5 Ways to Boost Your Body Confidence

5 Ways to Boost Your Body Confidence

Anna Delany and Pat Fiducia



How do you feel in your own skin?
Feeling body confident comes naturally for a small percentage of people, but for most of us it's a struggle. Despite the fact that people come in all shapes and sizes, we often feel self-conscious or awkward in our own bodies.
So what do the body confident do, and know, that the rest of us don't?
Read on to find out.




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Test your body confidence

Before we look at what causes low body confidence and what you can do to boost it, take a moment to assess where you're at:

• Do you constantly compare your body to other people's?
• Do you often criticize yourself or put yourself down?
• Do family members, friends, or your partner hassle you about your weight?
• Do you avoid certain situations because you feel uncomfortable in your own body?
• Do you avoid exercising because you are ashamed of your body?
• Do you hate having your photo taken?
• Do you avoid going to the beach or the swimming pool because of the way you look?
• Is your body image affecting your sex life?
• Do you hate shopping for clothes?
• Is getting dressed in the morning a daily trial as you try to find something that you feel comfortable in and that you think looks good?
• Are weight loss pills and fad diets a part of your life?
• Are you within a healthy weight range, but still think you should lose weight?
• Do people say you look good, but you don't believe them?

If you've answered yes to any of these questions, your body confidence needs a boost in some way.
Don't confuse wanting to lose weight for health reasons, or even to improve appearance with low body confidence. While it might be true that you need to lose weight, an important step in that direction is to start feeling good about yourself – now! You don't have to wait until you lose weight to feel okay in your own skin.

1. The Hollywood connection (and how to disconnect it)



According to a Body Shop campaign "There are three billion women who don't look like supermodels and only eight who do."
And yet many people still strive to look like the unattainable “norm” that is represented in the media. Of course, most models and celebrities are far from normal – they are at the extreme end of the spectrum, where air-brushing, cosmetic surgery and personal trainers are standard tools of their trade.
Measuring your own physique against these impossibly high standards of the media is damaging to your body confidence. However, it can be very hard to escape the influences. Everywhere you look there are billboards with big boobs in Wonderbras, sexy poses on the covers of men's magazines, articles in women's magazines about how actresses and models lose large amounts of weight in five simple steps, or how you can follow the latest celeb hot-pants diet and lose weight overnight.
Disconnect it: To minimize the impact of media perfection you need to learn to disconnect. Remind yourself daily (and whenever you feel jealous of a billboard babe), that media images of beauty are not real. You are. You’re alive, breathing, thinking and being, and that’s beautiful. You might never be an image on the cover of a magazine, but why would you want to? Redefine “the body beautiful” in your own mind.

2. Psst! What’s in your past?


Let go of your childhood labels
There isn’t a person alive who wasn’t teased in some way as a child, but some people carry the scars around with them for longer than others.
If you were teased for being fat, or even just “affectionately” referred to as “Chubs” or something similar by your friends and family when you were young, then you may not have ever shaken that label off. It could be making a significant difference to how you feel about your body now.
Let it go: A body-confident person deals with the labels of the past by realizing they came from outside, perhaps from people who were too critical or unaccepting, or who were insensitive to how words can burn a negative self image into the mind. To let go, you also need to disown those fictional labels and negative images from the past.
If you are trapped in a childhood or teenage image of yourself, it's time to develop your own sense of who you are. Separating out the past and building your own sense of self is an ongoing and often painful process, but it can be done.


3. Fat or thin - check the "accept" box

You may have felt unaccepted as a child and been unable to change that, but as an adult self-acceptance is within your control. Have you checked your self-acceptance box lately?
When Jodie Cook, a 29-year old mother of two decided to lose weight, she knew she needed to change more than her appearance:
"I also had to address the way I felt about myself - fat or thin I need to like who I am."
Accept yourself: To be body confident, you need to decide to accept who you are now, whether or not you need to lose weight. From this acceptance, your body confidence will grow. Jodie explains how she developed self-acceptance.
"I began to keep an eye on my self-talk and gradually began to replace negative thoughts with positive ones." Jodie explains. "I stopped calling myself a 'fat pig' if I enjoyed a piece of cake occasionally, and began to compliment myself on the things I was achieving instead."
Follow Jodie's lead and stop being overly critical of yourself. Start to compliment yourself instead of engaging in negative self-talk. Value your body for its good points instead of constantly pointing out the things that are wrong with it.

4. Compliments of ... yourself


Be good to yourself
Not taking care of yourself is a sure fire way to reinforce a lack of body confidence. Eating too much of the wrong types of food, drinking too much, smoking, not exercising and not taking care of your appearance are guaranteed ways to drop your body confidence lower than it already is.
Turn it around: Body confident people take good care of themselves. You need to do the same. Nurture your body with healthy food, moderate exercise, and adequate sleep.
Doing things that say "I care about myself" can be an incredible confidence booster. Try a new haircut, buy a nice item of clothing. Pamper yourself with bubble baths and body scrubs. Compliment yourself and learn to recognize your achievements with non-food rewards. Although these aren’t magic answers to your esteem problems, even the smallest of steps will lead to a more positive outlook.

5. Think outside the body

Who says the size of your thighs is a measure of your worth?
You are more than just a body, but if you only focus on your body, it's all too easy to forget about the rest of life. And if, when you focus on your body, you have a negative attitude, your body confidence will be permanently stuck in a rutt.
On the other hand, if you think outside your body and involve your mind and emotions in concerns other than how you look, you'll find the overall confidence that builds in those areas will trickle down and boost your body confidence too.
Have outer-body experiences! A body-confident person takes an interest not just in how they look, but in how they act, think and feel. Here are some tips to do the same:

• Find yardsticks other than how you look to evaluate yourself – you are not just a body. Make a list of all the positive things about yourself. Do you help others? Can you be counted on? Are you a good friend?*Are you a good parent? Co-worker? Spouse?
• If you can objectively say you could do a better job at what you do, work on doing it better.* Doing better makes you feel better. Feeling better about what you do and who you are will build your confidence in all areas, including how you feel about your body.
• Do things that you enjoy. If you love to travel, but you haven’t taken the time to do it, plan a trip.*If you love jazz, go and listen to some. If you like flowers, grow a few!

Most people who are confident in general are also confident about their bodies. A confident person doesn't constantly seek the approval of others, has realistic expectations, is postive about who they are, and, most importantly, accepts themselves. Your challenge is to do the same.