Channel Your Inner Olympian

As a human in this modern society, it is next to impossible not to have thoughts and opinions about people’s weight and body image. I know that I have struggled with this since I was an early teenager.

My body was changing and I was bombarded with images of what I was supposed to look like. For me, it was the images of the supermodels and I thought we all needed to strive to look like Kate Moss. When I would look in the mirror and my body didn’t conform to this image, I would beat myself up and say the most terrible things to myself. And that negative self-talk persisted into my entire adult life. Until recently.

So what changed? Well, it turns out what you say to yourself does matter. Through self-reflection and coaching, I realized that you can’t create your healthiest self by berating, shaming, and judging yourself. It just doesn’t work that way. And even if you manage to change your outward appearance, you are still left with that inner critic who will go on to find the next reprehensible flaw, and the cycle repeats. But there is hope because there is another way. You can create a new dialogue for yourself. Now, I’m not going to say you should just love yourself and your body just the way it is. Except that you should. But it is hard to jump from being supercritical to absolute love for your body. There is however a way to baby-step your way to this goal.

First, figure out what you are trying to create.

It can be a number on the scale, but I have found that just having a goal weight was not enough for me. I had to truly envision how I wanted to feel in my body. What is the healthiest, most authentic body you can have? Was there a time in your life when you felt comfortable in your body? If not, what might that look like? For me, it was when I first started doing distance running. I had this one run where I felt strong, fit, and capable like everything was exactly the way it should be. I have also had this feeling when I have been consistent with my yoga practice and I felt like my body was a natural extension of myself. So do I have a number on the scale that I would like to see? Of course. But the more important goal is to feel strong, fit, and capable in my body.

The next step is to figure out how you can create that feeling in your body now before anything on your outward appearance has changed.

I admit when I first started to make healthier changes in my life I didn’t feel strong, capable, and fit. But there were plenty of examples of women around me who embodied this. So I decided to borrow their thoughts or at least what I imagined their thoughts to be. When I was working out I would think, I’m just like Jennifer Garner in Alias training to be a badass CIA agent. Or when I was watching this ballet show on Netflix (did I mention I have really bad taste in TV) I would channel my inner badass ballerina. And now, during the Olympics, I am channeling my inner badass Simone Biles and Suni Lee. Because when I am thinking like Jennifer, Simone, or Suni, I am not telling myself that I am pathetic for not being better, I am telling myself that I am already strong and capable and I can do this. So then, I don’t skip the workout. I continue to push myself. And I actually end up enjoying my workout so much more. 

So who is your Olympian? What might they be thinking as they train and perform? Book a 30-minute free consultation to see how you can use those thoughts to embrace and become your most authentic and healthiest self?