We hear a lot of comments about a lot of things. One this is true though, we are getting into a bad habit of putting other people down for the expense of our own self gratification. But here is some hard hitting truth:
- As a nation, we are overweight and its a major health crisis.
- There are stigmas against being overweight.
Our health as individuals is connected to our health as a society. That might be from social norms and expectations, socioeconomic status or even the health care you are provided.
We are in this together.. so why all the hate??
“Acceptance” is a loaded word. How you respond and react to this is up to you. Non-judgmental acceptance is truly accept your situation before you decide how to act. If you learn to be mindful about your decisions, you will see that the sooner you can accept the situation the better you can learn to deal with the possible outcomes. However, most of the time we skip right over being non-judgmental and right into full judgement zone ! We are human !!! So instead of being rational, we go right into crazy town and think the world is out to get us! And worst of all, we automatically assume its because of how we look !
How many times has this happened to you ? You look at yourself, or even anyone else, and judgement just shows up and you can’t stop it. The problem is, when we couple emotional judgment with our assessment of our body, we lie to ourselves. We tell ourselves we’re ugly, or that we’re perfect, when neither is true. We tell ourselves we don’t need to lose weight, when our doctor tells us we are headed for an early grave. Or conversely, we become obsessed with body image and fail to recognize that we actually ARE healthy.
Stress and judgment ultimately prevent us from fixing the things that caused those negative emotions in the first place.When our brains define a situation as negative in a quick judgment the terms that seem like they are on repeat in your mind can be hard to break free from. So what do you need to do? Learn to accept the NOW !
Let’s look at this in terms of our own bodies: If you read the following you can see that YOU need to change the way to interprete things and how you speak to yourself.
- I’m ____ over/underweight. I’m ugly.
- I’m ____ over/underweight. I’m beautiful.
- I weigh ___. My body fat percentage is ____. My other health indicators are ____.
Just by picking one or the other, we have ALREADY secretly decided how we’re going to feel and what we’re going to do about it. But we didn’t really make the choice; our unconscious framing of the situation made it for us. Being angry or stressed out about our bodies can be a directly related in moving in the most useful direction. When we let our self-judgment interfere, we defend that self-judgment at all costs.
In other words, we make irrational decisions and statements:
- “Real women have curves! That woman is a twig. I’m big and beautiful.”
- “Good thing I’m not fat like that person; gross. They should do something about it.”
- “That dude spends too much time in the gym. What a meathead! I’m glad I’m not full of myself like he is.”
The definition of body acceptance that should be adopted is to learn how to accept our bodies for what they are: just facts. No extra negativity or overly loud positivity, not ranking your body to anyone besides your own.
We need to learn to love and accept our bodies.We need to separate these two processes: the labeling and the decision-making. We must separate them because if we don’t, we risk being dragged down by the power of words and sadly the words we say to ourselves can cause a lot of damage. Only YOU can change YOU. These justifications are often the biggest hurdles to actually making the change we need to make.