Have you ever struggled with the internal battle of wanting to let go of body image expectations, but still find yourself wanting to lose weight? Is wanting to hit a weightloss goal and your ideal body image good for your overall mental health? In today's episode, that's exactly what we dive in to. How can we learn to finally accept our body and treat it with the love it deserves while healthfully setting fitness goals? Is it possible to this if we've always had internal struggles with our body image? I share my thoughts on this topic, plus I dive into how I've navigated this personally as someone who has always struggled with my body image and used fitness as an outlet to feel control in my life.
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Shop our apparel! --> Love Your Body Now
Follow us on socials: @weareloveyourbodynow
Have you ever struggled with the internal battle of wanting to let go of body image expectations, but still find yourself wanting to lose weight? Is wanting to hit a weightloss goal and your ideal body image good for your overall mental health? In today's episode, that's exactly what we dive in to. How can we learn to finally accept our body and treat it with the love it deserves while healthfully setting fitness goals? Is it possible to this if we've always had internal struggles with our body image? I share my thoughts on this topic, plus I dive into how I've navigated this personally as someone who has always struggled with my body image and used fitness as an outlet to feel control in my life.
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Shop our apparel! --> Love Your Body Now
Follow us on socials: @weareloveyourbodynow
Welcome to the Love your Body Now podcast, the podcast for women who are ready to feel confident in their body right now and redefine what health looks like for them. I'm Savannah, your host, and together we'll be having conversations about what it means to accept and love our bodies now, while simultaneously prioritizing our health journey. We'll be debunking beliefs that do not serve us and diving into misconceptions and unhealthy narratives in the fitness world, so that we can rebuild our foundation from a place of self-love. Hello, welcome back to the Love your Body Now podcast. If you are new, thank you so much for tuning in today and if you're a regular listener, thank you so much for being a regular listener of this episode or of this podcast, and I just want to say that, if you are a regular listener of this episode or of this podcast and I just want to say that, if you are a regular listener if you could please go and leave a review wherever you listen to the podcast, it would mean so much. I feel like I never at least, I don't feel like I ever remember to ask people to do this, and I know I have regular listeners because when I see the stats on the podcast, it actually tells you where people are listening from. So I have an idea, a good idea of, like some of the regular listeners, whether they're friends or family, who I know for sure support the podcast. And if you do, it would really mean a lot to me if you could go, whether you listen on Apple or Spotify or wherever if you could go and leave a review, give us five stars if you think we deserve it, and it would mean the world to me if you would do that.
Speaker 1:I am attempting another video recording. I am attempting another video recording. I think I shared in the last episode that I've been attempting multiple times to record video so that I can get the last podcast. I just haven't attempted to edit it, but I did make a mistake where I had my microphone plugged into my camera which I am recording on, but it wasn't actually plugged in. It was set up but I didn't actually plug it in. But I didn't actually plug it in. So I actually haven't listened back to the audio yet on that video recording and I have a feeling that it's not very good and I don't know if there's a way to switch out the audio from the recording that I did on my phone. And I'm also kind of like is it really worth the effort? So I'm attempting again for like the fourth time, to successfully record a video version of the podcast, and I am super pumped to talk about this episode because I feel like this was something that back when I was regularly health coaching and was talking a lot about health and fitness on my social media pages for those of you who don't know, I was a health coach with my own program for probably about a year, but before that I was also doing a form of health coaching by partnering with a fitness company and was basically helping women either get started on their fitness journey or guiding them as they were going on, providing support, providing accountability, suggestions for them to just help them basically live a healthier lifestyle.
Speaker 1:And eventually I had decided to try to go on my own as a health coach and create my own program, and I did do that. I ended up creating a program that was called Diet-Free Dream Body, which was all about helping women live a healthy lifestyle without the fixation on weight loss and trying to morph our body to what we believe is portrayed as a perfect body or the body that we should have and that you know we won't be happy unless we have the body that we should have and that we won't be happy unless we have the body that we think is our ideal version. And the program was really all about helping women come to that realization and try to shift their perspective of their overall health journey and do it in a way that fully served them and fully just like was built on their own you know, to be really what's the word I'm trying to say which is really sustainable for them, rather than trying to do someone else's program that really doesn't really work with their lifestyle, or following some fitness influencer what they're teaching when it really doesn't make sense. So that was the whole goal behind the program and I did that for about a year and ended up taking a step back from it, not because I didn't believe in it, it was just a lot to. It was just a lot for me. I think maybe part of me wasn't quite sure what that looked like in the future or how to take it to the next level, and I just started shifting what I was talking about.
Speaker 1:I created the podcast shortly, shortly after I like completely stopped offering the program and health coaching people and I really enjoy the podcast because it just allows me to speak what I've learned, speak my own journey, and other people can listen and take what they need and still apply it to their health and fitness and maybe other things they don't need to buy into. Basically, and also I like that being able to put all of this on the podcast. It's free, it's a free resource for women who are really looking to help shift their mindset, and with that it takes so much time, and with the podcast I'm able to do so many different episodes and teachings and share my knowledge, share what's going on in my journey, and there's no timeline on it and anyone can come and find my podcast and pick what episodes they feel like will best serve them in whatever part of their journey that they're in. And that's the one thing that I really love about the podcast of Love your Body Now, which is again all about body positivity and self-love, and you know that it is very catered to beauty and fitness and our health journey.
Speaker 1:How can we do this from a place of self-love and respect for ourselves, rather than doing it because we are taught that we shouldn't like certain areas of our bodies and that we should be dieting all the time. So that is why I wanted to talk about this specific topic, where we talk about how do you lose weight and commit to your health journey in a way that is actually healthy and is from a place of loving yourself and not from a place of wanting to punish ourselves, and I have also been navigating this for a long time. I have shared in the past about my own personal journey with just trying to heal my relationship with my body great outlet for me, but at the same time, on the other end, it was also a way for me to feel like this sense of control over a certain part of my life, which was my physical body. I would kind of use exercise in a toxic way and I didn't have a very healthy relationship with food. But on the outside, we see someone who is quote unquote eating healthy or regularly exercising and we automatically tie that to oh, they're healthy because they do these things, and that's why I always preach just because you see someone who looks healthy or maybe they've lost weight, it doesn't mean that you should comment on their physical changes or the habits or the daily actions that they are focused on, because you really just don't know what internal struggles that they're carrying or if they're doing it for some of the wrong reasons.
Speaker 1:And there is a very fine line between this and the first step for all of this is at least creating awareness around your habits on a regular basis and asking yourself why you do certain things, because we may have a belief about what we think is healthy that maybe we adopted back when we were in high school or when we were really young. An example of this could be that you believe that salads are healthy. You see a salad, you automatically think it's healthy. Or maybe you're out to eat and you feel obligated to order a salad to fit this like role of being healthy, and you're just doing it because it's a belief that you've had for so long, that it's like, oh, this is what I should be doing. And the truth is, the sooner you can let go of like beliefs that, like, don't really have any reason, like it's like kind of like, why do I have this belief? Like where did it come from? Especially if you know that you didn't adopt it yourself, it's just something that you have carried for so long, then it is having that awareness to question these types of beliefs is so powerful, because even when it comes to our physical weight.
Speaker 1:If we believe that being a certain weight is what we should be or what is healthy, even that can be considered a little bit unhealthy, especially if we have no reason for why we feel that way. Maybe we have we weighed a certain. There's this fly Sorry, I keep getting distracted because there's this fly stuck in my office and he keeps like. He keeps going to the window and is making a bunch of ruckus over there, I think, because he's trying to get outside, but then he like swarms around and around and around. I don't know if it's just Texas, but I feel like the flies here have been so bad because even when I work out in my garage and I have the door open, tons of flies come in and it just they drive me crazy. So I'm sorry for getting distracted, but thinking about like.
Speaker 1:I know I carried this belief for a long time which was like oh, I weighed this X amount in high school and I like, as an adult, like feel like I need to get back to that weight. And I'm sure if you're a woman listening to this, you know exactly what I'm talking about that we all have this idea of like oh, this is what I weighed at this age and that's what I should be at now and that should be my goal. But really, like you don't even. It's just kind of like, that's just what you feel like it should be and you don't even question whether or not like, would that actually make me happy? Like, does that fit my lifestyle? And also, as we get older, our hormones change, our bodies change and to think that like we think that we should be a weight of, maybe when we were technically still a kid or a teenager, is kind of absurd in my opinion. And I say that like I used to think that that's what I should be, be for myself, that I needed to, that I need to basically achieve a weight. That was back when I was like really young, still a kid, still growing, still developing, and thinking that that was something that I I should force myself to achieve.
Speaker 1:So those are a couple of examples of how you can start to create awareness around what, like some of the things that you're doing, some of the habits or actions or beliefs that are kind of like lingering in the background for you Start to ask yourself where they come from and if they truly are like a truth that you want to be carrying and allowing to dictate your actions, because, again, that can be super powerful. When you kind of like question it, it's like, well, why do I feel like I need to be 120 pounds or whatever your number is? And it's like, would that really make me happy? Like, if I got to 120 pounds, then what? I mean, what if I had to starve myself all the way to get there? Would I still be happy? And if you're like yes, then maybe you need to like like dive a little bit deeper with yourself and find avenues to start to heal your relationship with your body.
Speaker 1:Because if you feel like you need to do things that are harmful to your body overall and you tell yourself that it is worth it for the body image that you're trying to achieve, then there's some other things that you may be, things that you may be internally carrying and maybe avoiding dealing with. And I again I say that from my own personal experience Like I used to believe that I needed to be a certain weight. I think the number used to be. I think so. I used to think that if I got to 135 pounds, that I would be happy. And the truth is, I got to 135 pounds and then all of a sudden the new number became 130. And then I got to 130. And I was like for sure, like this, this will be the way I want to be at. Well then, once I got to 130, I told myself that I needed to get to 125. So that's just a perfect example that, just because, like, we think that these are what will make us happy, it doesn't go away and that feeling of like needing to take more control, needing to strive for this like perfection or whatever belief that we're carrying will solve all of our problems. It does not solve all of our problems and a lot of the times it can come from. Just because you achieve the body image that you think you want doesn't mean that it doesn't come with its own other like toxic behaviors. Just you know you may be trading one for another and it doesn't mean that either of them are good for you. So, again, just like developing that awareness around your beliefs, what you're carrying, you know.
Speaker 1:We can go back to the salad example and I see this a lot, or at least I used to back when I was health coaching if I would even order, if I were like going out to eat with people. They would sometimes make comments about either what I was ordering or they would make comments about what they're ordering. Almost to like. They felt like I was like going to judge them for what they ordered and they would almost like say they need to be ordering a salad or something, or like they should be. And the truth is like, even if you go somewhere that offers salad options, it doesn't mean that that salad is actually a healthy option, especially if you think about, like sometimes, like all you get is like a bowl of iceberg, lettuce and ranch, and it's like that's not even like. There's like no nutrition to that. There's no protein, like it doesn't have a lot of nutrients to it. So it's just weird that some people have like adopted this belief that just because it's like green means that it's like the perfect option for them. And for me, like, my biggest priority when I'm like trying to figure out what to eat is what am I going to have for my protein? And a lot of women may not even consider that or know how important protein is. Maybe they have a belief that protein will make them big and bulky, and if you haven't been on the fitness internet. You know that there's plenty of people spreading the knowledge that that is not true. So, yeah, it's more about like creating that awareness and finding the right people to learn from and get your education from is also super helpful, always continuing to learn and educate.
Speaker 1:But the main thing that I want to address and like kind of just like have an open I wish I was talking with some of you. I like an open conversation about this is like at what point is it healthy versus unhealthy, with like the whole wanting to lose weight, and really only you can navigate this and answer this for yourself. I have like been back and forth with this internally with myself for so long. I think that it's like partially why I like took a step back from health coaching, because it was just so I was talking about it so much of like trying to to tell people to stop fixating so much on their weight and their physical body and how we can do things to just take care of ourselves, and I think at the time I was still really in the depth of navigating that personally. For the first one or two years that I started doing fitness coaching and posting a lot on the internet, I had gotten really physically fit, so for me to say those things. It's a lot easier to say those things when you look like that. It's like you don't have to necessarily worry about your body image as much as you used to because you do look physically fit. So for me to try and preach those things, it was a lot easier to do.
Speaker 1:And then all of a sudden, I went through a season in my life where I started to gain the weight back again, and not like an unhealthy amount of weight, like I just was no longer like you could not see, like visible abs anymore, and that was like a really hard time for me mentally. And I had a really hard time talking about it online, trying to be this example for people and trying to share my journey and trying to just guide other people to get through this and work through this. Just guide other people to get through this and work through this, while all the while, like I was really like trying to hide my own internal insecurities and struggles about gaining the weight again, because for me that was like a, that was like a sign of that I was losing control. Right, because some of the habits that we have in life, whether it's maintaining our weight and maybe we take it to an extreme. It's a form of us having to have this sense of control in this area of our life and for me that was fitness and my body image and what I was eating and putting into my body. It felt like I had control over something in my life and then I was at and putting into my body.
Speaker 1:It was like it felt like I had control over something in my life and then I was like at a point where I started to gain the weight back. I was still exercising, I was still eating fairly healthy, but I was like I was trying to let go of this need to be perfect all the time with my exercises and like just being so strict with my nutrition. I was trying to slowly let go of that. And at the same time we had just made a big move across the country and I didn't know what I was going to do with my career. Like it just was like a lot of changes all at once and I kind of navigated that for like a good year or so, a year and a half or so, trying to figure out what it doesn't do with my career and just like all of these I don't know big life things that I was trying to navigate and figure out and, at the same time, like losing this sense of control in my physical fitness. So it was really hard for me to continue doing what I was doing online.
Speaker 1:There were other reasons as well, but just to like openly talk about it and feel like I was trying to be this guide and role model for people and just like internally struggling with it all. At the same time I felt like a hypocrite and a phony and back and forth, back and forth with myself. It was like I need to lose weight which, by the way, I have not weighed myself, probably in like two and a half to almost three years, because of how toxic it is for me. I just know how triggering it is for me and I have just decided that that is not something that serves me. So I do not. I do not know my weight and I do not allow myself to know my weight for that reason, but I can still feel like physically.
Speaker 1:My clothes were, you know, starting to feel tighter, so I knew that I was gaining weight like physically I could to feel tighter, so I knew that I was gaining weight, like physically I could, I could see differences, um, and it was just like this back and forthness of, oh, I need to, like I need to get, get it together, I need to eat better, and it was a lot of. It was coming from a place of, like feeling the need to change my body physically and I really like it did not sit well with me because I'm like I don't want to feel this way. I don't want to feel obligated to exercise more and to eat better, eat healthier, whatever, because I feel like I need to change my physical body, like I want to do it because it feels good and because I respect myself enough to do it. And what I ended up doing is I? Well, for one, I left a job that was also part of the problem and really just started to try to get in alignment with things that truly made me happy and felt good in my life. That was like the first step, and once I made that step, I was able to give myself the permission to go to therapy and start journaling and start doing more regular exercise, but I was, instead of, like, following a certain program or you know, doing specific workouts every single day, whatever I was actually allowing myself to tune into my body each day that I was going to do a workout and say, what does my body feel like doing today, what would feel good? And even when it came to how I was eating, it was like I was giving myself time before I would just like go and raid my pantry or you know whatever. I would like ask myself, like, what is my body craving right now, and just give myself that space to try and listen. And so what a lot of a lot of this between I don't know this year and like even now, a lot of it has been like slowing down, giving myself the space to reconnect with my body. That has been one of the most impactful, powerful things for me in my healing my relationship with my body and you know I've been talking about healing my relationship with my body for like four years now but truly like embodying it.
Speaker 1:I feel like there's a difference between saying, oh, you need to love your body, you need to do all these things, versus like truly embodying it and honoring it. Do all these things versus like truly embodying it and honoring it. Honoring it is huge and I think that that's where it can get tricky in the fitness industry is we get told like you have to do things a certain way, you have to have all this discipline, you have to stick to your plan, and I do think there's power in discipline, but I also think there's a lot of power in being so connected and tuned in with your own body that you know how to properly honor it and give it what it needs to feel its best. And if you struggle with the body image? And if you struggle with the body image, what are ways that you can maybe set goals that have nothing to do with your weight or your body image? What are activities that you can start to do that you actually enjoy, rather than forcing yourself to do workouts that you dread or you hate, or maybe they hurt your body in a way that's not soreness but actually hurt you to the point where you may be injuring yourself. I think that that's super powerful me right now, I am working on like getting my handstand and I'm working on calisthenics, which is something totally different than what I'm used to.
Speaker 1:I'm used to just like lifting heavy all the time and while I love that and I love the benefits of that, it is something new that I am trying and challenge, challenging myself with, and it's something that I really look forward to and I record myself often so that I can see my progress in my handstands. That's just one example. I mean not not everyone wants to do calisthenics or wants to do handstands, but also another goal or another challenge that I've been working on is sometimes I go for runs which is like not not really like something I do and I just like focus on I don't know, like taking my, taking it to the next level, like I usually never run for long periods of time and it does feel very like challenging for me sometimes, and so like, while I'm running, if I feel like the need to stop, sometimes, what I'll do is I'll walk for part of it and then I'll take off running again, and it's like something as simple as that, rather than just stopping the run altogether and being done with my exercise after five minutes. I find ways to keep going and still feel good in what I do and I hope that, like me, sharing all of this is able to give you insight in your own journey. I get that it's easier said than done to look at ourselves and feel good about our bodies, but another thing that has helped me is, like even when I'm looking at myself because I have mirrors in my gym and my mind wants to go to the criticizing and like letting me know that you know I don't look as fit as I used to or things could look better I actually will like counter it with like either positive things about myself or I just kind of like, if it comes up, I'll just like sort of acknowledge it and be like okay, like I mean that's not true. Whatever thoughts I mean that's not true. Whatever thoughts that just came up, that's not true at all. They're just there. I don't have to like adopt them as a belief, and I think that that's a huge part of your progress is if you can like separate yourself from that thought or that belief and just like look at it and like acknowledge it, like okay, um, not sure where that came from, but it doesn't mean you have to completely adopt it and accept it as your truth. And, and again, only you are going to know what's healthy versus not healthy for you. What decisions that you are making, are you doing it out of feeling like you need to take back control, feeling like you are not enough as you are. You have to allow yourself to go deeper, and what I recommend?
Speaker 1:I have a lot of episodes where I talk about how to increase your awareness on the thoughts that are going on in your mind. I talk about the latest episode journaling as a form of therapy. It is actually very, very healing and you can really start to work through some of those beliefs that you have about yourself and your body image. And let me just say that wanting to lose weight is not a bad thing, I think for me, like you know, I have to be very careful about it. But if you are wanting to get healthier because maybe you're not very healthy right now, maybe you've been struggling and you're tired of feeling the way that you feel and you know things could be better weight loss and wanting to lose weight is not bad.
Speaker 1:But I think that there's such a healthier way that we can go about improving our health and our fitness and just our quality of life. That is just a byproduct. It should not be the main focus, like I personally don't believe it should be the main focus when it comes to our health and our fitness journey, and I think that we are doing ourselves a disservice when that is like the one thing we are using to track our progress, and I hate that. It is like that's all the fitness industry talks about. Even like when you go to the doctor, that's all they talk about is your weight, if you need to lose weight. That is like the whole, like what they center it around, and I just think that there are so many better approaches to improving our health and wellness than focusing so much on our physical appearance and our physical weight.
Speaker 1:It is about how can we do this in a sustainable way, how can we do this in a way that is enjoyable and feels simple and maybe not necessarily easy, but isn't so out there from what we're used to, that we are able to maintain it and come back to it very often If, like, even if we have our struggles, like that is totally normal, and that is really what I want to end this episode with is just saying that wanting to lose weight is not bad, but the more you can take your focus away from it and put your focus into other things that totally serve you, that encourage you, that have positivity around them, that make you excited, that are fun. That is how we achieve a healthier lifestyle and weight loss will be a byproduct. And, yes, feel free to celebrate it If someone compliments you on it, just know that they mean well, but also know that your size whether you are smaller or bigger than what you were has nothing to do with your worth and who you are as a person. I think that we can get really caught up on in that as well. When people make comments about our physical body changes, whether we are proud of them, whether we do feel better about our bodies, sometimes we can get caught up in that outside validation and also in this idea that, oh, because I look physically better, I'm more important now I'm. You know, before I was less than, and then that is not true, and I think that that's sometimes we all can kind of struggle with this idea.
Speaker 1:So I hope that some of these tips help and if you have questions, if you're on a weight loss journey or if you're on a health and wellness journey, please feel free to reach out if you need any kind of guidance, and I will be sure to help you in the best way that I can. All right, thank you so much for tuning into today's episode. You have no idea how grateful I am to have you as one of the Love your Body Now listeners. If you are loving this podcast, it would mean the world to me if you subscribed and left a review. This helps me get the message out to more women just like you, who are also committed to their journey, and if you love this episode, please be sure to share it with someone who you know needs to hear today's message. Together, we can help more women recognize their self-worth and build their confidence from a much deeper place, just like you're doing right now. Let's help change the world, one woman at a time. All right, talk to you soon, friend.