This concept has served me well over the years, even more so in the last 1.5years as I’ve experienced pregnancy, childbirth and breastfeeding.
For a long time I didn’t realise that I placed my personal worth and value on my body. If I was the ideal size, I was ‘good enough’ for all the things I wanted… which was mostly just a boyfriend!
But the difficulty was I could never get to that ideal size and weight… and I’d swing in roundabouts between exercising as a punishment for eating wrong, and eating wrong out of frustration that I couldn’t get it right.
Till one day it occurred to me… what if I considered my body ‘mine’ rather than ‘me’. Mine to take care of, mine to be grateful for… rather than ‘me’ who was too fat and a failure in the area of my ‘looks’.
Something shifted. Exercise became a pleasure. I booked an appointment with a nutritionist to learn more about my body and how to take care of it. Learning about diet and exercise became a discovery of how to take care of this body that I owned. I became happier in my skin even before I started to loose weight.
Fast forward a few years and I was pretty nervous during my pregnancy that I was going to gain excessive weight. I shouldn’t have worried, now out the other side, and having experienced the amazing way a women’s body lets a women know if it is hungry (and oh my goodness breastfeeding made me SO hungry), I realise that the same things I learnt when I decided to make my body my possession, would have easily guided me through pregnancy.
Over the years I have learnt to:
- listen to my body’s hungry and full signals
- throw away food when I’m full because eating it doesn’t feed a ‘hungry child in the 3rd world’
- discover my love for outdoor walks and bootcamps (each in their own season)
- ask myself why I want to eat when I’m not hungry
- find replacements for foods that don’t serve my body
- make healthy delicious treats so I’m not punishing myself with no special food
- stop following fad diets and stick to what works for me!
- like my body in every season
What about you? What have you learnt about your unique body makeup over your life?
