Spiritual reasons to love your body

Physical body is a machine and a vehicle for a physical experience. Our body is the vehicle we have chosen for a particular type and kind of physical experience which we call the human experience. It can also be seen as our consciousness manifested in human form. Each and every vehicle is worthy, because it serves it’s purpose. We did not come to this Earth so we would compete who came with the best looking vehicle! 😀 It sounds funny but we are doing exactly the same thing when we compare our bodies.

There are no accidents and the way our bodies look like is no exception to this rule. We choose our physical appearance before coming to this life. We design our bodies in a way that corresponds to what kind of experiences we want to have in this lifetime.

When someone wants a life in which he is a famous singer or an actor and influences a lot of people, he will intentionally choose a body that corresponds to standards of beauty in that particular society. When someone wants to have an experience of being a model, she will design a body that enables her to do such a job. Teal Swan said in one interview that she remembers how before her birth, her and a group of other beings designed her body so it will be considered beautiful in all parts of the world. Her intention for this life was to reach as many people with her teachings as possible. And humans naturally pay most attention to what is attractive.

But when someone wants to have an experience as an ordinary working person, he/she doesn‘t need to look like a model. Most of us choose a normal appearance that doesn‘t stand out from a crowd. In such case we can live our life in a normal way and our appearance is not a big problem for us. Some people even choose an appearance that is considered highly unattractive. They do it because this condition gives rise to the biggest expansion in their lives. Out of the biggest contrast comes the highest level of awareness. Even a disability is something that we choose. We, the ones who came to this earth healthy, often don‘t understand why would someone choose such a limiting experience. But a physical disability can teach you a lot in life. Take for example Nick Vujicic. This is the story of him I found on the internet:

Imagine getting through your busy day without hands or feet. Picture your life without the ability to walk, care for your basic needs, or even embrace those you love. Meet Nicholas Vujicic. Without any medical explanation or warning, Nick was born without arms and legs. And yet, the Vujicic family was destined to cope with both the challenge and blessing of raising a son who refused to allow his physical condition to limit his lifestyle.

The early days were difficult. Throughout his childhood, Nick not only dealt with the typical challenges of school and adolescence, but he also struggled with depression and loneliness. Nick constantly wondered why he was different than all the other kids. He questioned the purpose of life, or if he even had a purpose. According to Nick, the victory over his struggles, as well as his strength and passion for life today, can be credited to his faith in God. His family, friends and the many people he has encountered along the journey have inspired him to carry on, as well.

Since his first speaking engagement at age 19, Nick has traveled around the world, sharing his story with millions, sometimes in stadiums filled to capacity, speaking to a range of diverse groups such as students, teachers, young people, business professionals and church congregations of all sizes. Today this dynamic young man has accomplished more than most people achieve in a lifetime. He’s an author, musician, actor, and his hobbies include fishing, painting and swimming.

Nick says, “If God can use a man without arms and legs to be His hands and feet, then He will certainly use any willing heart!”

So at the end, it does not matter what our bodies look like. You could be dying of cancer, you could have a physical disability and you could still love your body. It is all about perspective.

Style

For me style is a way of being. That word we use to describe what makes something or someone unique. It defines the way we choose to express our individuality across all facets of life. Fashion, career, communication, cooking the list is endless.
Put simply, it is the way something–anything–is done. There are no limits to how something can be expressed, designed or presented, whether that thing is a story, a staircase or a shoe.

You can’t avoid style; it’s impossible to do something without doing it in a certain way. Every style expresses or amplifies an outlook on life, even if this outlook can’t quite be put into words. To understand a style, you have to understand something of the mood, philosophy or aesthetic tendency behind it.

So you see that style is much more than how you wear your clothes or your hair. A building, a poem, a painting, a fork, a voice, a chair, a car, a movie and a movie poster all have style.
But in this article I am going to focus on style of clothing because that is the first thing that comes to my mind when I hear the word “style”.

In a society increasingly focused upon image, where the single greatest influence on a first impression is someone’s physical appearance, does what you choose to wear define who you are? It’s most certainly true that people make assumptions about you based on what they see. From what you look like, what you choose to wear, to the sum of the little details like hair, nails, makeup and jewellery, it all contributes to how you are seen and perceived by others.

I think that there is a difference between fashion and style, however many people find it difficult to distinguish between the two.

Fashion is ever-changing. Fashion is difficult to keep up with, as it changes by the decade, the year, the season, sometimes even by the week. What is considered in fashion today could possibly be different tomorrow. There’s no sustainability in fashion, and one could go so far as to say fashion can be wasteful. Wasteful as in, a closet full of barely-used clothes, left unloved because they’re no longer fashionable. It seems the worst followers of the religion of Fashion aren’t really true to themselves; they seem to wear things or carry things or like things because these things are “in”, they’re popular, everyone else wants it.

Style, on the other hand, is personal. Style is all one’s own, and no one can say otherwise. The truly stylish man knows, understands, and respects the rules, yet knowingly defies and breaks them, bends them and interprets them as he pleases. Great style means not taking oneself or one’s garments too seriously, because to be honest, there are things in life way more important.
Style isn’t directly affected by trends. It doesn’t change with the direction of the wind, or the disapproving look of a fashion magazine’s Editor-In-Chief. Style can adopt and adapt to certain trends, and most importantly, put a unique spin on it.

It’s easy to feel the pressure to conform in today’s society – media can lead you to believe that you have to look a certain way, and this is certainly very true of the clothes that you wear. How many times have you worn items because they are fashionable or because ‘so and so celebrity’ is wearing them? When you choose to wear fashion without consideration for whether it suits your own sense of style, you’re not honoring your own style personality – it’s likely that when you do this, you won’t feel 100% comfortable with what you’re wearing. Fashion is all well and good, but only when it fits with your own style.

We are all unique individuals, so why do we all want to look the same? Don’t be afraid to dress in an ‘unconventional’ way if that’s what you like – your style is unique, just like you!
Above all, don’t be afraid to express yourself!! When you dress in a way that embraces your personality, you will feel comfortable and confident in your own skin.

Start a Body Revolution!

Is physical appearance really that important? Is our worth dependent on it?

Of course not. A huge majority of the human population doesn’t look like models which are propagated by the media. If only people which are considered beautiful by society‘s standards were worthy, it would mean that most of us are unworthy and we don’t deserve to exist.

That of course is not true. We all know that people who don’t look anything like Hollywood actors can be people with an incredible personality, people, that no one would call ugly, because their inner beauty outshines their physical imperfections.

In my opinion, the most attractive people are the ones who know that their physical appearance isn’t the most attractive thing about them. They have a certain kind of confidence, they’re usually more fun to hang out with, and they’re the kind of people who are ready to love you for who you are. 

It’s all too easy to buy into the belief that your body is just not good enough. It’s too easy to feel inadequate, like you need to constantly change who you are and what you look like to fit an ideal of beauty.

Let‘s stop this madness! Start a body revolution! Times are changing and self-hate is NOT part of the new paradigm.

That something that we all should realize. Your worth doesn’t depend on your appearance! We are all perfect. As cliché as it sounds, we are. Especially YOU, the reader of this article. Never let anyone tell you otherwise. You are perfect in every single way. We all have qualities that make us unique, we were made for a reason. Remember it! 🙂

I actually wrote a whole guide on how to love your body in the past. There I describe many tips and practices that help you to accept your body completely, no matter what you look like :).

I came to the conclusion that the most beautiful thing a person can wear is a smile :). And happiness is the best make-up!

It’s really true. When we are happy, it doesn’t matter what we look like, we still make a good impression on people. In the moment when we are truly happy, we have no resistance towards what we look like. And when we don’t contain a vibration of resistance toward our appearance, we aren’t a vibrational match to people which would call us ugly. We will be a match to people that compliment us instead. And the next time someone tells you: “You look pretty today!”, you can respond “Thanks, I know” :D.

Why do we hate our bodies?

In the previous article, I was talking about the obsession our society has with physical appearance. It is obvious that it is so. Now I want to go even deeper into this subject .

I think that these days our obsession with physical appearance is worse than ever. More and more 12-year-old girls are going on diets because they believe that your weigh determines your worth. But when all you see is a body type that only two percent of the population has, it’s difficult to remember what’s real and what’s reasonable to expect of yourself and everyone else.

Before social networks, we mostly had images of impossibly perfect celebrities. We would pass these images on billboards, watch them on TV, look at them in magazines, but we weren’t sitting around staring at them for hours every day.

I think that social media hurt because young people are now having their bodies judged online in addition to being judged in person, which causes them to feel trapped. People also say things they’d never say to your face. It’s like Facebook gives them a screen that totally blocks out their emotions…they don’t have to see how I’d react when they say something negative about me. We are relying on judgments from people we’ll never meet to determine our worth.

The standards that society has set on what we call “pretty” are very hard to meet. There are few people who are naturally pretty and all other people could probably be considered the uglier ones.

For years, we’ve acknowledged the fact that no matter how much we try to temper it, girls face immense pressure to look a certain way – from the media, Hollywood, and probably most of all each other – a pressure that many would say starts early and doesn’t ever really end.

Body image is no light subject. There are people who are suffering legitimate illnesses, mental and physical, relating to how they appear. 

I’ve read many stories of girls that want to kill themselves because they hate the way they look. They are in such a deep place of self hate.  I’ve heard of a girl that avoids mirrors and windows because whenever she sees her own face she wants to vomit. She can’t even stand people looking at her. People laugh at her all the time, boys teas her for being ugly. She cries herself to sleep at night and even cuts herself because she hates that she is not pretty.

It hurts me that we as a society are causing this suffering that people experience regarding their physical appearances. 

The question is, what do we do about it?  What is the solution to this problem? What can we do to stop this insane obsession we have with physical appearance?

I have been thinking about this for days and days, trying to come up with a solution. But the more I was focused on the problem, the more upset and angry I was becoming. I was casually walking on the street when I saw a billboard with a model on it. I instantly felt like I want to destroy that billboard for spreading the propaganda of plastic beauty. When I watched a movie, I was so angry at the fact that only beautiful people by society’s standards play leading roles and the normal looking people play the dorky ones in the background. Whenever I encountered good looking girls in a bus, I was getting more upset because I felt like society pressures us into uniformity.

I became so angry that everyone is obsessed with their appearance. But most of all, I was angry at myself. My hate for everyone was just a reflection of my own self hate. I recognized myself in all of these people I was hating on. I was just the same as all other girls. And I hated it about myself. I felt like it made me a shallow stupid person. I couldn‘t stand it about myself. When I wasn‘t dressed well and when I wasn‘t wearing any make up, I felt ugly and unworthy. And when I was dressed well and looking good according to society’s expectations, I felt like an attention seeking whore. I felt like because of me there are so many people suffering.

Then I asked myself, what the hell am I doing? It doesn‘t matter what I look like, I always find a reason why to hate my body. I obviously have a problem.

Then I have realized how ridiculous this is. The only reason why we all care so much about our looks is because we don’t feel good enough. We think that we must live up to certain expectations in order to be considered beautiful. And not to be considered as beautiful means to me that no one will love us, we will end up alone and rejected.

Therefore it’s only natural that for us females it’s so important to look good. Most of us have a similar belief, that to be ugly means not to deserve love. That’s why we care so much about our looks. From our perspective our entire existence is dependent on it.

We have to realize that it’s not about what we look like. It’s all about self worth. We don’t have to change our bodies in order to be worthy and loved. We just need to learn how to appreciate ourselves more.

In the next article I’m going to tell you more about what you can do to love and accept your body.

Sorry if this post was too depressing, I just wanted to explore the shadows that cause so much pain in our society. I think that it’s important to have a clear image of what’s going on and how many people are suffering because of our crazy beauty obsessed society.

Our society is obsessed with looks

Today I want to talk to you about beauty and body image. I couldn‘t help but notice that our society is obsessed with physical appearance.

As a young female, there are some societal expectations that I am expected to live up to in order to be considered attractive. I have to be thin, well-developed, have clear skin and shave my legs. Basically, I can’t be my natural self. 

Who makes these rules?  In the Middle Ages, obesity was considered attractive. They also didn’t have television or magazines in the Middle Ages! 

It is well known that a cause of this obsession with beauty stems from the media. Everyday, we are bombarded with beauty advertisements in commercials, magazines, billboards and social media websites, such as Facebook, Twitter and YouTube. The beauty, fashion, and entertainment industry are famous for hiring women based on their looks. Even so, looks are important for all jobs and almost all areas of life. In magazines and on TV, celebrities are constantly being ranked on their looks.

Girls get praised for their appearance rather than their accomplishments. This can cause self hate and hate towards other females. The emphasis on physical attractiveness is detrimental to mental (and sometimes physical) health. The effects of the media on young girls’ development  has led to a rise in eating disorders, low self esteem and depression.

All of my friends have complained about their bodies at one point or another, commenting that their thighs were too big or their breasts were too small. There are very few young females who are completely satisfied with their natural bodies, and even fewer that have always been that way. 

The truth is most of us will not look like this. BUT why do we have to abide by what society says is beauty? This is not a healthy obsession, it is one that causes pain. We spend money on make-up, weight-loss pills, anything that will make us feel better and more beautiful. We as females try to hide any imperfection that we may have by using make-up, clothing to hide any stomach we may have, paint our nails to cover discolouring, straightening our hair thinking it will change us etc.

Another reason for our society’s fixation on appearance is our need to impress others. It is when we value another person’s opinion of our looks that we put on the most makeup and spend the most time selecting our clothing. Most women will spend time getting ready if they know they are going out and might be seeing people. When there is no one to impress, we feel much less need to be attractive by society’s standards. I am completely willing to go downstairs and eat breakfast with my family straight out of bed, messy hair and uncovered pimples and all. It is a much different case, though, when this family breakfast is at a restaurant where I might run into people I know.

I think it’s unfortunate that we live in a world obsessed with beauty. Many girls will try to become what they see, because they are not satisfied already with themselves in the mirror.  I find it funny how we don’t hear about males going through severe self-esteem issues like girls. Maybe this is because they’re more confident or because we do not judge men by their looks but by strength and wealth.

You would think that being pretty solves everything. We have this image in our heads that beautiful people are happy and have amazing lives. But that is not always the truth. Even being beautiful can be a curse. Here are some reasons why:

• Jealous girls gossip about you.
• People want to be your friend for your looks and not for the person you are.
  
• You feel you always have to have a perfect personality to live up to others high expectations.
• People expect you to be less talented.
• Guys are afraid of being rejected by you since you are too pretty so you barely get approached by intelligent and normal people.
• Being ogled at 24/7 by random guys.
• Girls don’t want to hang out with someone more attractive than they are…
• Being stalked by a overweight 60-something dude that seems like a rapist.

So as you can see, our obsession with physical appearance is harmful to everyone. I don’t think it’s good in any way that we pay so much attention to body image. 

We are going to look for the solution to this problem in an upcoming article!

How to develop a positive body image

Considering that our body is the only place we have to live in, it’s very important that we build a positive relationship with it.

Today’s article is a guide to love your body. These are the steps I have taken in moving from someone who didn’t love her body at all, to someone who fully embraces what her body is today and continually improves it to be better.

My wish is that those of you with poor body images will find this guide helpful. Sure, you may hate your body today. Sure, you may have body parts which do not match your ideal body vision. Sure, you may wish that you have an entirely different body altogether. Regardless, it is possible to develop an unconditional, unadulterated love for your body—just as I have. This guide will show you how.

1. Identify the things you do like about your body and start loving them.

Someone with self-body-hate has a tendency to zoom down right to the hateful parts of his/her body whenever he/she sees the mirror. Even if there isn’t anything to hate about a particular body part, he/she can look at that body part and spot imperfections. I can relate because this was the lens I used to wear.

If this is the case for you too, I want you to try something different. The next time you look at your body, look for things that you do like instead. Maybe you have lips that are nice and pouty. Maybe you have killer curves. Maybe you have beautiful eyes. Maybe you have a great smile. Maybe you have nice cheeks.  Maybe you have nice teeth.

Whatever these things are, notice them. Then, celebrate them. Give them credit for being what they are.

Then, make this part of your daily routine whenever you look into the mirror or see images of yourself.

This appreciation process was what I did in my early phase of overcoming my negative body image. My natural tendency then was to notice my body “fats” and put them down repeatedly. This would include my tummy, my “thick” thighs, my double chin, my baby fats, and my round hips. Imagine how tough it was when I gave myself the challenge to look into the mirror and spot things that I liked instead.

While my mind drew a blank for the first few seconds, something soon got my attention—my complexion.

I have a natural, fair complexion which many people often compliment. I realized how lucky I am to have the fair skin as I do today.

Next, I noticed my lips. I suddenly noticed the beauty of my lips in a way I had never noticed before. People have often praised me on my lips before; they would say I have a nice shape to my lips.

Then, I saw my eyes. Oh yes, my eyes, I thought. How could I have forgotten about them?

And the list went on.

With each feature I noticed, something new would catch my attention. Suddenly, I realized there are so many things worth liking about my body—perhaps even more than the number of things I was hating about it. I just had not noticed the former because I had been so busy hating on my body all this while. I felt sad, as it meant that I had been denying my body of the appreciation and love that it deserved.

What did I do then? I began to celebrate the things that I liked about my body. Every time I looked into the mirror, I would dedicate time to appreciating my face and body. It came to a point where the celebration of my looks is now part of my daily routine—not out of narcissism, but out of self-appreciation.

2. Recognize your body is not at fault.

I realized that my body is simply a neutral entity with no emotions. So what if I hate it? So what if I keep scolding it? It’s not going to look any different (as a result of my hating and scolding). If anything, looking back, I actually felt that my body probably looked more haggard than it should because I was harboring so much negative energy against it.

I eventually realized that the only way to address my body issues was (a) to take responsibility for my body woes and (b) to work through them. This meant addressing my self-hate issues. This meant fixing my eating problems and increasing my activity level so that I would achieve a slimmer physique.

While it’s natural to finger point at your body and blame it for all your body woes because it is the one carrying the objects of disdain (such as your fat thighs, chubby cheeks, flabby shoulders, and so on), it’s futile to do so. That’s because your body is neutral. It has no mind of its own. It was created to support your existence and to let you live on earth.

Take responsibility for your body issues and work through them instead of sitting around and hating on your body all day long. This is where the next point comes in.

3. Get to the root of your self-body-hate issues.

Your self-body-hate arose as a symptom of a separate issue. To eradicate your self-body-hate permanently, get to its root cause.

Here are three questions to get started:

1. What do you dislike about your body?
2. Why do you hate/dislike your body / body part?
3. (For whatever answers that come up from Q2…) Why?

From Q3, keep drilling into the answers until you get to the root cause of your self-body-hate. After that, devise a plan to address this root cause.

For example,

1. What do you dislike about your body? — I dislike my eyes, my large thighs, and my big belly.
2. Why do you hate/dislike your body / body part? — Because they are so ugly.
3. (For whatever answers that come up from Q2…) Why? — Because they don’t give me the attention I deserve.
   • What do you mean? — Because guys would pay attention to the girls with big eyes, small thighs, and a flat tummy.
   • Why does this bother you? — Because I want guys to pay attention to me too.
   • Why? — Because guys have rarely paid attention to me since I was young.
   • But is this the fault of your body though? — No it isn’t. My self-body-hate is merely an expression of my frustration of my lack of appeal to the opposite gender.
   • What can you do about this? Firstly, I can work on being more confident. It is said that confidence is the sexiest thing a woman can ever have. Secondly, I should embrace the natural beauty of my looks. Thirdly, if I have an issue with my body weight, I should work on losing weight, rather than hating my body on it. My body is an innocent party that has nothing to do with my self-body-issues.

Notice how the answers started off as surface-level responses (ugly features). Then, they quickly moved down to a deeper-level issue (not being appealing to the opposite gender) through strategic probing. This is then followed by a wrapping of the issue with proper next steps.

For whatever you may seem to dislike/hate about your body, chances are this emotion stems from a deeper-level issue, with body hate being a symptom of the problem. You need to uncover this deeper-level issue by repeatedly challenging the surface-level answers you receive from this exercise.

For me, my self-body-hate was driven by three factors: (a) my fixation with one notion of beauty, in part due to media conditioning and my childhood stories, (b) my lack of respect for my body, (c) my hatred for myself.

4. Work towards your ideal vision of your body, not anyone else’s ideal vision.

One of people’s key motivators to lose weight/change their appearance/look better is to appeal to the opposite gender.

Yet, I want you to always remember to work towards your ideal vision of your body. Meaning—what do you see as the best version of your body? What do you see as your ideal weight (factoring in the healthy height and weight guidelines)? What do you see as your ideal fitness level? Work towards these visions, not other’s visions.

For example, many girls (including me in the past) strive to be skinny because it’s supposedly an archetype of beauty.

However, a skinny body is merely a vision projected by the media. Yes, perhaps some guys do like stick-skinny girls. But if your ideal vision of your body is to have a wholesome body with nice curves, then get that body and rock it! There will always be different guys with different tastes, and whoever likes your body will be drawn to you, and whoever doesn’t like it, won’t.

The most important thing to note is that this is your body, your life. Don’t mold your body just to match others’ visions. Work towards a body that you love, first and foremost. You are the key target audience of your body; everyone else is secondary. Look good for yourself first, then worry about what others think (or better still, don’t worry at all).

5. Embrace the individual beauty of your body. (Unchain yourself from media’s conditioning.)

Size zero. Big eyes. Sharp nose. Sharp chin. Big, pouty lips. Flawless complexion. Long, thin legs. Small waist. Big boobs.

The above is a standard list of criteria for what is perceived to be beauty for a female.

All our lives, we have been fed a certain image of beauty by others. All our lives, we have thought beauty to mean having set features, a set look, and a set height/weight.

However, what if that isn’t true? What if beauty has always been in us all along, just that we are not privy to it due to our conditioning?

Our perception of beauty has been narrowly defined by the media all our lives.

For a while I bought into this image as well. I thought beauty was a class reserved only for people who met that stringent list of criteria.

But then I realized that beauty is more than just about being a certain size and looking a certain way. It made me realize that—hey—beauty doesn’t just in one form, one shape, one color, and one size. Beauty exists everywhere—in all forms, all shapes, all colors, and all sizes. 

Meaning: there is no one look that is more or less beautiful than another; all looks are beautiful in themselves. This includes your look: whatever features and body type you have. It’s a look that is beautiful and unique to you, in your own special way.

The unfortunate thing is that most people are so fixated on that one notion of beauty that they fail to recognize how beautiful they truly are. And this is such a waste.

Here’s something I want you to do from now on: Rather than stack your body up against a certain mental image, see your body as is. See every single feature of your face/body as it is, without expectations of what it should be or shouldn’t be. Look. Observe. And feel.

Who knows, you may start seeing something you have never seen before. A realization of how beautiful you actually are. A new-found appreciation for your beauty.

6. Be Grateful for Your Body

Are you grateful for the body you have today? Or do you take it for granted?

I find it sad that there are fully able-bodied people berate their bodies endlessly, while you have people who are disabled who utilize their bodies in ways better than those fully able-bodied people ever will.

Take for example, Nick Vujicic. Born with no hands and no legs due to tetra-amelia syndrome, a rare disorder, he struggled mentally, emotionally, and physically as a child due to this condition. He eventually came to terms with his disability and started his own non-profit organization, Life Without Limbs, at the age of seventeen.

You can watch a video about him when you visit this link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WLDBgRAvmew

Today, Nick is married (as of 2012), has a son (as of 2013), and speaks all over the world, inspiring people with his personal story of disability, personal struggle, and success.

Another example is Lizzie Velasquez. You can watch her inspiring speech here:  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c62Aqdlzvqk. She is one of only three people on Earth born with an unusual genetic ailment that prevents her from gaining any weight. She discovered a video of herself on YouTube labeled “The World’s Ugliest Woman” in high school. Unfortunately, the video had already received four million hits on the website. Instead of suffering from anger, hopelessness and depression, she took a different approach to her attitude. After educating some high school freshmen about her rare disorder, she challenged the issue of bullying face-to-face and generated a schedule of dialogue arrangements. As a result, she appeared on multiple television programs which allowed her to produce three books, including “Be Beautiful, Be You.

Think about Nick and Lizzie, then think about how you can better appreciate your body today. Despite being disabled, they have embraced their bodies and accomplished so much in their lives. It’s a sign to us to be grateful for the bodies we have today and put them to better use.

7. Be the best owner of your body.

Last but not least, be the best owner of your body.

You may be given this body at birth. However, have you justified your place as your body’s rightful owner? Have you cared and treated your body in a way that’s in its highest good of all?

Chances are you haven’t. So many of us abuse our bodies. We smoke, drink, eat junk food, laze around (or exercise ferociously for some), hurt ourselves, deprive ourselves of sleep, etc.—without considering the damage we are doing with each of those actions.

Myself, I used to abuse my body with binge eating, ferocious exercising thereafter, and minimal rest due to my constant self-pressurization. In retrospect, I was such an unworthy owner of my body. I was blessed with this body, and yet I failed to take good care of it.

The good thing is that my previous episode of body abuse and self-body-hate made me truly treasure my body. Today, I longer abuse my body. I rest when I need to. I consume the best food for my body. I regulate my eating. I engage in a healthy level of physical activity to keep my body fit. I don’t drink except at specific social outings, and even then that only happens once every few months.

I’m proud to say that I now manage my body in a way that’s to its highest good, and I can’t think of anyone who can be a better owner of my body than me myself.

Here are some questions to get you going in being the best owner of your body:

1. What is your ideal, healthiest diet for your body?
2. What is your ideal level of physical activity that will keep your body at prime condition?
3. What lifestyle habits/changes will make the biggest difference in your life?
4. Do you have any bad habits which are jeopardizing your body and which you should cut right away? What are they?
5. For your answers to Q1–4, how can you start realizing them today?

My experience with hating my body

For a long time up until recently, I had hated my body.

While most people hate their body for its certain features, their body frame, or a disdain of their natural body type, my hatred of my body did not stem from any of that. I have always had no problem with my natural appearance, be it my body type, my body frame , my height, nor my facial features.

Rather, my hatred of my body stemmed from my inferiority of my body weight.

I had always felt that I was heavier than I ought to be. While I had never been overweight nor truly “fat” even, I had always wished that I could be lighter. I had always believed that regardless of how I looked, how many people praised me about my appearance, or how heavy (or light) I was, I would be much more attractive if I was slimmer—much slimmer.

A big part of this self-body-hate probably started when I was in primary school.

I recall sitting beside this girl in class who would regularly dissect and disparage her body parts and call herself fat, even though she was so skinny—easily one of the skinniest girls I knew.

At that time, I didn’t understand why she would repeatedly put down her looks like that. Whenever she called herself fat, I would look at myself and wonder why she would think that she is fat, for I weigh more than her.

While I did not hate my body nor think that I was fat in any way then, hearing her constant complaints planted the first seeds of doubt about my body’s integrity. It made me wonder if I was perhaps missing something about my body and that it was not as “okay” or perfect as I thought it was.

These incidents made me subconsciously conclude that being skinny is equivalent to beauty and that to be regarded as beautiful by others, I had to be stick skinny.

Subsequently, I became exposed to projected images of beauty in the mass media on a regular basis. From leggy models, to sharp facial contours, to stick-thin celebrities, these images were repeatedly projected as standards of beauty which all girls should strive for.

Of course, this wasn’t a factor of my concern back then. My only obsession was to be as thin as possible, then evaluate the results later.

To be skinny—that was deemed as a good thing. To not be stick skinny was deemed as being not ”attractive”, not “beautiful”, or even—not deserving of love.

Because I did not conform to the sticky skinny image of beauty, I harbored a deep hatred for my body. I constantly wished that I was thin, thinner than I was, or better yet, thinnest among everyone I knew.

My weight loss journey would be fraught with difficulties for my childhood was laced with emotional eating issues. I constantly ate to feed my emotions, resulting in weight gain over time despite my healthy eating efforts and constant exercising.

Because of my emotional eating issues, weight was frequently an area of contest within myself. I would constantly set goals to lose weight, only to fail one way or another. This would make me hate myself even further, for not being able to achieve my goal.

For the record, my real problem was not in losing the weight. My problem was with sustaining my weight losses, partly due to my emotional eating issues. Regardless of how much weight I would lose during each weight loss endeavor, I would regain my “excess” weight after a while, through one way or other. From gradual regains over the span of months to immediate weight regains in a matter of days, I would always regain my lost weight.

It was almost as if my excess weight had a mind of its own. No matter how many times I lost it, it would find its way to pile itself back onto my body. It was as if I couldn’t run away from it, no matter how hard I tried.

Eventually, I learned to love my body. I just shared with you my own experience. I am sure I am not alone in this and many girls experienced the same thing. So I am here to tell you that it is  possible to love your body. I am going to share with you the process on loving your body in the next post:)