When you feel great about your body, you don't notice the wrinkles, cellulite, or varicose vains. You love the skin you're in simply because you're alive. You don't feel self-conscious or afraid.....you just live fully.
Feel Great About Your Body
According to a Psychology Today study most of us are dissatisfied with at least some of our body parts – but there are several ways to feel great about your body no matter what you look like (and developing a healthy body image won't hurt):
10 Ways to Feel Great About Your Body:
- Having sex - but only the good kind; bad sex will make you feel worse
- Being in a good mood makes you feel great about your body and everything else, too
- A partner who thinks you look great helps you love the skin you're in
- Practicing gratitude for your natural assets will help you feel great about your body
- Knowing what makes you feel good helps you feel great about your body
- Eliminating people & media images that make you feel bad
- Participating in activities that you enjoy helps you love the skin you're in
- Exercising not for weight loss, but for fun and adventure
- A balanced perspective of your abilities, talents, achievements, and self will help you feel great about your body
- Accepting that nobody is as perfect as those air-brushed models in magazines and on television
Pick three or four tips that work for you, and focus on them to help you feel great about your body. When you’re rolling with those, pick a couple more. Before you know it, you’ll be swaggering around the beach in a bikini or speedo!
Here are two more tips that can help you feel great about your body:
Nude beach. On our honeymoon in St. Maarten, my hubby and I got nude on the beach and played in the waves – and it was a blast! There were fat people, short people, attractive people, unattractive people, skinny people…and not a single perfect person in sight. There were at least 50 nude people on this beach, and they felt great about their bodies. Their various body parts bounced, jiggled, swayed, and rippled (and not in a good way); and they didn’t care. Self-acceptance – self-love – regardless of appearance was the overriding theme of that beach.
Pilates. This exercise is about developing your mind-body connection as you strengthen your core. Learn to stand taller, breathe deeper, and feel great about your body – this positively affects how you feel naked. Try a new fitness class; you may be surprised at how good it is for your self-image. Be patient: I’ve taken Pilates for 9 months now and still occasionally feel fat and uncoordinated in class, especially when beautiful, fit women join. Ah well, what can you do? Keep going, that’s what – and learn to love the skin you’re in!
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Laurie Pawlik-Kienlen - Laurie Pawlik-Kienlen is a full-time writer and blogger in Vancouver, BC, and the creator of the Quips and Tips blog series.
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