We all have some days when we catch our reflection in the mirror and poof, a dark thought such as “ugh, I look terrible” just pops up. It makes us feel crappy, it can last for a few days, it can seem to appear out of nowhere and can be caused by thousands of factors who have nothing to do with any changes with your body.
We have discussed many times how you can deal with your body insecurities as well as why you deserve to love your body again, and today, we will targeting the off days when your body-image takes a turn on the negative side without any particular reasons.
What can you actually do when your body-image is not just doing it for you?
1) Wear a badass outfit and get dolled up.
You may be tempted to hide under sweatpants and greasy hair, but this is not the time for this. Bring some pampering back in the picture with a face or hair mask, a haircut, or even a massage and beat the negativity to the punch by wearing an outfit that you KNOW you look and feel great in.
If you avoid said outfits, you will only be feeding the beast and invite your temporary poor body-image to stick around longer.
We are not gonna let this win now, are we?!
2) Don't scrutinize your reflection in the mirror
When sh*t hits the fan and we feel like everything is wrong with our appearance, many of us (us included) have the tendency to just stare at it. Why? To make this uncomfortable feeling last longer? To make it grow? To teach ourselves some sort of lesson? You are a smart person, you don’t need to live pain twice to understand something, especially when you know this particular feeling can just be caused by something as simple as a hormonal fluctuation.
In those moments, it is much better to just acknowledge your reflection and tell yourself will come back to it once the crappy feeling fades.
And it will fade. On that note…
3) Remind yourself this feeling in temporary
Emotions and feelings come and go, sometimes with nothing else but time. You could wake up tomorrow and feel totally fine, so don’t sweat it, don't try to “fix” anything because there is nothing wrong with you to begin with. Ride the wave as peacefully as you can.
4) Distract yourself
This is also a great way to ride said wave. We are not talking about burrying yourself in work here, but more about bringing some fun back. Surround yourself with people you love, sign up for something that will bring a smile on your face, go get an awesome book to dive into, anything that can just bring a bit of butterflies in your tummy.
This will help you to keep things in proportion and bring back positivity from other sources.
Positivity spreads on everything, you will see very quickly that it will also fight this crappy body-image too, even if it is not directly related to it.
5) Avoid social media accounts that you know will make you compare yourself.
Your current body-image is not accurate at the moment. And constantly seeing people and bodies that you wish you could have is only going to make you compare yourself on the negative side. Once again, don't feed the beast!
6) BONUS: Film yourself for after the wave.
Have you ever looked at past photos of yourself and thought “wow, I thought I was so much fatter, skinnier, worse looking that I actually was, this is crazy!”.
A couple of weeks ago, I was down the rabbit hole of shitty body-image. I had a beach trip coming up and wearing my bathing suit made me very anxious, despite the fact that I had proudly bought it a couple of years before because it made me feel amazing afterhating bathing suits with my entire being for so long.
I had put on a bit of weight in the past year, and didn't feel good enough to wear it this time.
It made me so sad, as if I was undoing all the hard work I had done.
Said video for you my friends
But instead of giving in to this negativity, I tried my best to stay objective and I applied all of the advice above. After all, even if I did put on weight, I am not unhealthy, and secondly: I am sure I am making it much worse in my head that it actually is, like I have many times in the past. So I wore the damn bathing suit and I decided to film myself.
Can you guess what happened?
I look at this video now, and yes, I was seeing my body a lot worse than it actually was.
Point proven. This is going to be a new habit for me for next time, until my brain registers that yes, my body-image can be extremely inaccurate and so can yours.
You are now ready to face your next wave of negative body-image with flying colours. Remember to give yourself a break, patience and extra loving during those times. Even if we don’t like them very much, they are perfectly normal and useful to show what points that you can work on.