Achieving a Positive Body Image: What 10 years coaching different women has taught me about our ability to love ourselves.

Very quickly into starting my coaching career did I realise that personal training can become so much more than running someone through a set of exercises. I found my niche in training women only and more specifically - women ready to look at movement and their bodies beyond what it looks like. 

There’s a set of clients for everyone, and the language I use with my clients even in an initial consult communicates to them that they are in a position to choose to start looking at their body with love, to nurture it with good movement, nutritious food and routine rather than to punish it with overtraining and under consuming calories for not looking a certain way. 

I have gotten to know so many different women over the years to different depths, so without sharing any personal information or stories, here is what I have learned about our ability to love ourselves from the female POV: 

1. It is a completely collective feeling to have insecurities around the way you look.

Whether you were born into an environment that wasn’t yet ready to teach you about your worth beyond your looks, grew up heavily influenced by societal trends and celebrities starving themselves or whether your relationship to your body is influenced by a much deeper trauma it is undeniably clear that to different degrees - every woman faces insecurities around the way they look. 

Although it has definitely become a widely spoken about topic especially amongst younger content creators with modern views on body image, it can regardless still feel like a very subjective experience. 

I think like any other internal turmoil, it stays with us forever, some women have just mastered how to not let thoughts compound for too long and play such a prominent role in their mood day to day.

2. Achieving the body of your dreams and learning to love it are two seperate goals. 

Alongside your physical progress, there needs to be the mental progress that transforms your relationship to your body and self in a way that leaves you proud of the outcome instead of with an inability to be satisfied. 

3. Understanding how incredibly unique your body is will help you to slow down the constant comparison to women around you. 

It’s way too easy to compare yourself to other women your age, around you or on the internet, especially with the range of filters, editing and surgery that has become the norm.

We all have different DNA, muscular skeletal systems, nervous systems, hormones, Pre-exposure to certain illnesses and history with nutrition and movement that can all effect the way our body is looking at a certain time. We are all facing different circumstances and DO NOT have the same 24 hours in a day. 

I always find the more a client understand how uniquely individual your body and circumstances can be, the easier it is to stop the negative spiral that can start from this constant comparison.

To read more about how individual our approach to health should be you can see this detailed in my last post https://www.biastrength.com/post/specificity-in-training-and-nutrition-7-ways-you-re-different-to-her

4. Shifting your focus to performance goals is not enough.

Setting performance goals is an important step in shifting your focus away from purely how your body looks. In the wrong context, this can lead to a similarly toxic mindset around how well you perform instead of how good you look.

I think it's important to set performance goals and start focusing on celebrating your wins inside of the gym to piece together the bigger picture and show yourself what your hard work can achieve, but there are many more pieces to the puzzle especially when life ultimately happens and you may find yourself needing to shift your focus around to keep exercise in your life to different capacities without being disappointed.

5. Community matters - insecurities can be contageous and so can confidence.

Pay attention to how you feel around different people. Notice how the language you use together either helps or harms the way you leave feeling about yourself. Surround yourself with people who project their insecurities by judging others based on their look or try to let appearance rank our worth and you will find it much harder to feel confident knowing these kinds of people make up your follower/friend list.

Find people you look up to for the way they hold themselves, with the emotional intelligence to speak about our bodies with compassion and respect and the maturity to understand that more often than not, the most you should speak about the appearance of other people's bodies is not at all.

6. Achieving body positivity and trying to change your body are not mutually exclusive.

You do not need to earn the right to love your body. You can love it in any form or phase and its usually from this place of love that allows you to decide you're worthy of more. Loving your body does not cancel out the need to change your lifestyle. You can at the same time love the way you look and acknowledge that some of the habits you have formed do not represent the woman you want to be. Much bigger than how we look is how we feel, how healthy we are from the inside out and our ability to move through life able bodied and able to show up for the people around us.

7. Confidence is an energy, not a body fat percentage.

When you have undergone major lifestyle changes, learnt new skills in the gym and achieved more than what you thought you were physically capable, when you surround yourself with only people that reflect how you want to feel about your body, when you speak to yourself with as much kindness as you would a friend and when you know on a deeper level that you are doing your best day to day to improve, face your shit head on and pick yourself up after setbacks you adopt an energy found in your presence, so powerful that you stop looking to your weight on the scales or body fat percentage to make up your worth.

"You can’t heal a body you hate. self-care is a form of self-respect."