Loving Your Body Just The Way It Is

What does it look like for you to love your body exactly how it is right now? With all of its imperfections, limitations, and unmet expectations. Are you able to love your body as it is? Love is the key word in this question.

Love is grace extended to ourselves free from judgment and shame. Love is the mindful acceptance that while limitations and imperfections do exist so can contentment. Love can be like an ocean wave on a stormy day: strong and deep, surging through anything in its path and sweeping us under its strength. Love can also be like the endurance of a river, continuous and winding, carving through any rock and stone that may have been present. Love is strong, deep, wide, and powerful. All the beautiful adjectives, similes and metaphors we use to describe what love is or what it can be like, all of that can be extended to ourselves. We are capable of love and loving and sometimes we need a reminder that we are also deserving of that love. Especially when it comes to the love we have for our bodies. 

We come up with a thousand reasons why we don’t yet love our bodies and we are harsh with our words and thoughts about our bodies. Our focus tends to be divided on the future and the past. We reminisce about what our bodies used to do and how it used to look or we look forward to the day our body looks better than what it does right now. And we set our goals, build for strength, starve for “health”, and forget or forgo being grateful for what is. The truth is you will never starve yourself to perfection. You will never strengthen your muscles to find contentment because the source of your peace is influenced by external factors. Contentment is found from within. It is built by the love and acceptance you cultivate in your heart. That's not to say that you and I should not strive for health, but as we strive for health we can also be content with where we are in the journey. We can be grateful for what our body has done and is doing for us each day.

I have a lower back that doesn’t always cooperate with me. Some days my pain is at a 2 out of 10, others it's at 7. Today as I write this I am aware of the piercing pain that has not subsided, and the longing I have to be pain free. Also today, instead of allowing frustration to tear me down, I have chosen to love my body where it’s at. I tried to workout and I realized how limited my movements are, how shaky my legs are when I enter into certain positions, and how much I want to push myself but I know that I shouldn’t and I physically can’t. So I wrestled with the question: What do you do when your limitations won’t allow for the desired outcome? I can either change the expectation, granting myself acceptance, or I can keep the desired outcome and continue to fall short. 

Today I choose to accept my body. With accepting this vessel I am not relinquishing my goals but I am offering my inner-self peace. This imperfectly beautiful body of mine is worthy of love and I am capable of giving it.