Are you torturing yourself daily because you’re overweight? Can’t stop focusing on your flaws? Frozen, fixated and feeling frustrated with your fault finding ways? Most women are. Without even realizing it, our scales, mirrors, words and our clothes have become weapons of mass destruction that we’ve learned to use on a daily basis to create unnecessary agony and suffering on ourselves. Having imperfections and flaws doesn’t have to make you feel bad about yourself, yet most of us treat our bodies like garbage because we’re not prettier or slimmer.
Research shows that 4 out of 5 women in the U.S. hate their bodies. Are you one of them?
As a certified empowerment coach and body image/self esteem expert, many clients come to me with body image and self esteem issues. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve heard, “I hate my fat thighs. If only my butt weren’t so big…. God! I hate my body, it’s absolutely disgusting.”
In fact I’ve wasted nearly 33 of my 47 years doing that very same thing; putting myself down. It’s a blessing that somewhere along the line, I became consciously aware of the fact that I had become my own worst critic.
Luckily as a Master Practitioner of NLP, I had the insight to recognize that this behavior of being so mean to myself was keeping me stuck, which for me always made me feel like I was hungry and wanted to eat.
As a certified energy coach, I spent time learning about the effect of energy on the body. EFT was one of the techniques that I was taught. That’s when I discovered that the origin of my obsessive thinking, voracious hunger, and body hating bad feelings came from a distortion in my body’s energy system. Gary Craig, founder of EFT, says, “All negative emotions are the result of an imbalance in the body’s energy system.”
Once I learned that, I realized that I had a choice. I didn’t have to feel miserable just because I was overweight. Hmmm. A choice. What a concept! I could either remain stuck in my analysis paralysis and maintain my short circuited, loopy, wrinkled energy or each time I get myself caught in a tailspin, I can smoothe out the wrinkles and realign my energy. That’s what I’ve chosen.
You see, just like you, I sometimes get myself all wound up, because I also have my insecurities, but now that I know that I can do something about them, I don’t take it personally and think of myself as a victim. Because I know how good it feels to feel good, I’m no longer willing to let ’em get the best of me.
The following excerpt from my book, “Lovin’ the Skin You’re In: The Juicy Woman’s Guide to Making Peace with Food and Friends with Your Body,” is an example of a time when I used tapping to change the way that I saw myself when I was down, down, down in the dumps, feeling ugly as sin and old as all holy hell.
Looking for Wrinkles and Little Clear Bumps or How Many Ways Can I Play the I’m Not Perfect Game…
Are you being grossed out by yourself lately? Are you focused on watching your mirror and looking for your flaws and spotting your imperfections?
About a year ago, I looked in the mirror and noticed that I had a little clear skin colored bump on my forehead. At first I thought nothing of it. After all it might have always been there. Unlike my son, PT, I’m not a very visually observant person. My special talent is in my ability to listen. Suddenly I found myself each morning, checking the mirror to see what was happening with my bump.
After several weeks of this silly behavior, my one little bump had a friend tagging along. Now I had two little bumps on my forehead. I knew for certain they weren’t pimples, but I tried to squeeze them anyway. Nothing happened. They just remained as they were, but now my forehead hurt from the squeezing.
Now assured that they weren’t acne, and never before concerned with getting older, I wondered if maybe these little bumps were signs of early aging. I started looking for little bumps everywhere. Whenever I saw women of my age (46) on the screen or face to face, I checked their foreheads, looking for those little skin colored bumps. One day, consumed with this new upset, I decided to do an internet search and found out what these bumps were.
Milia. Now they had a name. More energy invested in them. Bumps, bumps, bumps. It was all I could think about. Then one day I shared this new obsession of getting older with my EFT tapping buddy. I told her about my concerns about aging and my fear that those little skin bumps were my passport to an early grave.
As we began to tap together, I noticed feeling very different about those little skin colored bumps. My freak out melt down was fading fast. As I continued to tap, I sought a way to redefine beauty for myself.
Seeking out a role model that would suit my definition of everlasting beauty, I glanced up at the sepia framed photos of my Nana that hang above the sofa in my office. As I continued to tap and say what was on my mind, I looked at each picture of Nana throughout various stages in her life, and I remembered that I always considered her beautiful, no matter what age or size she was.
In minutes the clarity that comes with tapping swept over me. I realized that by obsessing about the skin bumps, I had cleverly found another distraction that kept me from loving and accepting myself. After a few more rounds of tapping, I saw the silly body hating game that I was playing and realized it was only hurting me. By the time that we were finished tapping and I finished comparing myself to a twitchy witch with forty warty warts, we were both laughing hysterically.
The point is, things are always going to happen to challenge the way you feel about yourself. A pimple may pop up on a day when you’ll have to do a big presentation or someone will say something to you that will toss you a real curve ball. You’ll get knocked down and you’ll have to find a way to come back up each time.
Loving yourself means taking care of yourself all the time, not just when it comes easily; I’m teaching you how to do that without having to resort to food. So remember as the poem says, “stick to the fight when you’re hardest hit; it’s when things seem worst that you must not quit.”
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beauty, The Juicy Woman, Andrea Amador, self image, body, fat, non diet, scales, mirrors, aging, Emotional Freedom Technique, EFT, energy coach, NLP
When you’re unable to peel yourself away from the mirror, stop picking yourself apart, focusing on your flaws, it’s time to stop and redefine beauty for yourself. It’s the only way that you’ll ever be able to love your body when you just can’t stand it!