I don't think you have to love your body to love yourself

I think this might be a bit of a controversial post, but I'm interested in hearing the different perspectives on it.

Often I will see people promoting the idea that you have to come to some sort of level of love in your body or physical appearance in order to make way in weight loss. Simultaneously I often see the idea of loving yourself being directly conflated with loving your body.

I don't love my body. I actually would say I'm much closer to hating my body. It's not attractive, it's not sexy and it's not beautiful. I don't get anything but discomfort and sadness when I look at it and all of that just fuels me to change, not to find a way of loving it. I had all the jiggly bits of fat, the big round waist and the man-boobs. I hate the flabby butt, the sausage fingers and the rolls.

I've hated it from the moment I started getting overweight and the ONLY thing that has improved it is weight loss - not finding a way to accept or love it. I also don't find much meaning in the idea of "loving it to allow it to change" or "loving it for everything it does for you, i.e. allowing you to get to the gym to work out". I get the nice message behind those but I still think those things are completely distinct to learning to love what you see when I look down.

Now just to be clear I do love myself. I think I'm a kind, thoughtful and nice person, who is good at telling a joke and knows how to take criticism. I'm not "number one" or anything but I think I'm a fairly rounded person. I'm pretty confident when it comes to socialising, I'm always the first one on the dance floor and the last one to leave it.

I understand that a lot of people here suffer from mental health issues, and perhaps because I don't suffer from those, I don't see how it's necessary to love your body to love yourself. But for me personally, being told to love my body for what it is feels like telling me I have no control over it, and I do, and I am changing it for the better.

submitted by /u/chrisd848
[link] [comments]

from loseit - Lose the Fat https://ift.tt/34RUBRA