Love Yourself. No, Really.

“Love yourself.” 

We hear this all the time. It’s touted as the true key to all of the good things we so desperately want but have been conditioned not to have. Confidence. Self-esteem. Self-worth. Just love yourself. Love your body. It’s as simple as that. But, is it really? How can we love our bodies when the whole world is screaming at us that our bodies need to be fixed instead of loved? This is an incredibly lofty goal to present to anyone. It’s an even loftier goal to present to people trying to navigate this world in a larger body. People who are sent messages daily, if not hourly, that their bodies aren’t worth loving.

But I still want you to love your body.  

So, where do we even start? How do we move away from the deeply rooted self-hatred that we’ve spend our lives being conditioned for, and move toward self-love? We need to learn to respect and appreciate our bodies for all that they do for us. But more than that, we need to come to acceptance. Our society has taught us that our bodies are something simultaneously meant to be changed and forbidden from changing. It’s time to ditch this way of thinking. So, I ask you, what would it feel like if you stopped trying to change your body? This doesn’t have to feel like love. You don’t even have to like your body. But what if you could accept it?

What would it be like to stop trying to change? To stop trying to shrink? I’m not talking about looking in the mirror and admiring your imperfections. I’m talking about looking in the mirror and acknowledging “this is what my body looks like. It is just a body, and it is okay.” Imagine no longer trying to control the size and shape of your body. No longer dedicating precious time and energy to a futile task that brings no real joy. No longer covertly assuring yourself that your body is not okay… because if it was, why would you need to change it?  

Here’s the secret about your body: once you stop trying to change it, you can start taking care of it. You can start loving it.  

It’s incredibly hard to love our bodies when we treat them like shit. When we overwork them, when we under nourish them, when we don’t give them adequate rest. So many of the behaviors we associate with our bodies are so unpleasant—I’m looking at you dieting and excessive exercise! We starve ourselves and run ourselves ragged, and then don’t understand why we don’t love our shrinking bodies. But it’s hard to love something that you have unconsciously turned into a target. We are consistently sending ourselves reminders of the fact that we don’t love our bodies. We remind ourselves of that every time we body check, every time we count macros, every time we over-exercise, every time we restrict our calorie intake. If there’s one thing diet culture has taught us, it’s how to make sure we remember that our bodies aren’t lovable as they are. 

With that in mind, I want you to rethink everything you know about what it means to love yourself. We are so hung up with love as an emotion word that we forget that love is an action word. How would you treat a body that you loved? How would your love show in your actions? 

Would you finally buy some clothes that feel like you? Would you finally get the haircut you’ve always wanted? Would you change your workout habits? Would you feed yourself differently?  

Everyone has their thing. “When I am _________, I’ll finally do ___________.” But I’m here to remind you that the acts of love you have in store for your body don’t need to come later. They need to come now. Your body needs your love. Your body needs your love whether you feel it or not. And you can provide that love, whether you feel it or not.