Body Image and Dieting: How to start loving yourself

Welcome back to the podcast, guys. Thank you so much for being here. If you are a brand new listener, hey, hi, hello, welcome to the family. And if you are tuning in as a regular listener, I want to challenge you right now to take a screenshot of wherever you're listening to this episode of the podcast and share it to your Instagram stories. Tag me and just share something about why you love the podcast or why you continue to listen. Um, you can tag me at _samanthadaily or the podcast account, which is Makeshift Happen Podcast. Or you can simply copy the link to this episode and send it to a friend or a family member in a text message because we are well on our way to 100,000 downloads. And as you guys know, if you've tuned in, it is my goal to reach that by the time the podcast is 1 year old. So all of the shares that we can get, uh, the more chances that we have that people are going to tune in and increase those downloads. So if you guys want to help me reach that goal of 100K in 1 year, which is up in July, then go ahead and share this episode or one of your favorite episodes with someone that you know that you think would resonate with this type of content or find it useful. So that being said, uh, let's go ahead and kind of dive into today's topic of discussion. I'm going to be talking about body image and the way that we see ourselves and our relationship to ourselves, which I've definitely talked about on the show before, but some things have just come up recently with clients and even with myself, and I just thought with summer coming if you live in the Northern Hemisphere. This is a time where these issues or mindsets tend to surface a lot, so I wanted to dig into them and just share some perspective and help anybody out there that is in that space of not feeling super connected or loving towards their body. I know it's a long journey and it's, uh, it's a challenging one for sure. So any insight that I can share that might help you shift your perspective in any way, I'm super, super excited to do that. Before we jump into that, I do want to let you guys know that this month in May, I'm going to be teaching a free masterclass. So if you've ever come to one of my masterclasses before, you know that they are super deep, super fun, super involved. The last one that I did, I think, was the manifestation masterclass, and we went— oh my God, we went deep on that masterclass. And then I hosted something called the Self-Love Experience actually after that, so that would be the most recent one. And we did so much embody— embodiment work. We did a lot of tapping, we did inner child visualizations. So I really love to make my masterclasses super tangible and information that you can take with you and implement and make shifts and changes in your life right away. So I'm planning to do that again with this one. This month's free masterclass is going to be called 5 success secrets to become magnetic AF. So I'm going to be sharing with you guys the 5 things that I find have been the most crucial in my journey to creating success and fulfillment and happiness in my life and career, and how utilizing these tools and practices really helps me stay in this energy of magnetism where I'm able to manifest things with ease and just continue to attract amazing opportunities and good experience and money and success and love and fulfillment and all these things into my life. So I'm super excited for this masterclass, and I hope that you guys will come and join and attend and jump on live so that I can see you and talk to you and chat with you and answer your questions. So all the details for the masterclass stay— will be revealed soon. So stay up to date with me on Instagram and also via my emails. So if you're not on my email list yet, you can go to samanthadaily.com and just sign up to be a member of the Monday Motivation family. I send out a little inspiring love note every Monday, and also every month I provide journaling prompts and insight about the month ahead. We do a vibe check. I help you set your intentions. So, and you'll get a free journaling guide when you sign up anyway, so there's lots of benefits to sign up. But that is a good way to stay up to date on the masterclass and everything that is happening with that. I'm also gonna leave the link in the description to this episode where you can directly sign up for the masterclass, and you'll receive an email once you sign up with all the details about how to join and where and when it is and all of that. So if you already know, you're like, fuck yes, I want to do this, I want to have this like free experience and, and learn whatever I can, then scroll to the description of this episode right now and click the link to join the masterclass and just enter your name and your email and you'll be all signed up and you will stay completely informed on how, when, and where to join us for the live training. So all of that, I think those are all of my announcements. I, I don't know if you guys can tell from like this episode, but I'm feeling very energized today, which is new and refreshing for me because the past week I was super, super tired and drained. All I wanted to do was sleep, but I had a lot of work on my plate and I actually worked several 10-hour days in a row. Which was a lot. And then I slept a lot over the long holiday weekend that we had, so that was good. But I'm, I'm back and I'm feeling like I'm in my vibe and I'm on fire. And there's so many exciting things coming this month, you guys. Okay, I'm just gonna tell you, like, From Burnt Out to Badass is coming back. Like, I don't know why it has to be such a big secret, but it's coming back and it's totally fucking brand new. It's a whole new platform. It's totally rebranded. It's a whole new vibe. It's a group coaching program this time, which means we're going to get on live calls together with all the women who are in this round. We're going to do trainings, we're going to do embodiment work, we're going to do live meditations and visualizations. I'm going to do tapping with you guys. We're going to do live Q&As. It's going to be so freaking awesome. Like, this is the best thing. That I've ever conjured up in my mind and created within From Burnt Out to Badass. So this is, this is gonna be the 6th time that I've run this course. And every time I try to uplevel it in some way, and I am just so pumped for this round. I honestly, like every time I say this, because like I said, I try to uplevel it a little bit every time. So every time I create a new round, I'm like, oh my God, this is the best one yet. This is the best one yet. But really, I'm so excited for this round because one of the main feedbacks that I always get about the course is that, you know, because I always ask my clients at the end, like, what did you love and what do you think could have been improved, or what would you change? And I think the only thing that people have ever said to me that they would have liked to see different or change is the opportunity to meet the other women and have more interaction with them. Because up until now, we haven't had any group calls together. We haven't got on phone together. We haven't jumped on Zoom together. So it's really just been these women going through the course and then having their one-on-one calls with me. And then they can obviously connect, uh, in whatever ways that they can inside of the Facebook group. But you know, Facebook groups are sometimes hard to create that deep level of connection between people. So I'm so excited to facilitate this in a new way and really allow these women to create like a sisterhood moving through this experience. We're going to be moving through it all at the same time. And again, I really think this is going to help people stay on track with the program too, because every week we're kind of going to be going through the same topics together all at once, sharing our learnings, unpacking questions, diving into it as a whole group. So this is going to create much more accountability, which I know is something that people are really, really looking for. They want to be held accountable, they want to stay on track, they need a timeline, they need someone kind of putting that fire under their bum to be like, this is what we're doing this week. Be on it, or, you know, you're gonna kind of get left behind. So that's the vibe that is coming later this month. Um, I'm not going to share dates or anything yet just because there's a lot in the works as I've been shifting and changing the whole vibe and platform and setup of the program. So yeah, um, kind of went on a tangent there, but love you guys. May is going to be a big month. I'm in my energy, I'm in my sauce right now, if you can't tell. So without further ado, let's go ahead and jump into this episode. Welcome to the Makeshift Happen Podcast. I'm your host, Samantha Daly, entrepreneur, life coach, and your no BS bestie here to bring you all things mindset, manifestation, and personal development. This podcast is designed to help you expand your mind and uplevel your life. So turn the volume up and roll the windows down if you're along for the ride. Let's go make shift happen! So I knew that I wanted to talk about this topic today, but then very serendipitously this quote popped up on my Instagram feed and I just thought it was so perfect, so I'm gonna share it with you guys. It's the vibe of the day for May 4th, which is the day that I'm recording this. And it says, remember, your grass will never get greener by focusing on someone else's lawn. And sometimes you might compare your lawn against someone else's without even realizing that their grass isn't even real. Refocus your energy on your blessings, goals, and growth. So obviously this is talking about comparison, right? And I think one of the biggest struggles that we run into as women with body image is this idea of comparison, right? Because what are we measuring our body against? We're obviously measuring it up against something else. So even if— and maybe you, maybe you don't feel like you are comparing that much in terms of like looking at specific photographs of people and trying to be like them or trying to achieve a certain body type that somebody else has. Like, maybe that type of comparison doesn't resonate with you, but when you really boil it down, any issue that we have with our own body likely comes from comparison because we've learned somewhere along the way that the way that we look is not good enough, and so we need to look differently, right? So like, what made us think that we need to look differently? Obviously seeing some other type of body getting praised or being seen as beautiful or sexy or, you know, worthy in some way or desirable, like all those things, right? But it all comes back to us comparing our body in some way or another to somebody else's body, or the, the body ideals that are perpetuated in society, right? So, you know, I was having a conversation with a client recently, and we were talking about her journey with her body and wanting to get to a place of feeling more comfortable. And she was telling me how a few years ago, when she went through a really bad breakup, she had lost a lot of weight, obviously without trying to like be fit and lose weight. It was sort of an unhealthy weight loss. And a friend of hers said, oh my gosh, you, you look like you have cancer. And that statement like really stuck with her and basically was like burned into her brain. I mean, imagine being told that you look like you have cancer. Like, that's, that's awful. And so she started to question, you know, like, 'Do I look sick? What about me looks ill?' And obviously she was moving through a really tough time in her life where she was feeling depressed and lost and uncertain. And so all of that, all of that was a big factor in what was going on in, in her body. And so she was a lot thinner then, but she didn't look good to herself, and she didn't look good to other people even, right? So then it's like, because sometimes we think, you know, if I could just lose 5 pounds, if I could just lose 10 pounds, if I could just, you know, look like this or have less fat on my thighs or have a flat stomach or whatever, then I would feel a lot more comfortable and I would be happier and people would find me attractive and I would find myself attractive. But it's not actually the amount of fat or weight on your body that's going to finally make you feel comfortable and confident. Because as we can see with this example of my client, she was in a place in her life where she had lost a lot of weight. You know, she probably did have a flat stomach. Maybe she had skinny arms and a thigh gap and all the other stupid shit that we want, right? But she didn't feel confident. She didn't feel attractive. She didn't feel sexy. She didn't feel desirable. And the people around her weren't seeing her that way either, because it's very clear to me now in my journey into a lot of, you know, other coaches in the space and women that I get to talk to and interview and all of that, you know, in this work that I do and in the mastermind that I'm in and these other amazing people that I get to connect with and hear their stories, like they're all so similar and it's all the same shit. And so something that I know to be true and that I've just realized so much in the past couple of years is that your body is a reflection of your internal state, and it's not actually your body that's going to make you feel confident, comfortable, happy, sexy, desirable, but it's your relationship to your body that's going to make you feel that way. Okay.

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And it's also your relationship to your body that's going to allow you to facilitate physical changes like weight loss, if that's something that you're working towards. So it all relies on this one thing. It all depends on our relationship to ourself. And I know that that's so hard to believe when you're in a place of feeling uncomfortable in your body, or not at home in your body, or feeling ugly in your body, or fat in your body, or however you feel in your body right now, when you're in that place, it's so hard to believe that if you could just change the way that you think and feel about yourself, that the rest would fall into place. Like, that feels like such a fairy tale. It feels fake. It feels non-scientific. It's so hard to buy into that and to believe it and to pursue it. With the energy in which you really do have to pursue it in order to see results. Because we get so stuck feeling like calories in versus calories out, the diet is what's going to fix me, I just need to be more motivated, I just need to be more committed, I just need to like go back and restart and find a new diet, or find the diet that works for me, or go back to counting my calories, or be stricter with healthier foods, or not eat sweets, or not eat carbs. Like all these things that we've been fed, we lean on them so much quicker. We believe them so much quicker. We jump to them so much quicker than we're willing to jump to the mindset work and the self-love work. Because it almost feels like the mindset and self-love work is a— maybe it's a little bit more airy-fairy and you don't believe that it'll actually work, Or B, it feels like it's a longer process and you really, really just want fast results. I think those are the two main reasons that people probably avoid getting to the root cause of the problem and actually doing the work to heal their relationship with themselves so that they can have a body that they feel comfortable in because they think that the other stuff, right, the diets, the workouts, the personal trainers, the this, that, the other thing is going to make it happen faster because it's backed by science, right? Calories in versus calories out, right? And I'm not saying that calories in versus calories out is wrong. Like, I, I get that. I know that that's real. But what I'm saying is that that doesn't work for you if you, on top of that, have guilt and stress and self-hatred. Because I've done that and I know a lot of people in this space and in this work and other coaches that have done that as well. They've done all the diets, they've done all the workouts, they've been in the gym every single day, they've been consistent, they've done the calories in versus calories out, they've counted all their macros and they still didn't get where they wanted to go because they didn't have a healthy relationship with themselves. Or with food or with exercise. So it's not to say that those other elements don't help. Obviously, eating foods that nourish your body and that are healthy for you and that are going to provide you with a good source of micro and macronutrients is what we all are kind of striving to do and what we want to do more of. Yes, okay, great. Obviously, moving our body is important, right? We're not going to build muscle and release fat if we're sitting on our butts all day. Like, no one is denying those basic facts of science. But what I am saying is that there's a missing element in, in the way that most of us approach this journey towards living in a body that we feel comfortable in and that we can love. And that element is your relationship to yourself. And how you feel, think, and talk about your body to your body. The emotional aspect that is involved in getting where you want to go with your body is so large. I would even venture to say that, you know, a lot of people use 80/20 as like this really healthy ratio for a lot of things in life. I would even venture to say that it's probably 80/20 in terms of your emotional health and your relationship to yourself, and 20% like what you're eating and how you're moving your body. Because raise your hand if you've ever tried a diet or tried a workout regimen or gone to the gym a bunch or cut your calories and still not succeeded or not felt happy and confident in, in your body and how you look and all that. Like, raise your hand. Raise your fucking hand. It's literally everybody. Like, I swear, I wish I could see you guys listening to this because I feel like it has to be everybody that's listening to this. Every woman has gone through at least a short phase in her life where she's felt uncomfortable in the body that she's in and has done something to try to change it and felt like it didn't succeed or that it failed. And you may have other times where you feel like it did work, but then did that last? Like, how long did it last when you did the diet or the workouts or whatever and you were like, oh my gosh, I lost the weight, I feel great? How long did that last until you ended up back in a place where you're like, ugh, I don't like the way I'm looking, I don't feel confident, I don't feel happy, I need to change this, I need to start over, I need to get back on track. Like, how many times are we going to do this whole let's get back on track bullshit, right? So if anything, I just want this episode to be something that opens your mind and maybe sparks a conversation with other women in your life or sparks an inner dialog for you or gives you something to journal on or explore more deeply in your own practice of what is your relationship to yourself and to your body? And what has that looked like in the past? And how have you tried to change it or manipulate it or improve it? And where has that worked and not worked for you? And where do you feel like you're at right now, you know? And then reflecting on this idea, this concept that I talked about before of how your body is a reflection of your internal state. You know, my client who was feeling really depressed and going through a hard breakup, she lost tons of weight, but she didn't look good and she didn't feel good because her body was a reflection of what was going on in her internal world, which was lots of heartbreak and turmoil.

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And in my own experience, you know, my body has very much been a reflection of my internal state and my relationship to it. When I was trying the hardest to lose weight and I was being really consistent in the gym with workouts, and I ate a salad for lunch every single day a protein oatmeal for breakfast every single day and some sort of like source of protein and vegetables for dinner every night. And I cut out sweets and I cut out carbs. And I was doing that. I was doing the things. I was doing all the things that on paper say this is how you lose weight and you look good and you feel hot. Like I was doing all of that. And let me tell you, I did not feel hot. I did not feel good. I felt the worst that I've ever felt about my body. And even though I was doing all those things, my body was a reflection of my internal state. I could work out until I was blue in the face. I could have continued eating those salads for 3 more months, but if I didn't fix what was going on inside of me, my body still would have been reflection of how I felt on the inside, which was like shit, right? I saw myself as looking like shit because I felt like shit about myself on the inside. And I was carrying extra weight because you know what? Your body doesn't release weight when you are stuck hating yourself, because hating yourself takes a lot of energy and it puts you into fight or flight for the majority of your days. You're constantly thinking about food or thinking about how your clothes fit or thinking about the vacation that you need to go that's giving you anxiety because you don't want to wear a bikini, or you feel stressed when you're shopping because nothing fits or nothing looks good, or you look at old pictures and you feel sad or upset that you don't look like that anymore. You're constantly being thrown into fight or flight, into the stress response of the body, which is— when that happens, your body is like, oh my gosh, we're in danger. And when your body is is expecting danger or trying to ward off any potential threat that might be coming, you tense up and your body literally holds on to fat and digests slower. Your metabolism slows down when you are in chronic stress or fight or flight, which is why people that try to hate themselves into getting skinny don't— it doesn't ever work out. And even if they do lose some weight, they'll put it right back on. As soon as they let their guard down, they'll put it right back on. It's not sustainable. It doesn't last because your body is a reflection of your internal state. I'm telling you guys, I know there's some of you that might find this really, really hard to believe and it feels scary to like let go of the intense workouts and the dieting and all of that stuff in order to get to a place of feeling comfortable and confident in your body. But until you do the inner work of figuring out how to be okay with yourself and how to accept yourself and how to love yourself and how to change your belief systems and your thought processes about your body and your self-worth and the way that you show up in the world and what you represent and what you're able to have and achieve and do and be. Until you change that, you will be in this cycle forevermore of sometimes I feel good, sometimes I feel bad. I'm on a diet. I'm not on a diet. I'm feeling thin. I'm feeling fat. It's like we ride this roller coaster for so many years and there, there just has to be a point where we wake the fuck up and we're like, you know what? This actually doesn't fucking work. 'Cause how many times have we tried this before? This is the thing too, is like we get so lost in it that we can't even see the forest for the trees. Like summer's coming and you're seeing ads for bathing suits and bikinis or people on the beach or models or influencers or whatever, and suddenly you're like, oh my God, I got to get my stuff together, I got to get ready, I got to get prepared, I got to get— and this like, this This still happens to me and I have to check myself and I have to switch those thoughts and practice my reframing process and tune back in to my higher self and my inner wisdom and the love that I now have cultivated for my body that I know is there. But we're always going to be pulled by the ego. There's always going to be things that trigger us or tempt us or try to lead us down those paths that we've been down before that we know don't work. Right? So this still happens to me, and I just have to come back home to myself and know what is true and not be deceived by that enticing idea of, oh, I'm just gonna get back on track, which means heavy workouts, um, or, you know, doing some sort of diet, or only having smoothies and salads and vegetables, right? Like, I just— I know better now. And even though those thoughts may come into my head and I may be tempted by those things, I know that that's not the solution. I know that that doesn't fucking work because I've done it before. I've tried it before. It doesn't work. The thing that helped me reach a place in my mental health and in my physical health where I was like, wow, I feel really great, like my body looks good, it feels good, I love myself, I feel connected to my body, I cherish myself, I honor myself— the thing that helped me get there was never a diet, diet, or a workout. It was yoga, affirmations, meditation, and mindset work. That was what I did. And once I did that, I felt like I unlocked this secret key of like, oh my God, I actually love myself. And once you love yourself you can't, you can't go back to like hating yourself. Once you truly love yourself, you can't go back to hating yourself no matter what changes or fluctuations happen. So my weight changes, it goes up and down. I can tell from the way I feel and from the way I look, but I don't really weigh myself. Although I used to weigh myself every single day when I hated myself and when I wasn't happy with my body and when all I wanted was to lose 10 pounds. Yeah, I weighed myself every day and it ruined my— it ruined my day, it ruined my week, ruined my months, ruined like a solid year of my mood essentially. So I don't, I don't, I don't do that anymore. And I would highly recommend that you don't do that either. You know, obviously people, everybody is on their own health journey, so this is not health advice, it's not medical advice, but if you're in a place where you don't, for medical reasons or personal reasons, need to be weighing yourself every day, I would highly, highly recommend that you don't do that anymore and that you explore what it feels like to just not know and to just do things not for a number but to start to do things for a feeling. So I feel like I got on a little bit of a tangent because what I was gonna say before is that summer's coming, right? And we see these ads, we see all the shops selling bikinis, we see these different bodies, we see people around us, and we start to be like, okay, I need to get back on track. And it's really easy to fall back in. It's like the, the, the apple, like the poisonous apple. It's like, it's so easy to reach for that and to be like, okay, yeah, I'm just gonna do that and that's gonna fix it. And this time will be different because this time I'm gonna be more motivated, and because this time I'm not gonna quit. Yada, yada, yada, yada, yada. It's so easy to want to reach for that poisonous apple when you know, probably deep down somewhere in your inner knowing and your intuition, you know, like, that shit's not going to work because if it was going to work, it would have worked by now. You know, you trying it the thousands of times you tried it before would have done something and it would have clicked by now. So if you're in that place, this episode is for you, and I want to honor that you're in that place because I've been there, and I know a lot of people that have been there. I think probably every woman can relate to being at some point in her life in a place of not feeling the most comfortable or confident in her body. So you're definitely not alone. I want to honor your experience that that's where you are. And I want to tell you that it's possible to love yourself. And it doesn't require a certain number on the scale or a certain size in your jeans or a certain bikini without cellulite or stretch marks or perfectly airbrushed skin and the roundest, plumpest butt ever. All these things that we're sold, that we feel like we need in order to finally love ourselves— I'm here to tell you that you don't need them. And it's okay to want those things. It's totally fine to pursue whatever version of your body excites you the most. There's nothing wrong with wanting to lose weight. There's nothing wrong with wanting to build a booty. There's nothing wrong with wanting to have tan, smooth skin, or whatever it is, right? There's nothing wrong with any of that. The only thing that's wrong is if we believe that that's the only way for us to be happy and the only way for us to love and accept ourselves. So my body has gone through its own changes and all the different seasons of my life. You know, building a business has been a challenge for me in my relationship to my body because there's been times where I just— I can't really focus on movement and nutrition in the way that I once could. Like, I don't have the space to explore new recipes and cook all these, you know, homemade, really healthy meals, or go to the gym 5 times a week. Like, there's lots of times in the past couple of years where that just hasn't been a thing for me. It just hasn't been possible for me. And I have to accept the ebbs and flows of my life and my body for what they are and still stay true to knowing that I'm worthy and that I'm lovable and that nothing is permanent and that I'm okay with who I am and where I'm at. Like, it just— and I don't think I would have been able to do that. I wouldn't have been able to be okay with not moving as much or not focusing on eating healthy foods as much several years ago, you know, before I really felt like I created that true connection to self and established my, my own self-love. I, I wouldn't have handled it the same way. I would have been like, oh my gosh, this is, this is awful. I have to do everything all the time at once. I have to work 10-hour days and build this business and go to the gym and do my recipes and do my protein shakes and do all this because I can't let anything slip. I can't let anything slide. Because the truth is, I used to be in a place where that was really— my worth was really based in what I could achieve and how I looked. And so I would have I, I would have handled things probably a lot differently trying to build a business and stay on top of all of these things like movement and nutrition in the same way that I once had before I was an entrepreneur and before I had all these different new responsibilities and duties and tasks and clients and so many different things to take care of. Right. So I'm so grateful that I was able to kind of go on that journey and create that sense of self-love within myself. Before really starting my business, because I think it would have— I mean, I don't think, I know it would have been impossible. It would have been fucking hard to try to be perfect in all those areas all at once. Like, who can do that? And that's the thing, is like, we're expecting ourselves to be this weird, like, superwoman who is doing all the things and juggling all these plates and being perfect in every single area all the time. And it's like, that's just not how life works. Like, I teach this to my clients and we work on this a lot, especially when we talk about, you know, cultivating habits and, and building this, this relationship to self. It's like you can't be in all areas of your life 100% at all times. And that's like a hard pill to swallow for some people, especially those of us that suffer with like perfectionism or placing our worth in how we show up or what we're able to achieve. Like, that was a huge part of my story. So if I hadn't established that sense of self-love and connection to self before wanting to build this business and do all the things that I'm doing now, like, that would have fallen on top of me like a ton of bricks. Because it's, you know, we just can't be in all areas of our life showing up at 100% capacity all the time. There has to be a natural ebb and flow, give and take. Some things in some seasons, they get put on the back burner, and that doesn't mean that we give up on them or we give 0% of our attention to them, but it just means that they're not at the forefront. They're not the most important thing in our life at that moment. They're not the thing that we need to be focused on in order to create momentum and forward motion in our life, right? Maybe health and fitness is the thing that needs your attention right now, and maybe it's not. But that's for every one of us individually to determine and be okay with the fact that you're not going to be showing up in all areas of your life at 100% all the time. Like, we have to start to prioritize. What is my main goal right now? Where am I going? Where do I want to get to? And what areas of my life need my attention, energy, money, focus and time in order to make that happen? And what other areas of my life can kind of take a backseat just for a while? Not for forever, just for a while, right? I teach this inside of From Burnt Out to Badass, and we, we dive into this really deeply with some specific exercises around your core values and what you care about most in life. And then we rearrange your priorities, and I help you put them into a specific hierarchy so that you can see really clearly what are the parts of your life that you're gonna need to go hard on, and what are the parts of your life that you're gonna need to let just sit on the back burner for a second, right? Which again, it doesn't mean that you're getting rid of them or you're not, you're not engaged with them at all, but we're just allowing for this natural give-and-take in our life, and we're not trying to to overexert ourselves or show up so much to the extreme in all areas. So I hope this is resonating for you guys, and you're just having this opportunity to kind of think about where this fits for you and what are your goals right now in life. What are you really trying to achieve, and what parts of your life, what core values are going to help you get there, right? Where do you need to like really like put the throttle on in your life? And what are the parts that can just kind of take a rest for a second? And they can sort of be there sprinkled in where they fit, but not as the main focus and also not a source of guilt or stress when you're not showing up 100% in that area. And you know, in terms of doing this deeper work, this self-work to kind of repair the relationship with your body image and how you feel about yourself and your relationship to self. I work on this a lot with my clients inside From Burnt Out to Badass sort of indirectly. And I think a lot of people are really surprised by the results that they get in terms of their body image and self-love coming outside of the course, or the program rather, because there's not any one specific module or chapter or video that's like titled body image or weight loss or anything like that, right? Like, we don't specifically cover it in that way because again, your body is a reflection of your internal state. So when you go on this journey inside of this program with me, you start to completely shift and change your belief system and your mindset and your way of thinking and viewing yourself and the world. And you alter your internal state. And when you alter your internal state, your body starts to change and shift, and so does your relationship to it and the way that you see it. So I have a lot of clients come through this course and they're like really surprised at the level of acceptance that they've gained towards their body and this newfound sense of self-love of, because we don't necessarily cover body, quote unquote, as a module, but because of all of the other inner work that we do, it happens for them as a byproduct. But so one of my clients who is currently moving through the, the program and finishing up this last, most recent round, we were talking about her relationship to her body. And, you know, she's trying to understand like the why behind why she feels disconnected and why she doesn't really love herself. And so something that I wanted to share with you guys about this is when you're trying to do this deeper work of uncovering the why and getting to a place of accepting yourself more, I think, you know, it— there doesn't always have to be this like one specific incident or childhood trauma or comment that somebody made that completely switched everything for you and highly impacted your relationship to yourself and your body. Although that is the case for some people, but it doesn't have to be that way. You know, sometimes it's just an accumulation of all of the subliminal messaging that we receive growing up because it's everywhere. It's all around us. Everything that we see, every photo, ad, movie, model, TV show, Instagram, everything is telling us that being skinny means that you're attractive, that you're sexy, that you're desirable, that you're all these things, right? So that can be enough to create this disconnection with ourselves and our bodies. So you don't have to go looking for one specific incident, although you may have one and you may come across one, and that's totally valid as well. Another place that I would encourage you guys to look that I was telling my client as well is looking at your relationship, or your mother's relationship rather, to her own body. So our mothers, our— as women, our same-sex role model influences a lot of the way that we learn to perceive and see our body. So consider, you know, what your mother's relationship was to her body when you were growing up, and maybe any comments that she would make about her body, or if she was always dieting, or, you know, if she was super confident in her body, or if body was just like not even an important thing, right? Which I think would probably be like best case scenario is when the body is just super neutral and it's not even looked at as like this separate thing that needs to be fixed or changed or glorified in any way. So look at— go back and try to, try to think about what your mom's relationship to her own body was when you were growing up. And we receive a lot of subtle cues from our parents, so it doesn't even have to be specific conversations that you had with her or direct comments about it, but we notice how our mothers notice themselves. And that informs us really deeply on how we should feel about ourselves and our bodies. So that's another place to look if you are someone who's on this journey and wanting to uncover more of the, the deeper why behind your disconnection to your body or your relationship to yourself. Another place to look is with sports. So a lot of us will have played sports growing up, and you may have had certain sports icons that you looked up to or certain girls on your team or coaches. And there's a lot of talk about body and strength and food and exercise and all of that when you get into sports as a child, and then obviously as like an adolescent and a teenager and all through high school. So those are like experiences that sometimes shape how we feel about our bodies and what we think we need to achieve or be or do in order to be rewarded or accepted and all of that. So you can look into sports if that was a thing for you in your life. And then another interesting exercise is to think about when was the first time that you viewed your body as being separate from yourself and then began to judge it from there. So this is super interesting, and it's sort of like nuanced. So I hope you guys are following me with this, but it's like, you know, when we're born until someday with some, some situation, like until then, until something happens that makes us realize that our body is sort of like this object, or makes it— I guess not realize, makes us think that our body is like this object that is separate from ourselves. Until then, like, we are just one whole piece. We're just one whole being. We just identify as our whole selves. Like, this is me. We don't actually see our body as being this separate thing that can be potentially good or bad or need to be fixed in some way. Until someone else demonstrates that to us or shows that to us or teaches it to us, either explicitly or implicitly through their own behavior and their own conversation about their body. So when I did this exercise for myself, I really thought about a time that has kind of like stuck into my memory pretty— it's like pretty ingrained. So if you find— if you come up against a memory like that, like, definitely go deeper there, because any random memory that gets ingrained into your long-term memory is a good indicator that, like, it meant something to you at that time, or something may have shifted for you at that time. But I remember being in a dance class and sitting down with my friends. We were all sitting in a circle, and one of the girls was talking about how when she sat down, she had, like, rolls in her stomach. And I thought, huh, that's weird, I've never thought about that before. And I did the same, and I kind of slouched myself forward and sat down, and I was like, oh, me too. And she was like, yeah, but your rolls are just skin, mine's fat. And I was like, huh. And I just, I had just never thought about that. I had literally never thought about what happens to my stomach when I sit down comfortably. And I remember in that moment like realizing, oh, there's like a way that your stomach can look good and there's a way that your stomach can look bad. And I think for me that was probably one of the first experiences where I really started to believe or, or see my body as being this thing that was separate from myself that I needed to take care of and manipulate and make sure that it looked good or that it was right or that it was correct. Act in whatever way that, that meant to me at that time, right? So think about if there's any— if you can go back and really pull out any moment in your childhood where you first became aware of like, oh, people see their bodies as separate from themselves and they judge them, right? Like, my body is something that can be judged. By myself and by others. It can be classified as good or bad, right or wrong, skinny or fat, beautiful or not beautiful. Like, try to find one of those moments for yourself, and that can be a really illuminating exercise and just something to help you go a little bit deeper about where your relationship to your body started to sort of unravel. And then And something that I told my client was like, also, you know, we don't need to get so caught up in this idea that we, we need to know exactly why we don't love ourselves fully in order to be able to love ourselves fully or repair that relationship with our body. Like, you don't need to know, oh, I don't like myself because when I was 4 this was happened, or when I was playing soccer growing up this happened, or When I was on the cheerleading team, someone said this to me, or, you know, my sister looked this way and I looked this way. So we compared ourselves or our family members compared us. Like, some people will have those types of experiences, but you don't need to know the exact why in order to start to repair your relationship to your body. All you have to do is continue practicing being compassionate and loving towards yourself until it becomes becomes easy, right? Everything in life is hard until we practice it enough that it becomes easy. Walking is hard as fuck when you're like 1, you know? But then it's like second nature. You don't have to think about it anymore, right? Driving a car is really challenging when you've never driven a car before, but then you can drive yourself all the way home and not even realize what gears you were shifting or where you were turning or if you had your blinker on because your subconscious mind drives you home for you. You know, everything in life is hard until you practice it enough that it becomes easy. So you can practice being kind to yourself and being compassionate to yourself and being loving to yourself enough so that it becomes easy and it just becomes natural and it becomes autopilot. The same way that driving a car was really hard and then someday you drive yourself all the way home and you don't even realize how you got there, because you weren't consciously thinking about any of the turns or any of those actions, your subconscious mind can create that programming of self-love for you so that you don't have to think so hard about, let me be compassionate to myself, let me be loving to myself, let me accept myself, let me honor my body, let me take care of my body, right? You won't have to put so much intentional thought behind it. Because it will become part of your programming the same way that it does with driving a car. But like, we have to show up to learn how to do it first, right? We have to show up every day, every week, and create those thoughts and mental patterns and run those routes in our brain that are teaching us, this is how we feel about ourselves now, this is the way I choose to see myself. This is the gratitude that I hold for my body, right? The more and more that we do that, the more deeply it becomes ingrained into our psyche, and the easier it is to reach for that than to reach for the criticism or the self-hatred or the extreme workouts or dieting or whatever else it is. Yeah. So your body is a reflection of your internal state. And if you're not happy with the way that your body looks right now, it's very highly likely that you're also not happy with the way that you internally feel about your body. And sometimes we think it's one way, like the way that our body looks is what's causing us to have this disrupted internal state, but I would argue to say that the internal state is what's causing you to have the physical body that's then reinforcing this idea that you're not good enough or that you need to be different somehow to feel better about yourself. So if we can start at the root, which is the internal state, then we can impact more deeply and more sustainably the external part, which is our physical body. Right? Your physical body will start to change when you change your mind about how you feel about your body and how you feel about yourself, and above all, how you feel about your own self-worth. Like, at the end of the day, all the body stuff comes back to self-worth and how worthy or unworthy we feel as we are, right? So this is so much of the work that I do inside of my program, From Burnt Out to Badass, with my clients. Again, we do this sort of indirectly by doing 3 months of deep personal development and inner work. And a lot of the women that come in having complained about their relationship to self or their body image, they come out feeling better about those things and feeling rejuvenated and restored and like they have a sense of self-love for themselves. But not because we focused on food or exercise, but because we focused on on the relationship to self. We focused on their internal world. And as a result of their internal world changing, it became reflected in their external world. And maybe that meant real physical changes on their body, like weight loss, but also the external effect of how they just— how they saw themselves, how they viewed themselves in the mirror that shifted and changed. So I want to leave you guys with the hope that it is possible to love yourself and to create a deep sense of connection and reverence for your body. And something that I want you to practice after you listen to this episode is to practice holding different parts of your body with both of your hands and just feeling how grateful you are that you have this functioning, perfectly good part of your body. I like to do this in the morning when I'm either taking a shower or going to the bathroom, like just those few moments where I can sit with myself and be like, wow, it's a miracle that I'm awake, that I'm alive, that my body is healthy and working and pulsing, and all of my organs are tip-top shape doing what they're supposed to do. You know, my, my intestines and my are whole and are healthy. Like, I can actually go to the bathroom right now. I don't need to, like, poop through a bag or be fed through a tube. Like, what a miracle it is to live in this capable body. And just practice holding different parts of your body. So you can hold your arms, you can put your hands over your heart, you can hold your face, you can hold your, your belly and your womb, you can hold your legs, your thighs. Like, hold any part of your body that you feel like you may have created some sort of resentment towards and just remember, like, what a fucking miracle it is that you have this body to live in, that you have this vessel to carry your soul through life, and that it's working, and that it's healthy, and that it never gives up on you. Like, holy shit, our brain has been working since before the moment we were even born. It never shuts off, not even when we sleep. Your heart is constantly beating, your lungs are constantly breathing, your cells are constantly dividing and like everything is changing and shifting. Your cells are renewing and you're just— your body is doing a million operations every minute of every day that we don't even have to be consciously aware of. And it is such a gift to be living in a healthy, able body. And sometimes that's the sort of gratitude that we need to really remember Like, it is possible to love this vessel because look at all that it gives me. Look at all that it allows me to do. So that's an exercise that I want you guys to take away from this episode and practice as often as possible. Hold your body, sit in deep reverence for the miracle that it is, and find gratitude for all that you have and all that you are, and know that it is totally possible for you to absolutely love and cherish yourself, and I wish that for you with all of my heart. So before we jump off, I want to remind you guys that I'm going to leave in the show notes of this episode the link to the free masterclass this month. So go ahead and click that link and sign up to save your spot for the free masterclass. I'm also going to leave the link to the waitlist for From Burnt Out to Badass. So if you are excited about this program coming back, if you want to dive in, or even if you're just curious about it and you want to stay up to date with more information, go ahead and click that link as well and just add your name and email to the waitlist so that you'd be the first to know about all the details of when it's coming back and how to save your spot inside that program. I'm sending you guys so much love. Thank you for listening. I'll see you next week. Bye!