Tag: confidence

why self esteem is important

How does self esteem affect your health?

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In today’s post I want to share why self esteem is important for improving your health. As someone who has struggled with low self esteem most of my life, I have observed how it impacted my own health and wellbeing. Through my coaching practice I now want to help other women believe in themselves. As a result, they can finally make breakthroughs with their health and find the true wellness they are seeking.

What is self esteem?

Self esteem is defined as the worth or value someone places on themselves. Not necessarily for the things that they do or own, but simply for who they are as a person. Someone with a good level of self esteem is likely to have a strong sense of personal identity and belonging in social groups. It also means feeling competent and confident about your actions and ability to create the life circumstances you desire.

Someone with high self esteem will generally view themselves in an optimistic light. They have a mostly positive view of their physical image, personality traits and capabilities. This doesn’t mean they see themselves as perfect, but rather that they accept who they are and appreciate their strengths as well as their perceived weaknesses. In addition, they believe that others also view and respond to them in a positive way (1).

Some words associated with self esteem:

  • Self-respect
  • Self-confidence
  • Self-compassion
  • Personal value
  • Worthiness
  • Deserving
  • A good person
why self esteem is important
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Signs of low self esteem

  • Talking or thinking negatively about yourself
  • Procrastinating or engaging in self-sabotaging behaviour
  • Downplaying your positive traits, skills or achievements
  • Comparing yourself negatively to others
  • Being overly critical in the face of failure or setbacks
  • Feeling excessively self-conscious, anxious or afraid of failure
  • A sense of stuckness and inability to create change
  • Worrying too much about what others think about you
  • Not being aware of or able to express your needs and boundaries
  • Lack of confidence in your abilities
  • Inability to accept compliments from others

If you can relate to several of these points, keep reading to find out why self-esteem is important for improving your health!

Why self esteem is important for improving your health

There are several reasons why self esteem is important for improving your health:

Sense of worthiness

Having a good level of self esteem means that you feel deserving of improved health. You feel that you are worth the effort it takes to make positive behaviour change. You believe in yourself and you truly wish yourself health and happiness. This might sound strange but deep down, those with a low self esteem might not want this for themselves. They may not believe that they deserve to be happy and that doing things to improve their health is a waste of time, money or effort. In fact, they might even engage in self-sabotaging behaviours which negatively impact their health (2).

Confidence in your abilities

The second reason why esteem is important for improving your health is that it brings a sense of confidence in your abilities. In order to succeed in making lasting changes in your lifestyle, you need to believe that you can! You need to believe that you have what it takes to learn new skills, change your habits and stay motivated long term. You don’t need to know everything right away. Having the belief that you are competent and able to learn is key to making improvements to your health. Otherwise, you might give up before you start or the moment challenges arise.

Staying the course

Furthermore, having self esteem will help you to stay motivated on your health improvement journey. If you have low self esteem, you might interpret any setbacks as a personal failure and blame yourself or your lack of ability. Having a higher sense of self esteem means you are more likely to appreciate the many factors involved and understand that you are not personally to blame. This makes it much easier to let go of any “failures” and keep moving towards your goals. You can view the situation objectively and find ways to improve without attacking or criticising yourself.

Positive emotions

Self esteem is one of the foundations of mental health. At it’s worst, low self esteem can lead to depression like states of feeling useless, unworthy and unlovable. These types of negative thoughts set off a chemical cascade in your emotional body which can lead to a downwards spiral of negative feelings, thoughts and behaviours. On the other hand, higher self esteem results in more positive feelings about yourself and your life. A sense of happiness and optimism can be felt even in challenging situations. A good level of self esteem improves your overall sense of wellbeing (3).

Healthy relationships

One of the elements of holistic health and wellbeing is having healthy relationships. Having a supportive network of family, friends and/or professionals around you can be the thing that lifts you up and helps you to cope with the stresses of life. Low self esteem can lead to feelings of being unworthy of other people’s love or the belief that they see you negatively. This can result is social isolation and poor mental health outcomes. Therefore, developing self esteem helps you to connect with others and find balance and wellbeing in your life.

Realistic expectations

Finally, having a good level of self esteem helps to have realistic expectations for your health. Low self esteem often results in underestimating what you can achieve and procrastinating taking action to improve your health. On the other hand, excessively high self esteem can lead to overestimating your abilities and setting too high expectations. This perfectionism may cause later disappointment or giving up if you don’t reach your high standards. Finding balance is key! This means believing in yourself and setting challenging yet realistic and achievable goals for your health.

How to boost self esteem

I’m not going to lie, boosting self esteem can be difficult and take a long time. Often low self esteem develops in childhood and it can take a lot of self-reflection and/or therapy to discover the root cause and to move past it (4). It is important to break the cycle of negative thoughts about yourself which lead to painful feelings and drive unwanted behaviours (or inaction).

This takes mindfulness to become self-aware as well as the ability to challenge the thoughts associated with low self worth. This is why working with a therapist or coach can be helpful as they provide an unbiased, outside view and can reflect back to you this inner dialogue. Replacing negative thoughts with more positive or realistic ones can be helpful to reprogram your mind to see yourself in a better light.

I have written previously about the importance of having self-compassion on your path to health. Self-compassion is not the same as self-esteem but the two often go hand in hand. Having self-compassion in moments of low self esteem means to accept that you are not feeling good about yourself but to commit to speaking more kindly to yourself and accepting and forgiving yourself for your perceived flaws.

Self esteem vs. self efficacy

One of the ways to improve self esteem is by actually taking action and accomplishing things. It should not always be about the things we achieve. However, setting yourself goals and reaching them gives you a sense of pride in yourself and your abilities. Even if your goals are small, achieving them sends the signal that you are a capable human and you can do hard things.

The problem comes when not believing in yourself prevents you from taking action. As a result, you don’t experience success because you don’t believe in yourself enough. We then have a catch 22 situation! Taking action requires self-efficacy. This is not the same as self esteem but does overlap. Self efficacy is the confidence in your ability to take action and make change. Even if you don’t like yourself or see your worth yet, you can learn to see yourself as capable and from there begin to take action.

You can increase your self-efficacy by:

  1. Setting and achieving goals (baby steps are best)
  2. Taking the time to reflect on past successes and what you have learned
  3. Understanding and accepting your strengths and weaknesses
  4. Mastering new skills or behaviours (4)

These four steps don’t necessarily require you to feel good about yourself but they certainly help. And once the ball is rolling and you begin to take action, the benefits will be exponential! Instead of a downwards spiral you will be on the up. Taking action will boost your confidence in yourself which will in turn create more positive thoughts and emotions. Feeling better about yourself will make it easier to keep moving forward.

This process of setting goals, taking action and then reflecting on your successes is part of the AGAR method of health coaching I use with my clients:

holistic health coaching method

So that is it for today. I really hope you found this post useful! Personally, improving my self esteem has helped me to make huge improvements in my health and my life. It is an ongoing journey and I still have my down days like everyone. But overall I am so happy with the progress I have made and it makes me happy to share what I am learning with others.

If this post helped you at all, please leave a comment below. I’d love to hear your thoughts and experiences and I always enjoy connecting with you. If you are interested in applying for health coaching with me, I will be opening up new client spaces from 6th December. Send me an email at lovemoonlife.mail@gmail.com to set up a free 15 minute call to find out if we are a good fit.

Have a lovely day and rest of the week!

References

(1) https://dictionary.apa.org/self-esteem
(2) MacGee, R. and Williams, S., 2000. Does low self-esteem predict health compromising behaviours among adolescents? Journal of Adolescence. 23(5). Pp.569-582. https://doi.org/10.1006/jado.2000.0344
(3) Paradise, Andrew W.; Kernis, Michael H. (2002). Self-esteem and Psychological Well-being: Implications of Fragile Self-esteem. Journal of Social and Clinical Psychology, 21(4), 345–361. doi:10.1521/jscp.21.4.345.22598 
(4) Well College Global, 2019. Personal Wellness Course notes
(5) Baumgardner, A., 1990. To know oneself is to like oneself: Self-certainty and self-affect. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 58(6), 1062–1072. doi:10.1037/0022-3514.58.6.1062 

Over to you…

If you would like to work with me to balance your hormones and improve your health, contact me to set up a free 15 minute discovery call. I am a nutritionist, yoga teacher and women’s wellness coach. We work together using a combination of modalities to support your individual needs and help you to feel your best.

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Stop comparing your body to others on social media

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Self-comparison is a natural human instinct. We are social creatures and self-comparison is one of the ways in which we form our identity within society. Your psyche has built in mechanisms to compare yourself with others in your community and make a judgement as to whether they are above or below you in the hierarchy. This could be in terms of physical beauty or strength, intelligence, material belongings or any other factor that might affect your ability to survive and reproduce. We also learn from others through role modelling and we base our ideas of who we are on the response we receive from those around us. We are primed to be hyper focused on others, what they think of us and how we compare to them.

Unfortunately, the people we tend to compare ourselves with are not those that we see in our daily lives but those we see in the media, far removed from our own communities. We forget that the people we see in the media are usually in the spotlight because they are amongst the most beautiful, most successful or most wealthy people in society and we use them to benchmark our own worth. Comparing yourself to others in this way often leads to negative self-talk and feelings of not being worthy or good enough. And since the explosion of social media, our exposure to visual media has sky-rocketed. Teens across the world are now spending around 3 hours a day on social media according to this report by Social Buddy. Instagram, the most visual social media platform, now has approximately 1 billion users, with almost 40% under the age of 25.

At this age, we are extremely vulnerable to self-comparison and based on the number of beauty and fitness influencers, it’s pretty clear that comparing your body to others is one of the ways that we do this. When I was a teenager in the early 2000s, I was already under the influence of media messages from TV and magazines and I would compare myself to celebrities and models that I saw. This led me to spiral into extreme body dissatisfaction and almost a decade spent chasing the thin-ideal, believing that if I only looked like the women I saw in the media I would be happier and my life would be perfect. But at least this was only a small part of my life and most of the time I was surrounded by real people.

These days though, social media is full of “real” people showing us how beautiful, how successful and how wealthy they are. We are constantly surrounded by advertisements and influencers whose sole purpose is to sell us something by making us feel like we are not good enough as we are. Research into the impacts of social media on body image shows that social media use is associated with increased body dissatisfaction and self-objectification as well as internalisation of body-ideals, that is adopting the belief that certain body types are more socially acceptable than others. It is a double edged sword of opening yourself up to feedback from others when you post images of yourself and comparing yourself to others in images that they post.

I’m not saying that you have to avoid social media altogether if you want to feel good about yourself and stop comparing yourself to others, although it definitely could help! I just want to raise awareness of this issue and share a few tips from my training in the Non-Diet Approach to Health Coaching on how to stop comparing your body to others online.

Mindfulness

Staying mindful is the first step as self-comparison is most toxic when we don’t see clearly what is happening. In particular, when we believe everything that we see online and we create a world view in our head that is different from reality. Exposure to images of ideal body types changes our perception of what is normal in society, raising the standard that we set for ourselves. If you spend too much time online comparing your body to others, you can easily start to believe that all women look like models and that you are the only one who doesn’t measure up Your standards of what is healthy and normal become warped when you are constantly exposed to images that use posing, lighting and editing to curate a perfect image of beauty.

The simple act of becoming mindful that not everything you see online is real and that social media can negatively impact your body image and self-esteem can help to reduce these negative effects. Being aware of how you are thinking and feeling when you spend time on social media and which channels trigger self-criticism or negative self-talk is the first step towards creating a healthier online space for yourself. Also making the conscious effort to bring yourself back to reality and recalibrate your mind by spending time with real people and seeing the huge variety of body shapes and sizes that exist amongst normal, healthy women rather than only comparing your body with images you see on social media.

Critical thinking

Along with this is to start thinking critically whilst you are spending time online. Rather than just viewing content passively and letting it dictate your emotions, take a moment to question why that content is there and how it was supposed to make you feel. Question everything! Especially when someone has something to sell, don’t take anything you see or read at face value. Be aware that every image you see could have been edited or airbrushed and may not represent reality, even photos from “normal” people who are not trying to sell anything but still want to portray themselves in a certain way.

I had a discussion with a friend not long ago about exactly this, why she was editing her photos for social media. Her opinion was that it is harmless and just a way to show your best self online. My opinion is that it can be extremely detrimental and create impossibly high standards that you and everyone who sees your photo then feels like they don’t measure up to. It is one thing to see a perfectly curated photo in a glossy magazine advert when you are aware of the amount of work that went into creating the image. But it is entirely another thing to see a “casual” selfie on social media of someone looking completely flawless and suddenly become acutely aware of your less than perfect appearance.

Body appreciation

Finally, developing appreciation and gratitude for your body and all it can do for you has been proven to act as a weapon against comparing your body with others online. This study showed that women with low body appreciation were more likely to experience body dissatisfaction after watching media adverts but women with a higher body appreciation were more resistant to feeling bad about their body and were more likely to remain neutral. You can nurture a positive attitude towards your body by using techniques such as guided meditations and affirmations which work by planting the seeds of positive thoughts in your mind. For example by repeating to yourself or writing down statements such as:

  • My body is strong and capable
  • My body is unique and beautiful
  • My body enables me to experience the joys of life
  • My body is a miracle of life
  • My body deserves love and respect

Focus on qualities you like about your body, the amazing things your body does everyday or the things it allows you to do. Cultivating respect and gratitude for your body can help to boost your self-esteem and create a more positive body image, enabling you to be more resistant to comparing yourself with others in a negative way. This also gives you the freedom to stay in your own lane when it comes to improving your health and focus on healthy behaviours rather than aiming for a particular weight or body shape goal.

In today’s world, with so many potential traps to fall into, it’s so important to be mindful of our thoughts and actively work towards mental health, especially maintaining a healthy sense of self-worth and self-esteem. I try my best to be authentic and honest on my platforms and perhaps that is why I don’t have a huge audience as unfortunately perfection sells pretty well.. BUT I am committed to remaining authentic and finding my own path to true health and I encourage my clients to do the same!

  • holistic health coach

Over to you…

Has social media and self-comparison impacted your body image? Share your thoughts and experiences below, I would love to start a conversation and raise awareness of this issue. Go ahead and like and share this post to support my business and follow my blog for more useful posts on nutrition, yoga and holistic health.

If you are looking for guidance, support and accountability to reach your health goals, I offer 1-2-1 holistic health coaching. My specialty is helping women to balance their hormones and heal their body and metabolism after chronic or restrictive dieting but I also help anyone who is looking to improve their overall health and find the perfect balance for their body. I would love to work together with you to move past any health blocks and get you feeling your best again!

Other posts you might like

Comparing your body to others on social media

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Self-comparison is a natural human instinct. We are social creatures and self-comparison is one of the ways in which we form our identity within society. Your psyche has built in mechanisms to compare yourself with others in your community. You then use this comparison to make a judgement as to whether they are above or below you in the hierarchy. This could be in terms of comparing your body to others, your beauty or strength, intelligence or material belongings. Basically any other factor that might affect your ability to survive and reproduce. We also learn from others through role modelling and we based our self-image on the response we receive from those around us. We are primed to be hyper focused on others, what they think of us and how we compare to them.

Self-comparison and social media

Unfortunately, the people we tend to compare ourselves with are not those that we see in our daily lives. Rather it is those we see in the media, far removed from our own communities. We forget that the people we see in the media are usually in the spotlight because they are amongst the most beautiful, most successful or most wealthy people in society. We use them to benchmark our own worth and feel inadequate as a result.

Comparing yourself to others in this way often leads to negative self-talk and feelings of not being worthy or good enough. And since the explosion of social media, our exposure to visual media has sky-rocketed. Teens across the world are now spending around 3 hours a day on social media according to this report by Social Buddy. Instagram, the most visual social media platform, now has approximately 1 billion users, with almost 40% under the age of 25.

comparing your body with others on social media
Photo by Ivan Samkov on Pexels.com
stop comparing your body with others on social media
Photo by Edmond Dantès on Pexels.com

Comparing your body to others on social media

Based on the number of beauty and fitness influencers, it’s pretty clear that comparing your body to others is one of the ways that we compare ourselves to others. When I was a teenager in the early 2000s, I was already under the influence of media messages. I would compare myself to celebrities and models that I saw in the glossy photos in magazines or on TV. This led me to spiral into extreme body dissatisfaction and almost a decade spent chasing the thin-ideal. I believed that if I only looked like the women I saw in the media I would be happier and my life would be perfect. But at least this was only a small part of my life and most of the time I was in the real world with real people.

These days though, social media is full of “real” people showing us how beautiful and successful they are. We are constantly surrounded by advertisements whose sole purpose is to make us feel like we are not good enough as we are. Research into the impacts of social media on body image shows that social media use increases body dissatisfaction and self-objectification. Social media users are also are more likely to internalise body-ideals, that is adopting the belief that certain body types are more socially acceptable than others. It is a double edged sword as you open yourself up to feedback from others when you post images of yourself and you compare yourself to others in images that they post.

How to stop comparing your body to others online

I’m not saying that you have to avoid social media altogether if you want to stop comparing yourself to others, although it definitely could help! I simply want to raise awareness of this issue and share a few tips from my training in the Non-Diet Approach to Health Coaching on how to stop comparing your body to others online.

Practice mindfulness

Staying mindful is the first step as self-comparison is most toxic when we don’t see clearly what is happening. In particular, when we believe everything that we see online and we create a world view in our head that is different from reality. Exposure to images of ideal body types changes our perception of what is normal in society. We then raise the standard that we set for ourselves. If you spend too much time online comparing your body to others, you can easily start to believe that all women look like models and that you are the only one who doesn’t measure up. Your standards of what is healthy and normal become warped. Especially when you are constantly exposed to images that use posing, lighting and editing to curate a perfect image of beauty.

The simple act of becoming mindful that not everything you see online is real can really help. Stay aware that that social media can negatively impact your body image and self-esteem to reduce these negative effects. Pay attention to how you are thinking and feeling when you spend time on social media. Identify which channels trigger self-criticism or negative self-talk and work towards creating a healthier online space for yourself. Make the conscious effort to bring yourself back to reality and recalibrate your mind by spending time with real people. Observe the huge variety of body shapes and sizes that exist amongst normal, healthy women rather than only comparing your body with images you see on social media.

Use critical thinking skills

Alongside practicing mindfulness, start to think critically whilst you are spending time online. If you view content passively, you let it dictate your emotions and program your subconscious mind. Take a moment to question why that content is there and how it was supposed to make you feel. Remember you are in control of what information you feed into your mind. Question everything! Especially when someone has something to sell, don’t take anything you see or read at face value. Be aware that every image you see is possibly edited or airbrushed and may not represent reality. Even photos from “normal” people who are not trying to sell anything but still want to portray themselves in a certain way.

I had a discussion with a friend not long ago about why she was editing her photos for social media. Her opinion was that it is harmless and just a way to show your best self online. My opinion is that it can be extremely detrimental and create impossibly high standards that you and everyone who sees your photo then feels like they don’t measure up to. It is one thing to see a perfectly curated photo in a glossy magazine advert. In that case you are aware of the amount of work that went into creating the image. But it is entirely another thing to see a “casual” selfie on social media of someone looking completely flawless and suddenly become acutely aware of your own imperfections. So keep a critical eye when you are on social media knowing that everything may not be as it seems.

Cultivate body appreciation

Finally, develop an appreciation and gratitude for your body and all it can do for you. Body appreciation is a proven a weapon against comparing your body with others online. This study showed that women with low body appreciation were more likely to experience body dissatisfaction after watching media adverts. On the other hand, women with a higher body appreciation were more resistant to feeling bad about their body and were more likely to remain neutral. You can nurture a positive attitude towards your body by using techniques such as guided meditations and affirmations. These techniques work by planting the seeds of positive thoughts in your mind. For example by repeating to yourself or writing down statements such as:

  • My body is strong and capable
  • This physical body is unique and beautiful
  • My body enables me to experience the joys of life
  • I am more than my physical body
  • My body is a miracle of life
  • I deserve love and respect

Focus on qualities you like about your body. Perhaps the amazing things your body does everyday or the things it allows you to do. Cultivating respect and gratitude for your body can help to boost your self-esteem and create a more positive body image. Therefore enabling you to be more resistant to comparing your body with others in a negative way. This also gives you the freedom to stay in your own lane when it comes to improving your health. It allows you to focus on healthy behaviours rather than aiming for a particular weight or body shape goal.

Summary: How to stop comparing your body with others

Next time you are online, remember these 3 key points to protect yourself against negative self-comparison:

  1. Practice mindfulness
  2. Use critical thinking
  3. Cultivate body appreciation

In today’s world, with so many potential traps to fall into, it’s so important to be mindful of our thoughts. We need to actively work towards mental health, especially maintaining a healthy sense of self-worth and self-esteem. I try my best to be authentic and honest on my social media platforms. Perhaps that is why I don’t have a huge audience! Unfortunately perfection sells pretty well.. BUT I commit to empowering myself and finding my own path to true health. I encourage you all to give yourself this precious gift too.

personal values
holistic health coach

Over to you…

If you would like to work with me to balance your hormones and improve your health, contact me to set up a free 15 minute discovery call. I am a nutritionist, yoga teacher and women’s wellness coach. We work together using a combination of modalities to support your individual needs and help you to feel your best.

  • Please like this post and share to support my business
  • If you liked this post, follow my blog or subscribe by email to receive updates on new content
  • Follow me on Instagram and Facebook for daily updates and inspiration

Book your consultation now

How visualisation can help you become the person you want to be

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How often have you found yourself reacting in the same old habitual ways to certain situations? Maybe it’s reacting negatively towards a particular person, feeling shy or anxious in certain situations, or repeatedly falling off the wagon with healthy behaviours as soon as a stressor hits. So much of our behaviour is habitual meaning that we do it without even thinking. We start to actually identify with feelings and behaviours as if they are our identity making it very difficult to change. But what if that wasn’t the case? What if you had the option to act consciously and choose how you want to show up each day?

I’ve heard many times how visualisation can help to do exactly that, change your mindset so that you can step out of your comfort zone and grow into the person you want to be. I never really paid it much attention until recently. However, recently I had an interview for a position that I really had set my heart on and after reading again about the power of visualisation I decided to give it a go. I’ve always struggled with confidence speaking in front of people, and this was an interview where I had to give a 15 minute presentation in front of a panel of 5 followed by a question and answer session. Naturally my inner critic was going wild with what ifs…

“What if you stumble on your words?”
“What if you go bright red in the face?”
“What if your mind goes totally blank?”

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These were all based on memories of past experiences of presenting or public speaking where I’ve done exactly that. Blushed like a tomato, panicked and totally forgotten everything I wanted to say – eek! When I projected forward how I thought the interview would go, these were the memories I had to help me out with visualising how the interview would go. This has happened before too when I’ve had to speak publicly. I’d be nervous and running through all my past “failures” at speaking in front of people and of course when the moment arrived the same thing would happen again, a self-fulfilling prophecy.

This is something we all do, as humans we hate uncertainty and we try to predict situations based on information we already have. Sometimes this can be helpful but often it can keep us feeling stuck in a rut and unable to reach our potential. But this time I was determined that it would be different. I’d had enough of feeling terrified at the thought of speaking in front of people and I wanted to create a new possibility. Since starting to teach yoga and make Youtube videos, I’ve already proved to myself that I can get out of my comfort zone and do things I am afraid of so why should this situation be any different?

I decided that for a few days leading up to the interview I would practice a guided visualisation where I imagined myself presenting confidently, impressing the panel and answering all of their questions with ease. I allowed myself to be aware of all of the judgements and criticisms that were present in my mind but chose not to dwell on them and to focus on creating new, positive beliefs about my abilities. As I always say, it’s important to also feel the emotions when practicing meditation or any mindset work and so I really let myself feel that happy, confident, excited version of myself in my mind. If you’re interested in the guided meditation I used, you can listen to it here.

As it wasn’t “real”, the visualisation gave me the opportunity to dream up an entirely new Amy, totally separate from the shy, anxious version I had become so attached to. I did this every morning, first thing for five days leading up to the interview and let me tell you, it worked wonders! I’m not saying that I arrived at the presentation with no fear or doubt but I felt so much better than I ever have in these kind of situations before. I presented confidently (even though I was shaking with nerves), I said everything I wanted to and answered all of the questions without freaking out too much. Definitely a win in my books. It’s out of my hands now whether I get the position or not but I feel good knowing that I showed up as my best self and gave it my all.

The best thing is that now I have a stored memory of this confident version of myself who can present well. Next time I need to do something like this and I rack my mind for past experiences, amongst the embarrassing memories I will also have this one to lean on and give me hope that I can do it. And the more memories like this I can build, the stronger this new, more confident Amy will become and over time it will become my new identity. So if any of you out there are struggling with confidence or with changing your behaviours, maybe give visualization a chance. You only need to commit around 15-20 minutes a day and it really can change your life. Of course, visualization alone won’t change anything in your life but what it can do is give you the motivation and sense of personal power so that you take actions that do create change.

Over to you…

I hope you enjoyed this article, if you did please like and share with anyone who it might help. Comment below your thoughts and experiences and follow my blog for more posts on health, nutrition, yoga and creating positive change in your life!

If you are looking for guidance, support and accountability on you health journey, please contact me for information on the nutrition and holistic health coaching packages I offer. I would love to work together with you to get you feeling your best again.

Other posts you might like

heart opening yoga - wild thing

How yoga can improve your body image (and traps to avoid!)

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I’m really enjoying teaching my online Yoga for Women classes on Sunday evenings, it’s a really cosy way to end the weekend and to connect with other women whilst we are in lockdown here in Greece. If you’re interested in joining the class contact me and I will send you the joining details. This week the class theme was about how yoga can help to develop a healthy body image. Especially nowadays with social media, so many of us have a distorted view of our bodies and waste our precious energy critisising ourselves for the way we look. We hold ourselves to such high standards, often comparing ourselves to images we see in the media which have been carefully crafted and edited to the point where even the person in the photo doesn’t look like that in real life (if you don’t believe me try following Beauty.False on Instagram!).

In my experience, yoga can be an amazing tool in our self-care kit on our journey to overcoming body shame and developing a healthier relationship with the way that we look. Yoga is one of the things that helped me the most in recovering from disordered eating and developing self-acceptance and a more positive body image. However there are also some pitfalls along the yoga path that can make us feel worse about ourselves. In this article I want to share 5 ways yoga can help to improve your body image and 5 body image traps to avoid.

  • heart opening yoga - wild thing

How can yoga help with body image?

  1. Yoga teaches us to be still and to turn our attention inwards. Even if it is only for the short time of the practice, we can shut out the outside world and let our true inner voice become louder. This means tuning out the external voices of societies’ beauty standards, other peoples opinions of us and our own interpretation of how we should be and instead letting the inner knowing that we are fine just as we are come through.

  2. Yoga is a great way to get your body moving and improve your strength and flexibility. Heart opening postures such as back bends and cleansing twists can really help to get energy moving through your body making you feel more alive and good in your body. Standing postures help to improve your posture so you can stand tall and confident and feel good about yourself as you move through your day.

  3. Unlike other types of exercise, yoga is not focused on weight loss or burning calories but on uniting movement and breath to create a more calm, positive mindset and a strong, agile body. During my eating disorder recovery, switching out my gym and running sessions for walking and yoga did wonders to change my relationship to exercise. I started to move my body in a way that felt good, pay attention to how I felt and rest when I felt tired instead of pushing through in an attempt to achieve “results”.

  4. Practice of yoga asana (postures) gets us very acquainted with our bodies in all sorts of weird positions! We are forced to look at our belly rolls in forward folds, our thighs in downward dog, our double chin in shoulder stand.. any part that we might feel shame about we are going to come up close and personal with through yoga. And that’s a good thing! Yoga helps us to become used to seeing our bodies and to normalise the things we might not like and cultivate acceptance over time.

  5. Yoga is a personal journey. Yoga encourages not to compare our progress to others but to arrive on the mat each practice ready to try again and observe what our body can do on that day. We realise over time that nothing is constant and progress is not linear. Our bodies change from day to day depending on what is going on in our lives, how much stress we feel, how much sleep we got and also the with the seasons. We learn to accept these fluctuations and even come to love watching things unfold.

5 body image traps in yoga

  1. Beating ourselves up or negative self-talk. As I said, yoga helps us to turn inwards and let our inner voice become louder. But what happens when your mind is ruled by your inner critic? Sometimes we can let this critical voice seep into our practice and tell us we are not good enough, we are weak or our bodies aren’t flexible enough instead of just accepting what is and feeling grateful for the progress we are making. If you catch yourself spiraling down into self-criticism, pause for a moment to ask yourself why things should be different.

  2. Comparison with others. Although yoga encourage us to focus on our own practice, it can be tempting to compare our bodies or progress in yoga with others around us. This is the worst possible thing we can do when we are trying to develop a healthy body image, especially if those others are people we see online and not in real life. I have definitely fallen into this trap, comparing myself to other yoga teachers online and feeling shame for not being as flexible or as beautiful as them, as if this made me any less of a teacher. Simply not true! A home practice can be a great way to explore yoga without the temptation to compare with others around you. There are plenty of diverse teachers offering free online classes that you can try out.

  3. The perfectionist mind-set. If we have a tendency towards perfectionism we can also bring this attitude into our practice having very high expectations of our selves and holding ourselves to extreme standards. Whether that is how our bodies look or being able to achieve the perfect yoga pose, perfectionism harms us more than helping us. It can cause us to injure ourselves because we are being driven by an external ideal rather than focusing on what’s going on inside. I encourage you to let go of the idea of creating a shape with your body and instead focus on lines of energy and sensations within your body.

  4. Feeling shame about our bodies. Again this is the other side of the coin of becoming aware of our bodies, we can also become more aware of the things we don’t like about our bodies. If we are not careful we can bring our body shame onto the mat and instead of accepting what we see we can magnify the things we don’t like and start to pick ourselves apart. If you catch yourself doing this during your practice, take a big deep breath in and as you exhale imagine you are breathing out the toxic belief that is making you feel something about your body is wrong.

  5. Pushing ourselves too hard. There are many different types of yoga, from relaxing yin and restorative practices to more intense ashtanga and vinyasa practice. For anyone with a history of excessive exercise or body image worries, it can be tempting to use the more active, physically challenging practices as a way to continue to try to lose weight or change your body. If you fall into this trap, work on expanding your mind by bringing more pranayama and meditation into your practice as well as challenging your body through asana practice. Set the intention of awareness with every practice and listen to your energy levels and emotions

Over to you…

I hope you enjoyed this article on yoga and body image, please share with anyone else who this could help!

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heart opening yoga - wild thing

Yoga and body image: powerful tools and traps to avoid

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I’m really enjoying teaching my online Yoga for Women classes on Sunday evenings. It’s a really cosy way to end the weekend and to connect with other women whilst we are in lockdown. If you’re interested in joining the class contact me and I will send you the joining details. This week the class theme was about how yoga and body image.

Especially nowadays with social media, so many of us have a distorted view of our bodies. We waste far too much of our precious energy critisising ourselves for the way we look. Constantly holding ourselves to such high standards. Often comparing ourselves to images we see in the media. Forgetting that they have been carefully crafted and edited to the point where even the person in the photo doesn’t look like that in real life. If you don’t believe me try following Beauty.False on Instagram!

Yoga and body image

In my experience, yoga can be an amazing tool in our self-care kit on our journey to overcoming body shame. Practicing yoga can help to develop a healthier relationship with the way that we look. Yoga is one of the things that helped me the most to recover from disordered eating and develop self-acceptance and a more positive body image.

However there are also some pitfalls along the yoga path that can make us feel worse about ourselves. In this article I want to share 5 ways yoga can help to improve your body image and 5 body image traps to avoid.

heart opening yoga - wild thing

How can yoga help improve body image?

  1. Yoga teaches us to be still and to turn our attention inwards. Even if it is only for the short time of the practice, we can shut out the outside world and let our true inner voice become louder. This means tuning out the external voices of societies’ beauty standards, other peoples opinions of us and our own interpretation of how we should be and instead letting the inner knowing that we are fine just as we are come through.

  2. Yoga is a great way to get your body moving and improve your strength and flexibility. Heart opening postures such as back bends and cleansing twists can really help to get energy moving through your body. They make you feel more alive and confident in your body. Standing postures help to improve your posture so you can stand tall and feel good about yourself as you move through your day.

  3. Unlike other types of exercise, yoga is not focused on weight loss or burning calories. We focus on uniting movement and breath to create a more calm, positive mindset and a strong, agile body. During ED recovery, switching out my gym and running sessions for walking and yoga did wonders to change my relationship to exercise. I started to move my body in a way that felt good, pay attention to how I felt and rest when I felt tired instead of pushing through in an attempt to achieve “results”.

  4. Practice of yoga asana (postures) gets us very acquainted with our bodies in all sorts of weird positions! We are forced to look at our belly rolls in forward folds, our thighs in downward dog, our double chin in shoulder stand. Any part that we might feel shame about we are going to come up close and personal with through yoga. And that’s a good thing! Yoga helps us to become used to seeing our bodies. It helps us to normalise the things we might not like and cultivate acceptance over time.

  5. Yoga is a personal journey. Yoga encourages not to compare our progress to others but to arrive on the mat each practice ready to observe what our body can do on that day. We realise over time that nothing is constant and progress is not linear. Our bodies change from day to day depending on what is going on in our lives, how much stress we feel, how much sleep we got and also the with the seasons. We learn to accept these fluctuations and even come to love watching things unfold.

5 yoga and body image traps

  1. Beating ourselves up or negative self-talk. As I said, yoga helps us to turn inwards and let our inner voice become louder. But what happens when your mind is ruled by your inner critic? Sometimes we can let this critical voice seep into our practice and tell us we are not good enough. That we are weak or our bodies aren’t flexible enough instead of just accepting what is and feeling grateful for the progress we are making. If you catch yourself spiraling down into self-criticism, pause for a moment to ask yourself why things should be different.

  2. Comparison with others. Although yoga encourage us to focus on our own practice, it can be tempting to compare ourselves with others. This is the worst possible thing we can do when we are trying to develop a healthy body image. Especially if those others are people we see online and not in real life. I have definitely fallen into this trap! I have compared myself to other yoga teachers online and felt shame for not being as flexible or as beautiful as them. As if this made me any less of a teacher. Simply not true! A home practice can be a great way to explore yoga without the temptation to compare with others around you. There are plenty of diverse teachers offering free online classes that you can try out.

  3. The perfectionist mind-set. If we have a tendency towards perfectionism we can also bring this attitude into our practice. We can have very high expectations of our selves and hold ourselves to extreme standards. Whether that is how our bodies look or being able to achieve the perfect yoga pose, perfectionism harms us more than helping us. It can cause injuries because we are being driven by an external ideal rather than focusing on what’s going on inside. I encourage you to let go of the idea of creating a shape with your body and instead focus sensations within your body.

  4. Feeling shame about our bodies. Again this is the other side of the coin of becoming aware of our bodies, we can also become more aware of the things we don’t like about our bodies. If we are not careful we can bring our body shame onto the mat and instead of accepting what we see we can magnify the things we don’t like and start to pick ourselves apart. If you catch yourself doing this during your practice, take a big deep breath in and as you exhale imagine you are breathing out the toxic belief that is making you feel something about your body is wrong.

  5. Pushing ourselves too hard. There are many different types of yoga, from relaxing yin and restorative practices to more intense ashtanga and vinyasa practice. For anyone with a history of excessive exercise or body image worries, it can be tempting to use the more active, physically challenging practices as a way to continue to try to lose weight or change your body. If you fall into this trap, work on expanding your mind by bringing more pranayama and meditation into your practice as well as challenging your body through asana practice. Set the intention of awareness with every practice and listen to your energy levels and emotions

Over to you…

If you would like to work with me to balance your hormones and improve your health, contact me to set up a free 15 minute discovery call. I am a nutritionist, yoga teacher and women’s wellness coach. We work together using a combination of modalities to support your individual needs and help you to feel your best.

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