we really need to look at the how and the why that desire is happening and how we go about it. Is it that you want to lose weight, or is it that you really want more energy, more strength, flexibility, ease of movement, better sleep, feeling capable? Because those aren't necessarily the same thing. What often happens is When we are making changes in our life and for our body, we're changing the way we move, the way that we eat, we're dealing with more of the emotional stuff that's happening within us. Oftentimes weight loss will result. And weight loss gets the credit. It's tangible. It's what we can see. It's a physical number. People are noticing it. You're noticing it. But what we're not noticing as much is all of those weeks and months. Of making those daily changes and how we were moving, how we were eating, how we're sleeping. Are we in a better relationship now? And our stress levels are lower. Did we change jobs? There's many different things that are compounding over time. That's what's making the change. And the other thing to remember is that you can also be in a lighter body and still not feel good in it. You can still feel heavy in a smaller body. You can still have joint pain. You can still not be sleeping well. It really isn't always about the weight. A lot of times when we are making positive changes in our overall health, if we were in a much larger body, that weight will reduce. But we have to remember that for many of us, and this was in my journey, who've come from a background of intense dieting and restriction. Being in better health and well-being and living in harmony with yourself means gaining weight. So it really isn't about the weight. It's what we believe the weight is going to give us. Now it comes down to the how. Well, there's two different ways we can look at this. When we are requiring our weight to be different in order to feel okay, we are in resistance. We are fighting our bodies. We are not at peace in ourselves. We're saying, I am not okay because this body is not okay. And that is not what's causing you to not feel okay. It's the way that your mind is interpreting it. It's the story that your mind is putting on it. It's the lens through which you're viewing yourself. And when we believe that I'm only okay if we have lost connection with the truth of ourselves, because On that one hand, when we are desiring weight loss in order to feel good enough, more valuable, worthy to get the approval of other people, we have outsourced all of that to our body and to other people. We have essentially given away our power because your worth and value is inherent to you. You cannot not be worthy and valuable. And in fact, when you remove all of the negative beliefs and judgments about yourself, you are going to find you are at peace in your body. It truly is an inward experience. You can't feel something unless you have a belief or thought about it. We need to go inward to find peace. Peace comes first. Body peace is an internal state. You can feel okay in your body right now. All depending on how you're looking at it. And then when we go to the physical side of things, you absolutely can do things to feel more physically better in your body. And one of the best ways to start though is by making peace with your body now. To know your worth and value from within, to realize that you don't need the approval of other people in order to be okay. That you don't need to protect an identity or a perception that other people have of you. That is your biggest freedom. That is when you're truly going to come into your power. Because the only way that we're really going to feel good in ourselves is by listening to what is right for us. When we're coming from a place of peace within ourselves, it allows us to listen inward and we can start to notice how I can best nourish myself? How do foods feel? in my body when I eat them? How does different movement make my body feel? Am I feeling more open, stronger, flexible? Is this helping improve my sleep? When we're going inward, we really have to be asking ourselves, am I living in a way that's truly optimal for me? Am I in a job that feels right for me? Am I in a relationship that is supportive for me? This is where we have to do that deeper inner work because All of that compounds into how we feel in our body. It affects it all based on our stress levels. Am I allowing myself enjoyment? All of these are the how that we can listen to in order to feel better in our body. And that may result in weight loss. We may end up literally being lighter, but we will feel lighter prior to that because you can be in a small body and feel heavy, and you can be in a heavier body and feel lighter. In the end, what we're ultimately looking for is to feel good inside. Any change that we're making on the outside is always in an effort to feel good on the inside. When we are not fighting ourselves, when we are at peace with ourselves, when we're listening to our body, weight loss may happen and people may comment on the weight and say, ⁓ wow, it must be the weight. But was it actually the weight, or was it all of those different factors that changed? That helped you to feel better in your body. So, what I've come to believe now is that it's totally understandable to want to desire weight loss. And I don't think that that's bad or that it's a wrong thing. But I think that the way that we're going about it and what we're hoping it will give us needs to change first. Only when we can be okay with ourselves now will we truly find peace. Do I think that desiring weight loss and body peace go hand in hand only when the weight loss in a paradoxical way stops mattering as much? Peace has to come first. That's the place that we come from to care for ourselves, not out of fear, not out of shame, not out of self-rejection, not out of fear of not getting approval. Those are all the deeper reasons we're often desiring weight loss. But what we're really looking for is just to feel okay within ourselves. And that comes before. That's when we'll experience lasting change and peace. Because not only does this help us to feel better in our bodies, but it helps us to navigate life better because life is always going to throw at us unexpected circumstances and challenges. And when we're able to find that centered, grounded place within ourselves, when we know what that feels like. Then we're able to navigate this journey of life more easily. That's what I support my clients to do. You can learn more at the link below and check out my one-to-one body piece coaching. Hope you enjoyed this episode and look forward to seeing you in the next one. 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.