It can definitely be a struggle to love your body in the age of the super fit superhuman. Unless of course you’re a super fit super human.
Whether super fit and super flexible or neither fit nor flexible, your body is amazing. And you should love your body regardless what it looks like. You should love your body regardless what you can and cannot do with it in terms of performing impressive physical feats that render people awestruck. You should always love your body because what makes your body amazing has nothing to do with how attractive it looks to other people or how it measures up to the established image standards. It’s not about the shape and how hot you look. And while it is indeed amazing what some people can do with their bodies in terms of developing a super fit or super flexible physique, your body isn’t necessarily less amazing than the body of the fittest or most flexible person in the world. Your body is amazing because of what is inside of it and how those things inside you function twenty-four hours per day seven days per week to keep you alive.
Celebrate, thank and love your body for continuing to do it’s job day after day even when you hate on it because it doesn’t look like they tell you it’s supposed to look to be worthy of being loved.
Reasons to love your body regardless of how it looks
You have a beating heart inside of it. And if that heart stops beating, it won’t matter that you had a perfectly sculpted physique. So, your beating heart matters more than the things on the outside of you that you value and obsess about constantly.
You have a working brain that allows you to be able to walk and talk and see and hear and touch and feel and do other things. And, if one or the other or a combination of these things isn’t true for you, others of these things are true. If you are reading this, some portion of your brain is still working well enough that you can be here reading. You are breathing on your own. You’re functioning. If your brain stopped working, you couldn’t do anything. You can’t have the things you value most about yourself from an external physical perspective without a working brain. The brain matters more than your external parts.
Your kidneys are working. And if that is not so, the fact that you are here reading this means your body is still working well enough even with impaired kidneys that you can be here reading.
You are breathing, therefore in some capacity, your lungs are working.
Your liver is working, and if it (or your lungs) is in some way impaired, you are still here. Your body continues to function to keep you comfortably enough alive even with an impaired liver (or an impaired lung) that you can be here reading. This is not a criticism or a minimizing of any serious health issues with which you might suffer. This is just a reminder that your body is amazing, even if it might not be functioning at 100% of its capacity for health and wellness. And you should love your body because it is keeping you alive and providing you a way to experience being alive.
Everything that makes your body amazing is on the inside of you. What makes you a worthy human has got nothing to do with your skin, or your hair, or your curves, or your biceps or your abs or any external measure of so-called beauty and sex appeal. Hating your body because it doesn’t look the way society tells you it should look in order for you to be worthy of esteem is an insult to your heart and your brain and your lungs, and liver and kidneys and all your other organs that work so hard every day to keep you alive.
Love your body even more when it needs your love the most–when it becomes underweight or over weight and struggles to perform it’s functions because of not getting the right quantities and combinations of nutrients it specifically needs. Or it becomes compromised by sickness and disease.
Stop introducing thoughts that self-sabotage and distract your brain from optimally performing it’s coded tasks to keep you emotionally and mentally and physically healthy. Stop focusing on the established standards of beauty and attraction and hating your body for not measuring up. The more you love your body for the amazing things it does twenty-four hours per day seven days per week to keep you alive and functioning, the easier it will become for you to take care of it and nurture it and want to keep it healthy and functioning.