When you’re on your intuitive eating journey, we don’t expect you to wake up one day and love your body. It’s a process! While you’re working on loving your body, something that you can start practicing right now is body respect! Practicing body respect is an important part of your journey to love your body.
What does body respect mean?
Respecting your body is being kind, having compassion and honoring your body and its needs for fuel, i.e. feeding it when it’s asking for food.
6 Ways to Practice Body Respect
- Diversify Your Social Media
If you are one to spend loads of time on social media it is time to get rid of anything that is triggering in terms of body image. Replacing those accounts with more body positive ones will make sure that you’re not still stuck in diet culture. No one should have to swipe through that every single day!
Here are some accounts that we LOVE:
- @fierce.fatty
- @your.latina.nutritionist
- @thenutritiontea
- @fatdoctoruk
- @black.nutritionist
- @yrfatfriend
- @tiffanyima
You can also check out our Feature Friday Highlight on Instagram, by clicking here for more accounts to follow!
- Wear Clothes That Feel Good!
You should be wearing clothes that fit your body. Don’t wait for the clothes to fit you or buy clothes for the body you want to have. Your body deserves to be in clothes that fit you and are comfortable to be in all day long.
Click here to watch our instagram video where Sammy talks about ways to lessen the amount of body image triggers when you’re trying on clothes in your closet.
- Practice Self Care
Everyone could use some more self care! Finding time to prioritize yourself and do things that make you feel good is a way to respect your body. Self care can look different for everyone. It could be taking a warm bath or having some joyful movement in your life.
- Stop Comparing Yourself to Others
Respecting your body means we have to stop body checking and we have to stop comparing how your body looks in relation to others. You have to remember that when you compare your body to another’s body, you don’t know the whole story! We should not assume that someone with a smaller body has a better life. It’s just not true!
- Don’t Tear Apart Your Body When You’re Feeling Down
When you’re having a hard time and you find yourself in a negative headspace, do not tear your body apart. This can cause us to spiral out of control and put you in a place that’s very hard to come out of. Instead, working with compassion and grace to reframe those negative thoughts and challenging those beliefs that your body is not good enough is so important and will help your mindset in the long term.
- Focus on What Your Body Does for You
Everybody’s body carries them throughout the day, every single day. Your body allows you to have new experiences and interact with new people. To honor your body and yourself, think about what you love about yourself, or that people tell you that they love about you, that has absolutely nothing to do with your body! These are the things deep down inside that are most important, and remember that your body enables you to be all of those wonderful things!
If you enjoyed this blog, you may be interested in my other post: How to Build a Better Body Image!
Want to learn more about body respect and intuitive eating?
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