5 Things to Tell Yourself Daily When Learning to Love Your Body
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One of the hardest things to do when working towards embracing your real, is to learn to love your body. At least for me, this was the biggest struggle. But I finally realized the problem with learning to love our body doesn’t lie in our body itself, it lies in what we think of it. So rather than being so consumed by trying to change our body, all we need to do is change our mindset around it.
In this episode, I share five reminders for you to tell yourself daily that I know will drastically help you reshape your mindset around your body and help you learn to love it unconditionally. Because at the end of the day, hating your body won’t make it any skinnier, so you might as well learn to love it.
So takeout a pen and paper, or take notes on your phone, because the five reminders I share with you need to be written down. I promise you, when you tell yourself these five things every single day, it will make a drastic difference in helping you shift your mindset and learn to have a healthier relationship with your body. Put them somewhere you look regularly: your refrigerator, your bathroom mirror, the dashboard of your car, or save it as the background on your phone. Whatever you do, just make sure you are constantly reminding yourself of these five things.
If you don’t know how to even begin loving your body, this episode is for you!
FULL TRANSCRIPT:
Hey there, beautiful human. You're listening to Embrace Your Real with me, Julie Ledbetter, a podcast where I empower you to just be you. With each episode, I dish you a dose of real talk and actionable advice for building your confidence, honoring your body, and unconditionally loving your authentic self. Stay tuned if you're ready to embrace your real. Let's get in. Let's go.
Hello, hello, and welcome back to the Embrace Your Real podcast. Welcome, welcome. I am so excited that you are here. Thank you so much for tuning in. I'm so grateful for the opportunity to connect with you and join you on your journey towards embracing your real. If this is your first time with me, I want to say welcome. If it's not, I want to say welcome back. I am so grateful to have you in this Embrace Your Real community. Now, today's episode is one of my favorites. If you haven't all ready checked out episode one or episode two, be sure to do so. I am sharing all about my story in episode one, kind of the way in which I came to embracing my real and just kind of my backstory there. And then episode two, I talk about our obsession with weight loss and how we need to change our mindset with that because if we fixate on that, then that will be the focus of our life and it hinders us in so many different areas. So be sure to tune in to those episodes if you haven't all ready.
Now today's episode, I'm so excited because I know one of the hardest things when working towards truly embracing your real is learning to love your body. I know for me, for a decade of my life, this was pants down my biggest struggle. And what I've learned is that when we are learning to love our body, the biggest problem does not lie in the body itself. It lies in what we think of our body. Like it's not our body that we hate so much so that it is what we think about our body. And so rather than being so consumed by trying to change our body, I really think it's important that we take a look and give value to changing our mindset around our body. Because at the end of the day, hating our body is not going to make us skinnier. Hating our body is not going to make us love ourselves more. Hating our body is not going to make our life more enjoyable. So we might as well learn how to love it. We might as well learn how to speak to it more lovingly.
In today's episode, I'm going to share five little reminders for you to tell yourself daily. And this is something that honestly is one of the biggest game changers. And these five things have been so transformative in my life and I guarantee it's going to drastically help you reshape your mindset around your body and help you learn how to love it unconditionally. Before I dive into today's episode, it would mean the absolute world to me if you press subscribe to the podcast. I want to make sure that you and I are on this journey towards embracing our real together and I want to make sure that you never miss an episode. I promise each episode I will bring you real talk and actionable advice for you to live your authentic self. Without further ado, let's dive into today's episode. I want to make sure that when you are listening to this episode that you take out a pen and paper or you have your notes app on your phone because I truly think that these five reminders are going to transform your thinking, your mindset, and it will drastically make a difference when it comes to truly loving and embracing our real.
Reminder number one, you can simultaneously love your body while still working towards changing your body. This is a huge, huge topic and I've talked about this a lot on my Instagram, but I genuinely believe that you can simultaneously love your body while still working towards changing your body. Loving your body only when it's "perfect shape" is like loving your kids only when they're well behaved or loving your spouse only when they surprise you with flowers or bring you presents or clean the dishes or your spouse shutting the toilet seat. I mean, this sounds crazy. You don't need to wait to love your body. It's important that you recognize that you can and you should love it right now.
Remember, you will always be a work in progress. You will never reach a point where you feel 100% satisfied. You will always feel like there's more work to be done. And if you continue to wait to love your body, you will literally live the rest of your life without truly loving your body. And that right there is the reason why I wake up every day and I do what I do because I don't want that for you. I don't want you to get to 40, 50, 60, 70, 80, 90, or on your death bed and then reflecting back on your life and asking yourself, "Did I truly love myself?" And saying, "No, I don't think I did."
I want you to choose to love it now. I want you to love it for all that it is and I want you to love it for all that it does. An absolutely 100% you can still work towards reaching your goals. In fact, I would encourage that. I would say that if you choose to love yourself right now and you also choose to have a growth mindset, you can be in this simultaneous place where you are always striving for more growth, but you are also giving yourself grace and you are loving yourself every step of the way. And I would also say that if you have that mindset of loving yourself every step of the way, it will allow you to actually learn to fall in love with the process of reaching your goals because you're congratulating yourself every step of the way, you are spending time celebrating yourself with the small victories. Every single day we're going to have mountaintops and valley lows. And so it's really important that we become our own best friend when it comes to loving ourselves and remembering that. So remind your number one, you can simultaneously love your body while still working towards changing your body.
Remind your number two, no matter how far you have to go, you can still celebrate how far you have come. This kind of goes along with reminder number one, but I think it's really easy for us to focus on all the things that we aren't rather than everything that we are. Or it's easy to spend more time dwelling on the things that didn't go the way that we thought they would and really dwell on that, instead of looking and evaluating and celebrating all the successes that we actually have. Each day, remember something that you accomplish. For example, if you are on this journey of learning to fuel your body optimally and, let's just say for example, you're counting macros.
I know for me, when I first started counting macros, like the thought of me reaching my macros within one to five grams of protein, carbs and fats was like so daunting to me. And so what I had to do was I had to say, "The fact that I am being more intentional about fueling my body optimally for what my body needs, with the goals that I have, that's what I'm going to celebrate. And I'm going to celebrate the fact that I am nourishing my body for my goals. I'm nourishing my body for what it needs." And so really just learning to celebrate the bigger picture of the journey instead of fixating so much on where you think you need to go.
What other small victories have you had? I know for me, for example, when I really started to learn to honor my body with movement and move my body out of celebration instead of obligation, it was like, yeah, I might've had a 20 or 30 minute workout, but did I love my workout that day? It doesn't have to be an hour long. It doesn't have to be this long workout every single day. And so just focusing on the victories that I am having every single day, I think just allows you to live more present in that moment, which allows you to appreciate it on a much deeper level because you're taking time out of your day to celebrate the small things. Celebrate things. They deserve to be celebrated. And I think we live in a society where we think celebration is egotistic. We think celebration is almost cocky. And I would argue celebration is so vital to the success of sustainability. Let me say that again. Celebration is so vital to the success of a sustainable approach, sustainable living.
Reminder number three, your weight means nothing. Literally nothing. Your weight means nothing. We have become so obsessed over how much we weigh. We could be feeling so awesome about ourselves until we step on a scale and we see that we gained five pounds, or we put on this dress that we once wore four years ago and it doesn't fit. It instantly changes our mindset and it's so crazy. But also I understand on a very deep level that we give a silly number way too much power about how we feel in our body. This number is literally a numerical reflection of your relationship with gravity. That's all that your weight is. You could weigh more because you haven't fully digested a meal or you're holding onto a little bit more water or you have higher stress or your sleep is varying. It's that time of the month you've gained muscle. Just because you've gained a few pounds on the weight scale does not mean that those pounds are from that, and it does not mean that those few pounds are permanent. And so I want to remind you again that your weight means nothing.
I know for me, my weight can vary anywhere from five to seven pounds easy between morning and night, but you know what? It's impossible to gain five pounds in one day. Literally impossible. You would have to eat an extra 17,500 calories in order for you to gain five pounds of fat in one day. All right? You have no control over your weight fluctuating. And if you continue to give that number control, you will never truly have control over how you feel about your body. So if your weight scale is giving you dissatisfaction or if your weight scale is giving you discouragement or it is defining you in any way, shape or form, I formally invite you to bashing your waist scale and literally throwing in at a dumpster and taking a selfie and then tagging me on Instagram. Again, reminder number three, your weight means nothing.
Reminder number four, it is okay for your body to be exactly what it is. Remember that when you're honoring your body with movement and nourishing your body with what it needs, your body is exactly what it's supposed to be in that moment. So rather than looking in the mirror and wishing that your body was something different, you can truly find peace knowing that where it is right now is natural for where it is supposed to be in this moment. Am I the skinniest, the most fit, the most toned or muscular fitness influencer on Instagram? It's okay. You can say no because I know I'm not. I don't want to be, nor is that my real body. Listen, when I was the skinniest, I wasn't going about it in the healthiest way, which meant it was so unnatural for me, so unnatural for me. And all I want for my body right now in this moment is to be what it's supposed to be.
Yes, I do count my macros because I choose to because I know it allows me to feel my body enough for what my body needs daily. But what I talked about in episode two, if you go back and listen to it, is I said that honoring your body looks different from day to day. Honoring your body looks different from season to season and you have to learn to be okay with that and ask yourself, "What does it look like to honor my body today? What does it look like to honor my body with movement in this season and know that the size of my body right now in this season of life where I'm at, what I'm focusing on is exactly where it needs to be?" I think giving that thought weight in your life, like true weigh in your life is so important because where your body is right now is exactly where it's supposed to be. It's not supposed to be anywhere else right now. And so when you start to accept that, it's beautiful what can open up from it.
Reminder number five, you are the only person who sees your flaws. You are the only person who sees your flaws. What's the first thing that you notice when you look in the mirror? I'm guessing it might be that pimple that popped up last night or the bed hair or the eyebrows that might need plucked. That's me right now. Or whatever it is. You feel like you're a little bit fluffy, you feel bloated. There's so many different things. But the first thing typically that we point out when we first see ourselves in the mirror every day is like, "Ugh, why do I look like this?" Or, "Ugh, look at this." And we just instantly start picking apart our body. We start picking apart different things, our "flaws" that we think we have. Things like, "Why do I look so fat today?" Or, "I wish my legs were thinner." Or, "I wish my arms were more toned." Or, "Oh, these bags under my eyes are horrible."
I have to remind you that the people who truly love you don't care about your flaws. They don't care about the weight you gained or even the way you lost. They don't see any of that. Other people don't really... They're way too concerned about what they look like. This kind of goes hand in hand with gym intimidation. I think oftentimes we can work up gym intimidation so much in our mind like, "Oh my gosh, what are they thinking of me? Are they judging my form or whatnot?" And the fact is, so many people are so concerned about themselves that they don't even think about looking into surface flaws. They don't even think about it. It doesn't even cross their mind. And I think we give it so much weight. We think that's the first thing that people see and the reality is it's not. We live in a very self-centered culture and that's exactly why we think that people are looking at us, but they think that we're looking at them.
Jay Shetty said it perfectly. He said, "The reality that we live in is the reality of what we think they think we are." And so we so often live in this reality of what are they thinking of us? And that's what I'm going to live in because I'm thinking that they're thinking this. So I'm going to live in that. And it can kind of get confusing, but honestly, we think that so many people are thinking things of us, but in reality, they're not. The people who truly love you want to see you succeed and want to see you confident and want to see you flourish. They care about the smile on your face. They care about the energy that you radiate. And the one thing that they will walk away from when they see you is they will remember the way that you make them feel. You are so much more than you are body. You are so much more than the "flaws" that you see. You are so much more than the weight that you think you need to lose. It is time for you to start focusing on everything that you are rather than everything that you think you are not. Remember that.
I want to recap this because again, if you haven't all ready written these five things down on your notes app in your phone or pen to paper, I encourage you to do so because I want you to ask yourself these things. I want you to remind yourself of these things daily because I can promise you, if you take the challenge of doing this every single day for the next 21 days, reminding yourself every single day of these five things, you will see a drastic change in your life.
Number one, you can love your body and still work towards changing your body at the same time. Simultaneously, you can have both.
Number two, no matter how far you have to go, you can still celebrate how far you have come. Don't ever forget to celebrate that.
Number three, your weight means nothing.
Number four, it's okay for your body to be exactly what it is right now.
Number five, you are the only person who sees your "flaws".
All right, those are the five reminders that you need to remember every single day.
Listen up. I know that loving your body is hard. I know that it's not just going to magically happen over night. It's something that you're going to need to work at. It's something that you're going to need to be intentional about. So please, please, please, if you haven't all ready written them down, be sure to do so. I want to see them on your refrigerator. I want to see them written on your mirror. I want to see them as a lock screen on your phone. However many times or wherever you need to see them every single day, do that.
I know and I've done it personally where I've written these reminders in places in my car because I knew I'd be in my car a lot. Try to saturate your mind with these things because it's so easy to listen to a podcast like this and be like, "Yeah, I need to do it." And then when you go out into the real world or you go out throughout your day, you so easily forget it. And if you can have these in your pocket, literally have these reminders in your pocket so that you can recite them over and over again until it becomes a habit, until it becomes a true belief ingrained in you. You will be amazed, sister, at how radically transforming this can be in your journey towards more self-love, self-acceptance and just honestly loving your journey.
I hope that this episode encouraged you in some way, shape, or form. Thank you so much for listening. It is my goal with this podcast, is to reach as many women as possible so I can help more and more women learn how to feel comfortable and confident in their own skin. Because the goal that I want us to all have every single day and the motto that I want us to remember is that we have the opportunity to embrace our real. You can help me by doing so. If you haven't all ready subscribed to the podcast, be sure to do so. If you want to help me further this mission of encouraging women to embrace their real, it would mean the absolute world to me to share this with a friend. Share this with your sister. Share this with your mom. Share this with a coworker. Screenshot this episode, put it up on your Instagram story. Tag me. Share it with as many women as possible because it is my goal for us to be a community of women who are choosing to show up to our life, choosing to embrace ourselves right where we're at while simultaneously wanting to become better and better versions of ourselves.
I want to leave you with this one last final thought from Margaret Mead. She honestly said it best, "If you and I resolutely resist unhealthy attitudes and activity in pursuit of the unattainable and unrealistic, we help free the next generation." We can help our daughters, we can help our sisters and we can help our friends reorder their thinking about body image, acceptance and beauty. I love you sisters and I will see you in the next episode.
All right sister, that's all I got for you today, but I have two things that I need you to do. First thing, if you're not all ready following me on the Gram, be sure to do so @juliealedbetter. Yes, it's with an A the middle, for that daily, post-workout real talk, healthy tips and tricks and honest accountability to keep your mind and heart in check. The second thing, be sure to subscribe to Apple Podcast and never miss an episode. Thank you so much for joining me. It means the absolute world and I'm going to leave you with one last thought. The most beautiful women that I have met in my life are the ones who are completely confident and secure in being authentically themselves. Remember that beauty goes so much deeper than the surface. Go out there and embrace your real because you're worth it.