Body Respect: How the heck are we supposed to respect our bodies??
When it comes to options for how we feel about our bodies, most of us are aware of the body hatred and body positivity options. Some are aware of body neutrality, where the focus is not whether we love or don’t love our body’s appearance, but rather the purpose of our body, which is to allow us to live. For most of us, body hatred is a given and body positivity feels impossible. Body neutrality is more conceivable, but still very challenging. It is really freaking hard to have a decent relationship with our bodies!! I’ve got a fourth option
46 Iffirmations to Change Your Life (nope, that’s not a typo)
One of my favorite mindset-management tools are iffirmations. Nope, not affirmations. Iffirmations. Affirmations are also mindset-management tools. Affirmations are statements that we are trying to get our brains to believe. “I am good enough.” is an affirmation. Many of us hear that affirmation and have an automatic “Yeah, right.” reaction. In other words, our brain’s first response is to reject it because it sounds so implausible. This is in part because it’s a statement. Statements give our brain no wiggle room – we are either good enough or we’re not. Since we’ve spent years believing that we’re not good enough, our brain automatically selects that
How To Stay Out of Other People’s Heads
You do it. I definitely do it. We hang out in other people’s heads, trying to figure out what they’re thinking about us. We’re trying to create safety for ourselves, but we’re actually doing just the opposite. On a first date, we spend more time wondering what the other person thinks about us than what we think about them. With a good friend, we wonder if they think we’re being self-centered because we’ve been talking about our exciting new job for 15 minutes. Checking out at the grocery store, we spend the whole time wondering whether the cashier is judging
Ditch Your Scale for Better Health: The true connection between weight and health
Do you own a scale? How often do you weigh yourself? Why do you weigh yourself? Most of us step on the scale because we’re trying to lose weight or make sure we don’t gain any. We believe the scale tells us important information about our bodies and our health. We’re wrong. Yes, the scale tells us what we weigh. But it turns out that that is not actually important information, and it is rarely helpful. In fact, it is much more harmful than helpful. Pop quiz: Which one of these statements is false? Weight is an indicator of health.
2 Tools to Help You Manage Overwhelming Feelings
Feelings can be HARD. The ones that are uncomfortable or painful are just so … uncomfortable and painful. They feel bad and can be overwhelming to the point that we can’t feel or focus on anything else. We get stuck in them. So, how do we manage overwhelming feelings? We can’t just make them go away or decide not to feel them. Feelings don’t work like that. The trick is to make room for them. Our instinct is to do the opposite – we want to squash painful feelings, but when we try, they tend to get more intense. If
5 Steps to True Self-Care
What do you think of when you think of “self-care?” A couple of glasses of wine at the end of the day whilst mindlessly scrolling social media? Netflix and ice cream? A bubble bath? A mani-pedi? Those all sound lovely. But they are not true self-care. Most of us spend 98% of our day prioritizing Not-Self-Care (e.g., work, other people, productivity, and shoulds). By the end of the day, our buckets are drained. We are exhausted, burnt out, and looking for escape. We reach for our own flavor of escape, whether it alters our mood, numbs our brains, or mainlines
Tips on Life from a New 50-Year-Old
Remember when you were a little kid, and you just assumed that adults knew what they were doing? That was a comforting feeling. And then you became an adult. I don’t know about you, but I was never given the handbook. I quickly started to realize that neither were most of the adults around me, and then I started to suspect that there was no handbook. It was not comforting to understand that we were all milling about, making it up as we went. I am a person who likes structure and certainty, and I wanted someone to tell me
How to Get Through the Holidays Without Focusing on Your Weight
Are you dreading the holidays because you’re worried about gaining weight? Are you already strategizing about what you will and won’t let yourself eat on Thanksgiving? Are you worried about what certain family members will think about your body size? Welcome to the tribe, my friend. You are not alone. The holiday season is notorious for good foods and bad body images. Instead of prioritizing fun or connection during this time, we obsess about how not to gain weight. Instead of a season of joy, it becomes six weeks of anxiety and low self-esteem. Let’s change that. I’ve got a
How To Go with the Flow, for Those of Us with Anxiety
The Anxious Approach Those of us with anxious brains tend to go through life with a white-knuckle grip on it. We like structure, we like to have a plan, and we like to know what to expect. If we don’t know what to expect, we can’t properly prepare. If we can’t properly prepare, we won’t be able to handle the catastrophe that is inevitably just around the bend. That’s what our anxious brains tell us. This is how I have always approached life. I overthink so I can anticipate every possible scenario, I prepare for all of them, and then