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Tips to Honor your Body Everyday
I subscribe to a lot of newsletters and Dailyspark always give me good tips everyday. If you are tracking your food intake or your on a diet, I highly recommend this website. They also have good recipes to choose from.
Dailyspark's topic today caught my attention (not just today of course) so I'm sharing this to you. They talk about the 8 tips to honor your body.
In honor of National Eating Disorders Awareness Week (Feb. 20-26), I'm going to share the 8 simple ways you can foster a more positive body image starting today.
1. Dress for the body you have today. Don't wait until you're 2, 20, or 200 pounds lighter to wear clothes that fit you well and flatter your figure. You deserve to look and feel your best right now.
2. Talk back. Talk back to your TV when you see commercials that use a woman's body to sell products. Talk back to companies with your wallet by NOT buying said products. Women's health and fitness magazines tend to glorify just one body type: super skinny. Reading these magazines make us bad about myself.
3. Turn every negative thought into something positive. It's not easy to suddenly say "I love my legs" if you don't feel that way, but there are plenty of ways you can turn negative thoughts into more positive ones: like that your legs are strong and get you up the stairs at work without getting too tired.
4. Compliment yourself in ways that have nothing to do with your looks. We tend to focus so much on what we see in the mirror and overlook our many other amazing attributes. Are you a good friend? A good listener? A successful professional? A smart driver? How about simply a warm, caring, friendly, or positive person? Make a list of 10 things you like about yourself that have nothing to do with your looks. Then next time you feel down about your appearance—or start to self-criticize—take out this list and remind yourself just how awesome you are. Better yet, start and end your day reading that list. Every. Single. Day.
5. Exercise because it's good for you. I have been wanting to do exercice before to shed off the weight I gained when I got pregnant. I even bought a lot of exercising gadgets to help me out and even bought this exercise game for Wii. But still I'm self-sabotaging. So what I do is I walk everyday since walking is a good for the heart and it can also burn calories.
It's funny how focusing on the wrong thing can undermine your efforts. If you're obsessed with the calorie burn or hate to exercise, stop counting your calories burned (I still NEVER track them to this day), and start exercising at an intensity level that simply feels good to you. Even more important: Find something fun that you really love and do it, even if it's not the biggest calorie burner. Your body deserves this respect.
6. Eat healthy because your body deserves it. Honor your body by eating as much nutritious and nourishing food as possible so that it can perform at its best and be healthy. Stop making every food decision based on calories alone.
7. Don't feel bad about cravings—or giving into them. I still struggle with this one myself. When I eat things that I know aren't good for me, I tend to "feel fat" and guilty. A little bit of guilt may be OK—that's what stops you from eating ice cream for EVERY meal, after all. But food is one of our greatest pleasures in this life, and you can and should enjoy eating. Sometimes, that means indulging in some less-than-healthy foods (notice I didn't say "bad" foods). What's most important is that you are present, making these choices consciously (not emotionally or on autopilot), honoring your craving without going overboard, and not letting the occasional dessert or rich dinner send you into a shame spiral that you can't climb out of.
8. Never allow anyone else to disrespect your body. This is a really important one. Never EVER let someone else disrespect your body by criticizing it, hurting it (this can mean many things), or objectifying it. Get negative people like this out of your life or at least tell them that you will not stand to have your body disrespected ever again. You deserve love and respect from yourself, but from other people, too. If someone disrespects your body, stand up for it. Remind yourself that you're great and—most importantly: If someone has a problem with you, it's their problem, not yours.
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Excerpted from Body Bliss: 8 Ways to Honor your Body Today
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