Why It Feels So Hard to Love Your Body

By Nicole Willett

More of a listener than a reader? Check out the video

It’s not just you. Liking, let alone loving our bodies, is a damn difficult task. No matter how hard we try, that feeling of not being enough seems to remain.

Well, it’s not your fault. Your relationship with your body has very little to do with what you actually look like - no matter what you look like or how much you weigh.

I know, it sounds a little crazy but I am serious. Allow me to explain.

Let’s start with an uncomfortable, collective truth: the majority of us believe that if we looked “better”, we would have better lives.

We believe if we lose weight or tone up that we’ll be happier, more successful, find confidence and motivation, feel more connected, have better relationships, and the list goes on. 

There is a reason for that, and it isn’t about your body, what you look like, or how much you weigh. Nor is it a character flaw or any kind of mistake you’ve made.

It’s conditioning.

We don’t come out of the womb struggling with our bodies. We don’t connect them to our value and our beliefs about ourselves naturally or instinctively.

We are taught this relationship. Just like we learn to speak the language of our homes/culture, or how to form attachments with other people, we learn how to speak to, feel about, and relate to ourselves.

We learn this when we are very young and then culture and environment instill it even further.

I’m going to walk you through the simplest version of how this cycle works including:

·       Marketing and Advertising

·       Common Cultural Shame Stories

·       Our Parent’s/Guardians’ Relationships with their Bodies

Marketing and Advertising

To start, an uncomfortable truth.

The varied list of reasons we want to change the way we look all come down to one thing: Pain Relief.

The most interesting thing? When I look back on all of clients I have worked with as a personal trainer, the majority are not there for physical pain relief.

It’s mental or emotional pain we seek to relieve, even when the language we use makes it sound like it’s physical.

And guess what the key to a lucrative, effective advertising campaign is?

It’s to determine a customers’ pain points and market relief from that pain.

Even crazier? Research has shown that the more emotionally triggering an ad is, the more likely it is to get us to buy. 

And the more people struggling with this pain, the more customers you have. And the more pain this struggle causes them, the more likely they are to buy. And the cycle goes around and around.

And it’s been going around and around for generations. Your parents endured this and so did your grandparents and on and on through the family line.

The more ads we see, the more intense they need to be to get our attention. So in recent decades we have seen advertising shift not just from marketing a solution, but to actually suggesting and instilling pain and problems we otherwise wouldn’t even think about.

Our insecurity has always and will always be profitable. The beauty and fitness industries profit from our dissatisfaction with our bodies and the constant barrage of ads portraying idealized body types can lead us to believe that we need to change ourselves to be happy, creating a cycle of desire and disappointment.

The further they can place this ideal from realistic and attainable, the better.

Hence why we see the trend of preferred body image over the years looking like this:

(Picture: blogilates/Instagram )

This amazing image/photoshop work is by Cassey Ho of Blogilates.

Common Cultural Shame Stories

The messages from this advertising become part of societal norms in the form of common cultural shame stories.

Common Cultural Shame Stories: the deeply engrained, shared narratives and myths we pass down that determine which behaviors, traits, or circumstances are disgraceful or make a person ‘unworthy’. These stories create a "hidden curriculum" that teaches members to feel shame if they fail to meet societal expectations often leading to internalized oppression, silence, and, even a desperate need to maintain "face".  These stories can be regarding weight and appearance, as well as gender, class, race, ability, and more.

(This definition was created with the help of Gemini)

The oh so special thing about shame and shame stories, is that they thrive on the fact that we just accept them and we don’t talk about them.

We feel shame and we fear social rejection so we keep quiet and hide our discomfort. Each one of us feeling much the same way in our overall sense of not being enough, but unable to risk the vulnerability of sharing this with others.

So we notice the differences between our bodies and the photoshopped or AI generated bodies in the media and we worry we aren’t measuring up in any way - physically, socially, financially, mentally, emotionally, etc!

So instead of thinking, “My soft tummy and I are just as valuable as that person with a flat stomach. We are both beautiful, capable, talented people with value in our own right”, we say things like, “Oh man, I am getting fat and old,” or “Ugh I wish I looked like that, I should be going to the gym”, or any of the many ways we devalue our entire being through our not-so-kind observations of our bodies.

Recently I heard a toddler say to her mom, “You are bigger than that lady” and instead of seeing this as just the fact of reality as they mean it - just a kid noticing their world - I could feel secondhand the emotional struggle of this mom - how she was seeing it as a reflection of her value and worth and making it mean something deep and important about who she is as a mother and a person. Because that is literally what we are conditioned to think and do.

Our Parent’s/Guardians’ Relationships with their Bodies

These words and reactions from adults around body image - about how they are trying to lose weight and the parts of their bodies they hate and what all of that means about who they are allowed to be or hope to become – are what shapes our own relationships with our bodies.

The tough part is that even if you’re parent’s/guardians were kind directly to you about your body, your relationship with your body will still be determined more by what you learn from their relationship with their body.

It becomes the internal voice that lays the foundation for how we approach our relationship with ourselves.

Is it driven by a need to meet those societal standards that we may not even realize are out of fear of not being socially accepted? One where falling short means failure, stress, pressure, or overall doom.

Or is that voice driven by a sense of love, understanding, and respect? One where thoughts and actions are based on an awareness that some days we will feel good and meet all our goals and some days we won’t- but that no matter which way the day goes we still deserve credit, forgiveness, support, a hug, kindness, good things, and space to grow and learn.

These questions and answers aren’t about judgement. They are about curiosity, compassion, and understanding.

Why all of this is actually a good thing

Once we are aware of all of this, we can start to determine what we have learned that we may want to unlearn. Just because our relationships with our bodies have been one way for a long time doesn’t mean they have to stay that way.

Ask yourself questions like this:

·       As a kid, what kind of language did I hear my parent’s use when talking about their bodies? Is that something I want continue doing?

·       What is the message of this advertisement/post/etc really saying? Is it making me feel like something about who I am and the way I exist is wrong? Is it equating things like my weight or how I look to social acceptance/belonging, financial security, self-acceptance, or happiness? Do I really believe that one thing is required to have the other?

·       What kind of stories, beliefs, or insecurities do I have about my body that make me feel like I am not enough? Do I really believe these are true? Would I tell a friend struggling with that same insecurity to talk to themselves/treat themselves/see themselves in that way?

·       If other people treated me, spoke to me, or thought about me as I do myself, would I be ok with that? If the way I treated and spoke to myself was the way others were required to treat me, would I change anything? What kind of thoughts, actions, and beliefs would create the kind of world I would want to live in?

A healthier relationship with your body is not a destination. It’s not somewhere you land and never leave. Like any relationship we have in our lives, it will change over time.

There will be ups and downs, ease and struggle. But through it all, we can learn that loving our bodies doesn’t require a constant state of being a heart-eyed emoji.

It’s about accepting those ups and down with an understanding that you are both doing your best, you both have value and worth, and that you both deserve kindness, respect and patience from the other.

And remember, no matter what kind of s*** tried to bring you down in the past, you can and you will rise above it.