Can you love your body and want to change it at the same time? Let’s discuss whether self-love and self-improvement when it comes to fitness are mutually exclusive.
This topic is something that has been on my mind for years. I’ve been all across the board. I know how it feels to be unhappy with my body, and willing to go to great lengths to change how it looks. I also know how it feels to be in a good groove and at peace with where I’m at physically and emotionally.
Yet the age-old question remains. Can you love your body and want to change it at the same time?
Before I dive in, I want to be clear that I have no intentions of being preachy or telling you how you should feel about your body. The online wellness space is becoming increasingly difficult to be in, and places that I once drew so much inspiration from have been making me feel really icky. Some of the content out there makes me feel like if I don’t share that opinion or point of view that I’m wrong in some way. I don’t ever want this space to make you feel that way, especially when it comes to tricky body image topics. I always want to be that friend you can chat over these things over green juice with, not an authority on how you should and shouldn’t feel about your body. I want to make that very clear.
Alright, back to the question at hand. Can you love your body and want to change it? Like so many other wellness-centered questions, I think it depends. To differentiate, let’s play a game of red light, green light.
Red Light
From my experience, wanting to change my body for vanity reasons led me down a slippery slope. When my sole “wellness” focus was wanting to make my thighs thinner and get rid of my cellulite (neither of which ever happened, FYI) I didn’t have a lot of self or body love happening. For me, my actions and motivations were completely driven by making myself fit a beauty standard that was not attainable for my body type, and not necessary for my overall health and well-being.
In situations where that is the case, taking a step back and understanding why those types of changes are what is motivating us could be more beneficial to our health than pursuing whatever the change was in the first place.
Green Light
On the other hand, depending on the nature of the change you are trying to make, desiring to change your body can actually be an act of self-love. However, I think this is a different type of change that isn’t necessarily weight or vanity-related.
Lower back pain is something I have struggled with for years. I threw my back out when I was 17 years old, and after that my lower back was incredibly weak. Combine my back injury with years of being sedentary thanks to school and corporate America, and you have the recipe for constant lower back pain.
About a year ago, I finally had enough of the pain and started making necessary changes to improve my lower back health. I made lower back strengthening exercises a key priority in my fitness routine, I dedicated more time to improving my hamstring flexibility, and am constantly working on my hip mobility and posture. This has resulted in physical changes in the way my body looks, but that wasn’t the point. The point was to feel strong, move freely, and experience less pain, and I’m happy to say it is paying off.
Do you see the distinction between the types of changes? When I was trying to make a change to my body to fit into an external beauty ideal of having lean legs (which btw, is simply a physical characteristic not a deciding factor of beauty). Pursuing that change didn’t make me feel good, and didn’t have any real payoff because the motivation wasn’t coming from a positive place.
On the other hand, I would argue that the second example supports the fact that you can make positive changes to your body out of self-love. Whether its wanting to be pain-free like my example, wanting more energy, wanting to feel stronger, or any manageable change that can help improve your overall quality of life, those types of changes can be done from a place of self-love.
As a fitness professional and wellness influencer, I want to help women instill those positive, quality-of-life-improving changes because sometimes they are necessary and it can be really challenging to do it all on your own without support. Registration for my next Elevated Movement online fitness coaching program is now open, and it is the perfect way to create positive change. The next round begins May 1, and spots are filling up fast. You can
Registration for my next Elevated Movement online fitness coaching program is now open, and it is the perfect way to create positive change. The next round begins May 1, and spots are filling up fast. You can learn more about the program, contact me with any questions, and even sign up if you’re ready here.
Your Turn:
- Can you relate to either of the body-change scenarios above?
- What are your thoughts on wanting to change your body while still maintaining self-love?
THIS IS EXACTLY WHAT I’M STRUGGLING WITH RIGHT NOW.
Excited to chat with you this week!
LOVE this! I just wrote something similar in my newsletter yesterday! It took me a while to shift my mindset from wanting to change my body for vanity reasons to wanting to improve or enhance my body because I want my body to perform at it’s best! I think body love/acceptance plays a huge role too!
It totally does! So glad you agree.
Ok. Wow. I love how you balanced it out; it’s so true that I do want to change things about my body, mainly my digestion, so I can be healthier and more vibrant and more full of energy. I think it’s probably the reason you want to change it that matters the most, while at the same time, being content with where I’m at, and being content with the process.
SUCH a good example Emily. Working on improving your digestion is absolutely a positive body change that will totally improve your quality of life.
I definitely struggle because my change is largely focused around size and looks. I went from being a healthy and happy size 4 to a pudgy, low-motivation, lazy, uncomfortable size 6 pushing on 8. And for someone who clocks in at just 5’1, I carry my weight very awkwardly. Because of where I was most of my life, I’m not at all content with where I am now. And it’s hard to hold myself back from a barrage of negative thoughts. I try hard every day, and have even asked my fiance to help me by encouraging me to eat the right foods and do the exercises I used to love. It’s slow going. But each day I am uncomfortable, and sometimes that motivates me and sometimes it makes me want to quit because I have zero motivation.
It’s a constant struggle. I feel trapped. I wish I knew how to change my mindset, but it’s so hard! I just want to feel good like I used to, both about my health and about how I look. It doesn’t help that my Dad also struggles severely with body image issues, and sometimes even puts me down for my own weight gain. I think he intends to try to motivate me to work out more because it helps encourage him to do the same, but it just hurts and makes things worse.
Sorry for the rant. Your post really hit home. I just wish I knew how to change this mindset and look at everything with a more positive light. I feel like the process would be so much better if it didn’t feel like a neverending struggle.
Karli, this comment pulled on my heart so much. Sending you an email today <3
I’m working on changing my body because I want to love my body, but I don’t think I love it now. I accept where I am with my body and with hard work I can get to a point where I love my body. This relates a lot to what I’ve worked on with my stuttering. For the past several years, I’ve been working on improving my communication while still having disfluencies in my speech. I learned I had to accept the fact that I stutter and that’s okay, before I was at a place where I could work to improve my speech. I’m been working on not focusing on the number on the scale because that’s not what I need to change based on my age (32) and height (5 ft 2inches), and this I believe also relates well to this post.