7 Things You Need To Know To Have A Healthy Relationship With Your Body

1. It doesn’t make you vain

Nope, appreciating your body, focusing on your good bits and choosing to accept your perceived flaws, doesn’t mean you’re conceited, narcissistic, or shallow. It’s about confidence, so when it feels like everyone else is having a moan about how they look, don’t feel embarrassed for not bashing your bod and joining in.

2. Self comparison sucks

If there’s one thing more detrimental to your self esteem than chastising how you look in the mirror it’s comparing your bod to your besties’, or potentially worse, the girl in the magazine with the killer rack or shapely thighs. Think how bland it would be if we all had the same figures. No, you don’t look like the other girls, and that’s totally cool because it’s what makes you unique.

3. Changing the way you look won’t necessarily change how you feel

Reckon that having slimmer thighs or a more toned tummy will totally overhaul your confidence or the way you feel about yourself? Here’s a heads up; it won’t. True confidence comes from treating your body with the respect it deserves, not obsessively trying to change it.

4. Food is not an indicator of your worth

So you ate an entire multi-pack of Tayto, scoffed the whole tub of Ben ‘n’ Jerry’s or demolished a block of Dairy Milk, does that make you a bad person? NO. Forget the guilt and move on.

5. The number on the label is total BS

No, really it is. Thanks to vanity sizing, different shops are using a mix of modern day sizing and measurements from as far back as the 1950s, so if you get upset when you’re one size in one store, and two sizes bigger in the shop next door, it’s not a reason to go home in bad humour.

6. So is the one on the scale

Body Mass index (the measure of your height to weight ratio) is officially flawed, thanks to the fact that it doesn’t make the distinction between body fat and muscle mass. The lesson? Don’t obsess over that number on the scale; the only true indicator should be how you feel about yourself.

7. Sexy isn’t a size

Does sexy fit into a particular weight range, body shape or clothes size? No, it doesn’t. Whether you’re a size 8 or a 28, 10 stone or 20 stone, sexy really is about more than how you look. Remember that.

• body
• Body Image
• Self Esteem