Stop undermining your weight-loss and body confidence

From first-hand experience working with many women from the age of eighteen to eighty, most women, especially the ones who you look at and think are really happy with their bodies, aren’t. In my experience working with and talking with thousands, I’ve only met two women who really embraced and who were happy with themselves. And judging them by today’s unrealistic beauty standards, they were not what the culture at large would deem beautiful. That’s because beauty does not start by focussing on the outside.

Their success in life was in direct accordance with how they saw themselves; as beautiful. They knew the truth that all the other women I’ve worked with, myself included, didn’t. What you see in the mirror isn't actually what you look like, it's what you think you look like. 

When I was much younger I always said I loved myself, and to prove it I worked really hard to be slimmer and more beautiful usually through excessive exercise and diets. I was maniacal about it. And I looked rather trim I might add, but I certainly didn’t feel like I looked trim, nor was I accomplishing a svelte body with any kind of self-love or honoring of myself. In fact, I was binging then purging with excessive exercise and laxatives. I was very unhealthy.

We women want to feel pretty in the least, and to have someone look at us and say, “Wow, you are amazingly beautiful,” at best. When we love our entire body—physical body, body of thought and body of emotion, efforts at weight reduction will stick, and so will your valiant efforts to make healthy lifestyle changes. This newfound alignment of the entire body of who you are helps you become whole, and when you’re whole you are more beautiful.

If you’re doing any of the following, it’s a sure sign you're not loving your body and no matter how you're trying to look, you will not be, and people will not see you as, a lasting beauty.

• regularly drinking caffeine, energy drinks or using something stronger to power through your days instead of resting when you’re body is tired
• excessive worry, concern and focus on how you look to others—physically, intellectual and emotionally
• distracted eating that has caused you to accumulate too much weight
• over busy—feeling overwhelmed or stressed out of responsibility or a feeling obligation
• inability to sit with yourself and be present in your body—always using something whether it be work, exercise, television, reading, conversations, internet surfing, gambling, drinking to name just a few ways—anything to keep you from being quiet with yourself

What I didn't know in my naive youthfulness, is that it was my self-image that was telling me I wasn’t good enough no matter what I looked like. Yours is too. Raising your self-image makes a positive impact in your entire life especially with who you see in the mirror.

When you stop doing the actions that undermine your healthy lifestyle efforts and really start  loving your whole self, you will make lasting positive changes in your body, not to mention your life! Enroll in my video series, Love Your Body, Change Your Life and begin that work. You will be rewarded in many ways.