How I (Finally) Learned to Love My Body

Oh, it took years and years for me to even say it, let alone feel it, but: I love my body. Just as it is, too.

I’m just a regular person with a regular (as far as that term goes) body. I’m also a person with high self-esteem and an extremely healthy body image. At least, that's where I am now. To recap, I suffered from an eating disorder for many years. Once I stopped eating in a disordered way, I had to dig into the underlying causes of the behavior. Food, or lack thereof, was just a symptom of a deep, deep dislike for my body, which, I learned after a whole lotta therapy, is really a deep, deep dislike for myself.

Somewhere along the line I got the message that I wasn’t enough and once I came to believe that, I needed to both punish myself for my supposed insufficiency and get to a state of enough-ness by dropping a lot of weight and being thinner than everyone else. Since I believed for so long that being thin was a sign that I was good enough and that if I wasn’t the “really skinny girl,” no one would love me, it was much harder to learn to love my new, not-underweight body than it was to learn to eat three meals and three snacks a day. Hard, but not impossible! Here are the things that helped me get there:

1. I stopped looking in the mirror. That’s right, I stopped starting off my day figuring out whether I had a “good body” or not. It was really hard, but refraining from body inspection meant I wasn’t hanging that day’s happiness and my sense of self-worth on what (I thought) my body looked. Over time, I realized I didn’t have to be a “body” going out into the world, I could just be a person like everyone else.

2. I stopped reading articles or looking at pictures in magazines about weight loss. I was obsessed with articles in tabloids—and even slightly more reputable publications, like the New York Daily News—that documented how celebrities lost weight. This kept the myth going to that there was such a thing as a good and bad body. The body with “baby weight” was bad while the body that had shed its “baby weight” was good. Those articles sent the message that the kind of body one possessed was of utmost importance. I did very, very well without them.

3. I had a talk with a close guy friend in which he revealed that “guys don’t care about any of that stuff”—that stuff being, oh, I dunno not looking like a Victoria’s Secret model—“and if he does, then forget him.” Even though I prioritized having a thin body for way more reasons than wanting to attract the male gaze, I absolutely believed that a boy would be totally horrified if my body wasn’t "perfect." My guy friend also said, “Kelly, look around at the guys you have crushes on. I guarantee you they have flaws.” He right. And, furthermore, he was in a happy relationship with a woman who loved her imperfect body. I was single. I decided he might be on to something.

4. By realizing that “we’re all ultimately worm food. And if you can’t like your body now, what’re you gonna do when you’re 80?” Ouch. That one came from the therapist. She’s right. My body can’t be my source of my happiness, contentment, or self-worth. It’s just unsustainable—literally.

5. I recited affirmations to myself: “You’re beautiful.” “You enough.” “You’re perfect and loveable as you are.” (Again, from the therapist). She also suggested that when the negative thoughts started to take over, I should write them down on a piece of paper, cross them out, and write down the opposite thought underneath. For example, “You’re body is repulsive” became “Your body is beautiful the way it is.” This gradually stopped feeling fake.

6. I started to think, “Would I talk to my friend the way my head is talking to me right now?” Absolutely not! I started to see that I could apply the same non-judgmental attitude to myself that I would to my closest friends. Why did I deserve special (especially abusive) treatment?

7. I stayed away from diet- and fitness-obsessed friends. I had a handful who were hardcore gym-rats, and others who were way into “healthy living” (which really meant obsessing with their appearances and torturing themselves with various potions for their skin, practicing extreme diets under the guise of “clean eating,” and even week-long fasts). It was a toxic environment for me if I wanted to let go of my obsession with what I looked like.

8. I started to be thankful for my body, and for what it could do for me. Yes, I absolutely had to fake that appreciation in the beginning. My therapist had me write out gratitude lists for my body. “I’m grateful that my body is healthy; I’m grateful that my body can take me on a hike.” That kind of thinking gradually reeled in the desire to harm by body.

It didn’t happen quickly and it took a lot of pain in order for me to even become willing to let go of the shame I felt around my body. Today I’m happy with the way I look. Is my body "perfect"? No. Do I care? Actually, no. I learned that there’s so much more to life than what kind of body I have. And dropping the rock I carried for years and years has opened up SO MUCH time in my life—on any given day. Now that I’m not plotting out the most effective method for me to lose weight I actually have a life. I work on fulfilling the goals for the rest of my life. My writing life, for instance, has never been stronger.

Do you have experience with learning to love your body? If so, please share.