This is a post I’ve been wanting to write for a while. When I came up with the name Nourished Sweetly for my blog it felt right for a lot of reasons. 1) I wanted to focus on all aspects of nourishing ourselves — food, movement, mental health and more. 2) I totally have a sweet tooth and knew I’d be sharing ways to make traditional desserts healthier. But the biggest and most important reason I knew this was the right name was because I truly believe any changes we make in our lives — whether they be regarding food, exercise, or anything else — need to be done “sweetly”.
I believe we can accomplish far more by being kind to ourselves. By being patient with ourselves. By loving ourselves. I truly believe this is how we make lasting, meaningful changes in our lives. And one of the areas I think we can be particularly hard on ourselves — and therefore need an extra dose of self-compassion — is in regards to our body image.
A big part of what I want to do once I’m a Registered Holistic Nutritionist is to help people heal their relationships with their bodies and with food. For all kinds of reasons we try to force our bodies to attain a certain shape and to look a certain way. We can spend huge amounts of time and energy focusing on something as minute as the width of our thighs or the flatness of our bellies and tear ourselves to pieces. And for what?
Those harsh words, that judgement, they don’t truly inspire us to find true, lasting, joyful change. The messaging we see around us would have us think that if we are hard on ourselves, that’s how we attain this mystical “ideal” we all “need” to be striving for. But I don’t believe that’s true. I believe if we love ourselves and are kind to ourselves and simply accept ourselves just as we are — then true change can occur. And not change for others, or for the outside world, or for what we think we “have” to be, but change because we know and believe deep in our hearts that we are worth those healthy changes we want to make for ourselves.
Talking about self-love and body-positivity is so important to me and I know it’s something I really want to delve into on this blog. And a really important aspect of that for me is sharing my own personal struggles with body image, the tools I’ve discovered to bust through all that garbage we’ve had instilled in us and how I’ve come to love my body and how I continue to make sure I’m loving myself and being kind to myself each and every day. I want to be totally honest and open on this, my little space on the web. But that can be a pretty scary and nerve-wracking thing to do — especially in such a public way! Fortunately, even though it’s scary, it’s also exciting because I can’t wait to connect with you all and start helping you now and once I’m officially an R.H.N.!
Now, let’s dig into this whole ab obsession…
There was a time in my life where every day I would lift my shirt up to reveal my middle, look in the mirror and be disappointed by what I saw. My waist was too wide, I had too much fat on my sides, my abs weren’t defined… and on the list went. All this negativity and damaging talk about an area invisible to the world 99% of the time.
I can’t speak to those who live in areas of the world where it’s crop top weather year-round, but here in Canada, that belly fat I was bemoaning, the majority of the time, was hidden under three to four layers. And one of them was a parka. Yet still, that extra layer of fat hidden away under everything was making me feel terribly about myself each and every day. And I think many can relate to that.
It isn’t really all that surprising when we consider the types of images we’re seeing on a regular basis. It’s pretty hard to walk through a mall or down a city street or even surf the web without seeing a belly-bearing model on an ad or poster. With this kind of constant exposure from a young age, not becoming focused on the fat on our middles can feel practically impossible.
But here’s the really crazy thing. It seems to me the parts of our bodies we spend the most time obsessing over are the ones that are hardly ever visible — our abs, our bums, our thighs. If we all had unhealthy obsessions with changing the appearance of our hands or ears or necks it would really make more sense. (But please don’t do that. It is an equally huge waste of valuable time and energy.)
I don’t know about you, but my middle is only on any kind of large-scale display for a select few days each year either during the summer or while on vacation and during those times I’m around friends or family who definitely have more important things to think about than the definition of my abs. When you do the math, my stomach is out for folks to see probably less than 1% of the year. Yet somehow for a long time I let the fear of those few moments affect the other 99%.
Why have we become so focused on this little portion of flesh that spends most of the time tucked under layers of fabric? I can’t say why for sure. But what I do know for certain is it needs to stop.
For me, what kept me feeling like it mattered was the fact I’m an actor. I kept getting down on myself because I thought “what if there’s a job where I have to show my belly and I don’t book it because I don’t have a perfect flat stomach?” Well yes, that is a possiblity. It is also a possibility that an amazing job will come up where I have to be able to juggle or high jump or bobsled and I won’t book it because I’m not a juggling high-jumping bob sledder. But I’m not losing any sleep over it. So why was I stressing about this mythical ab-showing opportunity and why I had to be ready for it? Well *spoiler alert* I stopped stressing about it a long while ago, let my middle do whatever it wants to do and that opportunity, for better or worse, still hasn’t presented itself. Maybe it will one day and my little ol’ “imperfect” belly will get the gig anyway, or maybe it won’t. Either way, I know I’m a whole lot happier without all that unnecessary pressure.
Ask yourself, what is that fear that’s holding you back from not worrying about what’s under your shirt? Is it that the person you’re interested in won’t be attracted to you? Is it that you won’t want to go to the beach with your friends when summer comes? What is it exactly? And if you were to stay exactly as you are right now when that moment comes what is the absolute worst thing that could happen? Maybe that person decides they aren’t interested in you. That would be hard. But a whole lot better than ending up with someone who isn’t interested in the version of you that has an extra few inches around your middle. Or maybe you won’t have the modelesque bikini body that you see all over the internet when you go to the beach. But who cares? You’re still you. Your friends didn’t ask you there to stare at your belly button. They want to talk to you and be around you, and that has nothing to do with what your body looks like when you drop your towel.
If you’re thinking this all seems far more easily said than done, I totally hear you. Choosing not to worry about the width of my waist or the fat on my stomach did not come immediately. It took time. A lot of it. It took countless instances of me talking myself away from disparaging comments when I looked in the mirror and from wondering if I should feel embarrassed when I went to the lake. But each time I did what I could to hit myself with a heavy dose of kindness. Rather than letting those negative thoughts consume me I’d stop and say “hey, you have people who love you, you work hard at what you do and you help people on a regular basis, so the extra few inches around your waist? Not that big a deal.”
Sure, at first it felt forced and awkward. When I started I could barely vocalize even the simplest kind words. That’s how hard I was on myself. If that’s where you’re at, please know it gets easier. Keep saying it. Write it down, say it out loud, smile at yourself, dance in the mirror. Just keep trying. Be kind to yourself on days when it’s hard and celebrate those days where it’s a little easier. Remember, it took many years for this negative view to dig its way into your brain, it will take time for you to usher it out and to replace it with self-love. But it will happen. Just keep at it.
Maybe one day you’ll come to love those dimples on your belly. Awesome! Or maybe you still won’t be crazy about the fat around your middle but you’ll be able to truly recognize “who the heck cares?” Cool! Just bit by bit, day by day, remind yourself that your belly fat, your ab definition, your waist circumference, do not define you. In fact, they have nothing to do with who you are. And although it may take time for you to let that focus on your middle go, it’s worth it. You are worth it.
What an insightful article.