Blogs About 'Body Acceptance'

And I Love You So

And I Love You So This is the title of my favourite love song by Don McLean. When we think about love, we often look at love in relation to having someone to love or someone who loves us back. What if we rather looked at self-love? Self-love is challenging. We are programmed to be hard on ourselves. I so often hear my clients say: “I want to learn to love myself”. So how do we do it? How do we start to love ourselves? “You, yourself, as much as anybody in the entire universe,...

10 New Ways To Think About Your Body

In the US and Canada, the end of May signals the start of the summer season. This time of year can bring up a lot of challenging emotions around body image. Our culture’s preoccupation with body size triggers feeling of inadequacy and unworthiness amongst so many of us because we aren’t meeting society’s impossible standards. Research shows that 55% – 80% of women and 35% of men don’t like how they look. Our body image can have a deep effect on many aspects of our lives. It can impact...

Empowering Women to Accept Their Bodies

It’s International Women's Day. This is a time to celebrate the achievements of women and to raise awareness of the ongoing struggles women face around accepting themselves and their bodies. What is one of the biggest struggles which women face today? Can you guess? It’s the paralysing pressure to conform to unrealistic beauty standards. In our society, thinness is often equated with beauty and success, and women are bombarded with messages that they need to be thin in order to be worthy,...

10 Steps To Peace With Food And Your Body

So much of our thinking is taken up by what to eat, what not to eat, what to wear and how we look... Imagine if we freed up our thinking around food and our bodies and devoted that time and head space to more meaningful aspects of our lives! Imagine a peaceful relationship with food and our bodies! What difference would that make? How would we show up in the world? How would we treat ourselves and treat others? How would we feel on a daily basis? If we felt peace around our bodies,...

Your Body Is NOT The Problem

Summer is here. We yearn for it but we fear it too, especially if summer brings up challenges around body image. This time of the year there is so much pressure around how our body looks. Our culture’s preoccupation with body size triggers feeling of inadequacy and unworthiness amongst so many of us because we aren’t meeting society’s impossible standards. I don’t know about you, but I have been feeling the heat. I am going to be visiting my mother after a 3-year absence this summer, in...

The Rude Awakening

Just over a month ago I slipped on a beautiful wooden staircase and injured my coccyx. Just as I was starting to feel better, I then did something that triggered my lower back. Sciatic nerve pain is humbling. Interestingly, during the last few months my self-talk about my body has been negative - my inner critic has been passing judgements about my arms, my stomach and my thighs. The voice is not nearly as harsh as it was in my “dreaded dieting days” when I was in a permanent state of war...

The Path to Self-Love

“You, yourself, as much as anybody in the entire universe, deserve your love and affection.” — Buddha — When we think about love, we often look at love in relation to having someone to love or someone who loves us back. What if we rather looked at self-love? Self-love is challenging. We are programmed to be hard on ourselves. I so often hear my clients say: “I want to learn to love myself”. So how do we do it? How do we start to love ourselves? “The real difficulty...

If You Want To Work On Your Body

What will it take to end the war with our bodies? A relationship with your body is for life. Yet we look at our bodies as something external often with disappointment, contempt and blame. Body image work is an essential part of feeling free and peaceful around food. If we weren’t trying to change our bodies we probably wouldn’t have such difficulty with food. What do we have our bodies for? Are they here for others’ visual pleasure or to carry us through life? Healing a negative...

What Will It Take to Accept Ourselves?

“Accepting yourself is about respecting yourself. It’s about honouring yourself right now, here today. In this moment. Not just who you could become somewhere down the line” – Kris Carr – Most of us are conditioned to believe that we constantly need to be achieving, acquiring and aspiring in order to feel worthy and acceptable. We have expectations that drive us to strive and struggle. It’s never enough.  In this hustle for acceptance from others, we exhaust ourselves through the...

Women at War with their Bodies

What will it take to end the war with our bodies? Your body is your shelter. It’s your home for life. A relationship with your body is for life. Yet we look at our bodies as something external often with contempt and blame. Body image work is an essential part of feeling free and peaceful around food. If we weren’t trying to change our bodies we probably wouldn’t have such difficulty with food. What do we have our bodies for? Are they here for others' visual pleasure or to carry us through...

Body Love

I must be honest, I am not a big fan of Valentine’s day, in the same way that I am not a fan of New Year’s Eve parties. I see them both as “compulsory enjoyment” days.  My inner rebel protests and does NOT want to give or receive flowers or go out for dinner on the 14th of February!  I far prefer spontaneity and random romance days! However… I DO like the message of Valentine’s Day… LOVE This Valentine’s Day I want to look at other kinds of love, like love for the precious...

How to Stop Obsessing About Being Thin

‘….and I said to my body, softly “I want to be your friend”, it took a long breath and replied “I have been waiting my whole life for this.”’ – Nayyirah Waheed – In today’s world it is really difficult for women to feel good about their bodies and to stop pursuing the mythical ideal of thinness. When we are focused on thinness, it creates a dysfunctional relationship with food because we are so obsessed with the number on the scale dropping. When it’s not dropping then we...

Make Peace With Your Body

Since the start of the year, I see so many of my clients struggling with judging their bodies, overeating, and body acceptance. What I notice is that the more focused we are on weight loss as the only goal, the more dysfunction we create in our relationship with food and with our bodies. Body love can be a difficult thing to attain but the steps to loving our bodies are neutrality, acceptance, gratitude and then love. Since February is the month of love (and every month should be!!) here is a...

Do You Compare Your Body?

Does this sound familiar to you? You are on the beach and you compare your body to other women’s bodies – thinking – “she has thinner thighs!” or “her stomach is so flat after having 3 kids!” Or you are at a party and you scan the room checking out women’s bodies and comparing them to your own. There’s a term for this…“Comparisonitis” – not really useful at all because the more we compare the more we despair! Think of nature, think of trees for example… Is a bamboo...

The Pursuit of Thinness

I meet so many dynamic and inspiring women in my practice and at my workshops. We talk a lot about our relationship with our bodies, food and eating and a dominant theme that always emerges is the desire to be skinny. The women I see are successful, resourceful, independent, super smart and extraordinarily courageous. And still, the pursuit of skinny seems to overshadow all their other amazing qualities. It’s the one missing ingredient... Imagine if we as women didn’t define our success or...

How Can I Love My Body?

Feeling unhappy with our bodies is like a dark cloud looming over every part of our lives. The negative feelings we may have towards our bodies can profoundly impact many of our experiences. Body dissatisfaction often triggers mental health issues like low self-esteem, anxiety, and depression, and can even lead to the development of eating disorders. And this dissatisfaction doesn't just stay within us; it affects our relationships, work, and productivity, while also pushing us towards unhelpful...

Self Compassion

How can the practice of self-compassion help with overeating? Can you believe that we are already at the end of the 3rd week of January!? I like to start my new year according to the Chinese calendar in the middle of February, it just gives me more time to adjust to the concept of a new year...This year, my intention is to practice more self compassion. I was introduced to the concept of self compassion by Kristen Neff - she has a wonderful TED talk. For some reason we believe that if we are...

Hating Yourself Does Not Lead To Change

Often my new clients come to me and believe that if they accept their body and are kind to themselves this will lead to more eating, laziness and a lack of action. They believe that change only happens if they are hard on themselves. So often I hear: "But if I accept my overweight body, I will never be able to change it." This is simply not true. Ever. My standard response to this statement is: "You cannot hate or bully yourself thinner" (Actually you can, I used to do that, but the...