Tell yourself you look beautiful everyday
Something that I have previously spoken about but yet something so important to me is my weight and body confidence. This is something that is constantly bringing me down on a day to day basis. Since coming to university I guess that it has been triggered even more because I am surrounded by people that I would see as looking attractive and having bodies that make me very jealous. This I would say has not helped my body confidence at all as well as the university standard of living not helping my case. It is not something that I love to talk about with anyone because of how low it makes me feel but I guess I am sharing it with you. This is not because I want to make others feel bad about themselves, but to help others know that they are not the only ones going through this.
During my time back at home during Easter, I found that I was extremely low with my body confidence and just wanted to be in slouchy clothes. I was just so unhappy with my body that I didn't want it on show at all and just wanted to cover up. I felt like I had gained so much weight and that it was so obvious that I had gained the weight. In all honestly, I have been told that you couldn't see the difference but I could not get that through to my head. It was like all I could think about was how awful I looked and that I was so unattractive. I found myself constantly comparing myself with other females bigger or smaller than me and just thought that everyone else had such good bodies and I was left with this horrible one. The worst part about it was that I could see it was starting to affect my relationships. I was arguing with my mum because I was so stressed about my weight as well as having the pressure from my first university exams. To top it off, I was arguing with my boyfriend and finding myself becoming more stressed around him.
The worst thing when having battles with body confidence, is trying to understand why someone loves your body. It makes it so difficult when all you see is the flaws and when you are constantly looking at yourself under criticism. I would look at my body and see every lump (there or not there) and think well why does my boyfriend want to be with me if I look like this? Why does he love me when there are all these other beautiful girls out there? What if he doesn't like my body anymore? All these horrible questions would constantly be going through my head because I had no self confidence in myself and it was not his fault at all for that. Some of you might be thinking, well why didn't he support you and help your confidence? Well he did, so much but at the time because I was so low I was unable to get past this horrible phase where I was surrounded and drowning in self-hate. He would constantly be complimenting my body and saying how much he loved it. That helped but the issue was that I needed to love my body.
I recently watched a story on This Morning (literally one of my favourite shows to watch at the moment) about women's body confidence and whether being slim makes women happy (I will link it below). From watching probably a 10 minute segment on YouTube I learnt so much about myself and other women that it made me understand that I am not alone. I learnt that women's weight does fluctuate which is because of our hormones (I know, they are always pulling us down). This helped me because my weight also does this and when I put on weight I feel so negative about myself as I feel that I shouldn't have put on the weight. Even though half the time it is not my own fault. Probably the most beneficial part of the show was that when dealing with these fluctuations I am not the worst at finding ways of fixing it. For example a women on the show was only eating lettuce and coffee to try and reduce her weight. This is NOT healthy and therefore should not be done. What I am trying to say is that, there is always different ways of achieving goals and everyone does it differently but we should not do that at the extent of our health.
I have always been told that I should be confident within my own skin because I have a good figure but when I look down on myself I don't see that because I see these flaws. This has been something that I have tried so hard within the last few weeks to try and change because I want to feel better within my skin. I feel like I had to get past the low point to want to change and help myself. Since January I had started to do a minimal workout routine once or twice a day to try and start to change but at Easter I still was not seeing the affects because of the laziness commit. However, when I got back to university I decided that I would increase the routine and try and help myself a little more. By increasing my workout routine by adding more stages, I have been already able to feel the affects on my body within a week. This has been down with adding the occasional swim and yoga but I just want to be able to feel proud of myself and my body. There are still days where I feel awful about my body and look at myself with shame but there are days where I feel so much better about myself.
I guess what I am trying to get across is that everyone feels terrible about themselves from time to time but we are the only ones that can change that. It is not a simple or quick process, it is slow and draining at times but we can do it. Also try and remember that just because you are not happy or don't love your body does not mean that others don't, so try and relax. We are all beautiful in our own ways and all we need to tell ourselves is that we are beautiful and that we can get through this.
This Morning Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mwo0ReScNPA
During my time back at home during Easter, I found that I was extremely low with my body confidence and just wanted to be in slouchy clothes. I was just so unhappy with my body that I didn't want it on show at all and just wanted to cover up. I felt like I had gained so much weight and that it was so obvious that I had gained the weight. In all honestly, I have been told that you couldn't see the difference but I could not get that through to my head. It was like all I could think about was how awful I looked and that I was so unattractive. I found myself constantly comparing myself with other females bigger or smaller than me and just thought that everyone else had such good bodies and I was left with this horrible one. The worst part about it was that I could see it was starting to affect my relationships. I was arguing with my mum because I was so stressed about my weight as well as having the pressure from my first university exams. To top it off, I was arguing with my boyfriend and finding myself becoming more stressed around him.
The worst thing when having battles with body confidence, is trying to understand why someone loves your body. It makes it so difficult when all you see is the flaws and when you are constantly looking at yourself under criticism. I would look at my body and see every lump (there or not there) and think well why does my boyfriend want to be with me if I look like this? Why does he love me when there are all these other beautiful girls out there? What if he doesn't like my body anymore? All these horrible questions would constantly be going through my head because I had no self confidence in myself and it was not his fault at all for that. Some of you might be thinking, well why didn't he support you and help your confidence? Well he did, so much but at the time because I was so low I was unable to get past this horrible phase where I was surrounded and drowning in self-hate. He would constantly be complimenting my body and saying how much he loved it. That helped but the issue was that I needed to love my body.
I recently watched a story on This Morning (literally one of my favourite shows to watch at the moment) about women's body confidence and whether being slim makes women happy (I will link it below). From watching probably a 10 minute segment on YouTube I learnt so much about myself and other women that it made me understand that I am not alone. I learnt that women's weight does fluctuate which is because of our hormones (I know, they are always pulling us down). This helped me because my weight also does this and when I put on weight I feel so negative about myself as I feel that I shouldn't have put on the weight. Even though half the time it is not my own fault. Probably the most beneficial part of the show was that when dealing with these fluctuations I am not the worst at finding ways of fixing it. For example a women on the show was only eating lettuce and coffee to try and reduce her weight. This is NOT healthy and therefore should not be done. What I am trying to say is that, there is always different ways of achieving goals and everyone does it differently but we should not do that at the extent of our health.
I have always been told that I should be confident within my own skin because I have a good figure but when I look down on myself I don't see that because I see these flaws. This has been something that I have tried so hard within the last few weeks to try and change because I want to feel better within my skin. I feel like I had to get past the low point to want to change and help myself. Since January I had started to do a minimal workout routine once or twice a day to try and start to change but at Easter I still was not seeing the affects because of the laziness commit. However, when I got back to university I decided that I would increase the routine and try and help myself a little more. By increasing my workout routine by adding more stages, I have been already able to feel the affects on my body within a week. This has been down with adding the occasional swim and yoga but I just want to be able to feel proud of myself and my body. There are still days where I feel awful about my body and look at myself with shame but there are days where I feel so much better about myself.
I guess what I am trying to get across is that everyone feels terrible about themselves from time to time but we are the only ones that can change that. It is not a simple or quick process, it is slow and draining at times but we can do it. Also try and remember that just because you are not happy or don't love your body does not mean that others don't, so try and relax. We are all beautiful in our own ways and all we need to tell ourselves is that we are beautiful and that we can get through this.
I hope this is helpful and that you enjoyed the read (if you got down this far). If there is anything that you would like me to write about please let me know in the comments.
This Morning Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mwo0ReScNPA
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