Stop accepting yourself conditionally
Photo by Tim Mossholder on Unsplash
I remember wrapping my hands around my thigh as I rode the bus to my high school. At just under 5’ tall, my legs dangled off the hard plastic blue seats. I used to intentionally hold my legs up just a little so my thighs wouldn’t flatten against the seats and look “wide.”
Then I’d wrap my hands around each one to make sure I could still touch my middle fingers on one side and my thumbs on the other. This was one way I judged how I was doing: by how easily I could fit my thigh into my hands.
I didn’t know then that I’d be battling disordered eating for a decade longer. And throughout this time, I’d have many different metrics against which I’d assess my “goodness.” I could be “okay” as long as:
I fit into size 0 or 1.
I could see my hip bones.
I was the skinniest one in the room.
People commented on my thinness.
As I recovered from my full-blown eating disorder, these metrics changed. In recovery “purgatory” (which I write about here), I reserved my self-approval for when:
I was following a diet.
I worked out for an hour or more.
I fit into size 2 or 4.
I felt hungry.
I ate less than the other people at the table.
Even as I gradually became healthier, found CrossFit, and practiced good eating habits, I held onto external metrics that informed my sense of goodness or worth:
Could I see my abs in the shower?
Were my arms defined?
How I answered these questions directed how I chose to “control” my eating that day. How I treated my body on any given day was a direct function of how closely it conformed to these self-imposed—and culturally informed, of course—aesthetic standards. And rarely was I ever living up.
At every stage, the more I criticized my body, the harder I tried to control my nutrition, and the more vicious my cycles of binging and purging. My self-criticism led to overthinking and restricting, which in turn led to full-body rebellion. And my reaction? For years? Try harder. Restrict better. Workout longer. Track more.
It wasn’t until only a few years ago that I realized I had it backwards. And it’s one of the most common patterns I notice among my current clients as well.
So often we believe—either consciously or subconsciously—that once we look, perform, feel, or act a certain way, we can love ourselves. Until then, we punish ourselves for looking, performing, feeling, or acting otherwise. We punish ourselves in the way we talk to ourselves, in the ways we seek to escape our bodies and feelings, and in our denial of care to our bodies—which includes, of course, how we nourish (or fail to nourish) ourselves with food.
Both undereating and overeating are acts of mistrust and disdain. When we refuse to listen to and honor our bodies and their needs, we reinforce the belief that we must be a certain way in order to earn our own love and care. Until then, our bodies, our feelings, and our actions can’t be honored or trusted. They must be controlled. “Mind over matter.”
But what if we switch the script? What if we actually love ourselves first? Right now, right where we are, doing exactly what we are doing. What if we recall for a minute that our very existence in these bodies from a cosmic standpoint is so completely improbable as to be virtually impossible?
That our very being here, existing in this form, breathing this air, thinking these thoughts, is the culmination of particles colliding at random, set in motion over 13.8 billion years ago, arranging themselves just so to create this perfect moment and to allow our minds and bodies to be consciously and physically aware of it?
What if we fall so head-over-heels dangerously in love with ourselves and our bodies exactly as they are right now that we treat them the same way we treat anything or anyone else we love with unbreakable tenderness? What if we went above-and-beyond to take care of our bodies? What if we asked our body what it wants and what it needs? What if we stopped what we’re doing to nourish it, to move it, or to rest it?
What if we slow things down, eating mindfully so we can pay attention to how it feels? When emotions surface, we don’t push them away or seek to “escape” through food or other means, but rather explore them. We name them, then we follow where they travel physically in our bodies, and we interpret them with compassion and curiosity.
As soon as we realize that “letting go” and loving our bodies exactly as they are in this moment is actually the first step to achieving the goals we so urgently desire, everything—absolutely everything—shifts. When we love something enough, our only choice becomes making it the best it can possibly be.
Personally, I’ve never been as physically healthy or capable as I am now. But it didn’t come from forcing my body to meet the demands and standards set in my mind. It came from my mind finally recognizing—and indeed falling in love with—the inherent beauty, wisdom, and nearly limitless potential that existed within my body.
I still have goals that I set for myself, of course. But my worth is not actually defined by whether or not I reach them. My worth is not something that is up for debate or subject to change. What I value, rather, is the pursuit and the courage it takes to try. And I try because I love myself, not the other way around.