I used to see things as black and white.
Either you love your whole body, or you hate the whole thing.
You can have food freedom and eat whatever you want, or you’re on a diet and restricting.
You might be obsessed with fitness and what you look like, or you don’t care about what you look like at all.
Either you always choose pizza, or you always choose a salad.
Thankfully, I learned that health and life is not actually black and white at all.
It’s also not about *balance*.
Rather, it’s about finding your personal grey zone through which you can ebb and flow.
The “grey zone” in my coaching programs is the area in which my client is free to explore, choose, and freely eat and live with flexibility. It’s the place of *and*.
You can love your body and feel insecure about some particular parts of it.
You can have food freedom and recognize that your body wants whole foods and packaged foods.
You can have aesthetic goals and love and appreciate your body where it’s at right now.
You can choose a pizza and you can choose a salad.
When it comes to how our bodies look, there’s a lot (like decades and decades in your DNA) of shame, guilt, and expectations around what qualifies a body as good, beautiful, worthy, right, sexy, desirable etc.
There’s also a lot of diet culture out there and about a million and one advertisements to convince you that you need to lose 10 lbs - oh, and you can do it in just 10 days!
Pass!
But, there’s zero shame in having an intention to look a bit different - whether that means more muscle, less fat, changing your nose, more weight, less muscle, getting eyelash extensions, etc.
You can indeed work on your relationship with food and your body while still having aesthetic goals.
There are two keys to doing this in a supportive way though.
The first is to prioritize: recognize that your mental, emotional, and spiritual relationship with food and your body is more important than how your body looks. That relationship must be first in line.
Your body will always change - that change is the only constant. Therefore, I encourage you to direct the majority of your attention and focus towards the thing that is more steady and consistent - your inner being.
The next key is to think about your aesthetic goals with an abundance mindset, rather than the lack mindset we’re all used to.
Lose weight.
Carve out the muscles.
Burn off calories.
Instead, focus on what you are adding to your body with love…
Gain strength.
Add tone.
Increase stamina.
Expand energy and vitality.
When you focus on what you don’t want or don’t have, you will attract more of that. Similarly, when you focus on what you want and what you already have (because you DO have all of those things that you want already within you), those things will grow.
As you focus on what you’re adding to your body and mind, recognize all that you already have. This level of appreciation will supercharge your healing journey so that you can accept where you’re at on your way to the next level version of you.
Get ready, because the best is yet to come.