I Heart Me (16 page)

If we do reach our ideal weight, because it was motivated by a lack of self-love, the new weight doesn't solve the problem. The sentiment of
not
enough usually runs so deep that a change in appearance is only a temporary sticking plaster that washes off the first time we step in the shower.

To make weight-loss stick, we need to rewire our brain with ‘I
am
enough …
now
!'

Many women resist working on self-love, however, because they fear that if they love themselves, they won't care anymore what people think and will just let their body go to pot. This comes up as a genuine concern for some women at ‘I ♥ Me' events.

But here's the thing: self-love won't stop you dieting. You won't suddenly become so satisfied with your body that you won't care what anyone thinks and will just gorge yourself on cakes and cheese. It
could
happen, but that's more likely to be a short-term effect of the state of ‘
I've
had
enough
.'

As you move to ‘
I
am
enough
' it's actually far more likely that you
will
diet. But you'll do it for different reasons. You'll do it because
you're motivated to make healthy choices. It's the same, but it's completely different!

Here are four steps that can help you to feel better about your body image and accept yourself as you are.

Decide that you are going to learn to like yourself as you are.

That decision doesn't take you there right away. You're not deluding yourself. It just gives you a direction to head in.

It doesn't mean you want to stay as you are. That can be a stumbling block for some people, as we've already seen. ‘If I accept myself as I am then I won't lose weight', for instance, is the belief. And such is the desire to lose weight that you are prevented from accepting yourself. But acceptance actually causes spontaneous change. This is what I call the
acceptance paradox
.

The acceptance paradox is that once acceptance arrives, whatever you accept begins to change. Naturally. Complete acceptance produces spontaneous change. It often leads to a spontaneous desire to be healthy or to engage in behaviour that makes you happier.

It also means that any change will originate from a state of
enough
rather than
not
enough.

We all live under a lot of pressure to conform to the latest styles, to force our body to become thinner and not show any visible signs of ageing. To be attractive, in short.

However, opinions really are subjective. And they change. Opinions about what's attractive are as changeable as the Scottish weather. Right up until the twentieth century, an ideal woman was plump. You can tell by looking at the most common shape in the paintings of nude or almost-nude women painted in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Plump was attractive. Plump was sexy. A plump woman would feel good about herself. She could feel she could walk down the street with her head held high, knowing that male heads would turn everywhere she walked.

But if that woman lived today, she could well be depressed. She would almost certainly be self-conscious about her weight. She would look at women, especially in magazines and in online advertising, who are considered attractive, and she would compare them to herself and feel ugly. Her head wouldn't be quite as high as she walked down the street. Maybe she'd wear trousers instead of a skirt because she felt ashamed to show her legs.

In the 1920s, the vital statistics of the average Miss America winner were 32–25–35. In the 1930s, they were 34–25–35, an average of two inches larger-busted. The stats were 35–25–35, larger-busted again, in the 1940s. A 1920s winner wouldn't even have made the finals in the 1940s. In the 1950s, bust and hip size became larger and waist size shrank. The average stats were 36–23–36.
⁶

Had the female size changed in this short span of time? Evolution is not quite so fast! What changed was opinion, strongly influenced by fashion and advertising and by the current leading lady in the movies.

The twenties' view of the ideal woman was influenced by flapper fashion, which incidentally was the result of the first mass-market magazines that used photographs of models rather than hand-drawn images. Models were chosen so the clothes would look as though they were on coat hangers. Wind the clock forward to the 1950s and Marilyn Monroe was a big star. Consequently, most Miss America winners then were around the same size as she was.

Since the 1990s, the popular beauty ideal has been the waif model – heroin chic. Some sociologists believe this has played a significant role in the large increase in eating disorders in young girls and women.

And to top it all off, most advertising images nowadays are airbrushed. So not only do you have to be slim, but you have to have unblemished skin, oh, and be free of cellulite, too.

The trouble with this is that we all suffer by comparison. Research clearly shows that when women look at images of other women in adverts and in the media, it makes them feel dissatisfied with their own body and lowers their self-esteem.

For instance, in a 2009 study, 299 French and Italian girls of an average age of 20 were shown ‘idealized' images of seemingly beautiful women in magazines and were found to be dissatisfied
with their own body afterwards.
⁷
Hundreds of similar studies offer the same conclusion.

And where you live matters, too. In some countries, Mauritania for example, large women are celebrated as beautiful. Women there are actually encouraged to put on weight. If a size zero model lived there she might be thought to be the least attractive person in the village.

Our minds are swayed on a daily basis regarding what is attractive. In a 2014 study, some people were shown images of plus-sized models and others images of underweight models for only one minute. Then they were shown images of women of different sizes. Those who had viewed the plus-sized models found a BMI of 18.4 the most attractive, but those who were shown the underweight models preferred a BMI of 16.9.
⁸

The point isn't so much the actual BMI but the difference in the BMIs that were found to be attractive. What we are shown in newspapers and magazines, on billboards and online, conditions us to view certain sizes and looks as beautiful and others as not. The same person might be pretty one week, ugly the next, and back to pretty again, all depending on what we have seen in the media during that span of time. We might think that we're in control of our own minds, but they are swayed far more than we think.

Coming to the realization that opinions are subjective is important. It frees us from linking self-worth to body image.

SELF-LOVE GYM:
Convince Me That Opinions Are Subjective and Change

As an exercise, write a few paragraphs as if you were teaching someone else that opinions are subjective and change. Write a page if you feel like it – it's up to you. Do whatever it takes to get it clearer in your own mind.

To make a start, why not reread the section above, highlight the pieces that resonate most with you and make some notes. You can even do some more research online if you feel moved to. With your notes to hand, write as if you were making a case. You might even find it helps to talk over the subject with a friend.

I often use exercises like these. They are very powerful. When you teach someone else what you've learned, it brings you new insights and a richer understanding of the subject.

So now you know that opinions are subjective and change, you don't need to try to be like everyone else. Opting to be authentic as yourself (which might be different from others in some ways) can be a statement that you feel you're
enough
. Celebrate your uniqueness!

SELF-LOVE GYM:
Celebrate Your Uniqueness

• Write down how comparing yourself to others has affected, and is affecting now, your happiness, health and feelings of self-worth.
  
• Next write down how your life could be different if you stopped comparing yourself to others and instead began to accept yourself as you are. For example, if comparing yourself to others is making you feel insecure, how do you think you would feel if you stopped making the comparison? Would you feel more secure? How would that affect your relationships, your career, your health, your finances, etc?
  
• Make a decision to be your unique self. Try it for a day. Wear what you want to wear. Speak your mind. Be yourself as a living affirmation that you are
  enough
  .
  

A girl who attended one of my workshops shared this exercise with me. It was taught to Japanese women with low self-esteem and massively improved it, moving many of the women all the way from low self-esteem to healthy self-esteem. It's also been shown to be effective in research studies.

SELF-LOVE GYM:
What Do You Like about Yourself?

• Choose three parts of your body you like. Maybe it's your hair. Or perhaps it's your feet. Or something in between! Maybe it's your voice, or your eyes, or your skin.
  
• Focus on these three parts every day for the next week. You might feel like accentuating them or you might just allow yourself to reflect on why you like them. Whatever you choose to do, keep doing it. It's the consistency of focusing on these body parts that makes the exercise so powerful.
  

Here's a summary of the four steps to feeling better about your body image:

1. Decide to get there.
   
2. Understand that opinions are subjective and change.
   
3. Allow yourself to be a square peg in a round hole.
   
4. Focus on what you like about yourself.
   

As with many of the exercises in this book, the work is like going to the physical gym: the biggest breakthroughs come when you're consistent. With body image, that means going over your responses to the questions on a few different occasions and even adding something new each time you do.

Some of you will need to do more reps of the exercise than others. You might have to do an exercise three times a week for two weeks to see some real benefit. But, just like the physical gym, it's always worth putting the work in.