Loving the body you have right now

I’ve had a few requests to share the speech I gave at the Lovely Larger Ladies Fashion Event last weekend, so here you go – without the ums, ahs, and me dropping my notes. Grab yourself a cuppa and a comfy chair, and let’s talk about loving the body you have… and sometimes not loving it.

After refusing to be in a family photo one Christmas because I so desperately hated how I looked, I made my New Year’s resolution to develop a healthy relationship with my body.

“No more obsessing over the numbers on the scale, no more stupid diets or exercising till I throw up, and no more crying because I’m not a size 8.  I will love the skin I’m in, eat healthily (but still allow myself the occasional treat), exercise regularly and wear clothes that I feel good in.”

I had spent almost 20 years despising the body I was in. Putting my life on hold and not doing the things I really wanted to do because I thought that I had to wait until I was thin. I couldn’t do it any more – the self hatred, the disordered eating and obsession with dieting, never thinking I was good enough. I was exhausted. There had to be another way.

You know, it’s pretty common, hating your body. It’s not limited by age, socio-economic background or even weight. Did you know that 91% percent of women are unhappy with their bodies? Just because it’s a common thing, that doesn’t make it okay – especially when it starts to affect our lives. The moms who won’t be in photos with their kids. The women who won’t go to the beach with their friends or family because they’re afraid to wear a swimsuit. The people who hold themselves back from achieving their dreams until they’ve lost that 5kgs. The girls who look in the mirror and don’t like what they see… And they’re seeing it younger and younger – in a survey of nine and ten year old girls, 40% of them have tried to lose weight. It’s so heartbreaking that those societal pressures are being felt younger and younger.

I decided that I didn’t want that anymore. I wanted to be able to live my life without being afraid of food, without hating what I saw in the mirror. So how did I do that? I stopped reading magazines that made me feel crap about my body. You know the ones, that talk about embracing the body you have on one page and then in the next segment they’re bashing a celebrity for having cellulite or daring to step out of the house with a post-baby body that’s anything less than the ideal that they’re trying to sell.

I looked for books and blogs by body positive authors, and was so excited when I found blogs and magazines overseas that were dedicated to plus size fashion. As someone who was writing about fashion for straight size women, it was a real revelation for me that there were whole sites that just talked about style for fat chicks! I knew then that I wanted to be writing about style for Kiwi women, because I couldn’t find anywhere that told me where I could find affordable clothes for my fat body here in New Zealand. Mainstream plus size fashion in New Zealand was way behind what I was seeing overseas – it was all designed to cover you up and shrink you down and either make you seem invisible or it would be the boldest, brightest, most horrendous prints imaginable. I had chosen invisible for so many years, so I started looking overseas. And there I found what I was looking for – mainstream retailers like the holy grail of ASOS and indie designers like 17 Sundays and Harlow that were making fashion forward clothes in plus sizes. Along the way I’ve been introduced to some amazing New Zealand designers who have brought the plus size fashion industry here forward in leaps and bounds over the last few years. Mainstream plus size fashion has improved dramatically as well, with great pieces available in department stores all over the country.

I knew that if I wanted to blog about fashion then sooner or later I would have to start being in photos, so I took the “fake it till you make it approach” and stepped up. I wanted to share my fashion finds with New Zealand women and help them see that fashion is for every body – even those of us in bigger bodies than the models you see in most magazines. To do that, I had to show the clothes.

I’ll be honest – I faked my confidence for a long time, and when my blog first became really successful it was quite overwhelming. I had women saying to me “oh, I wish I had your confidence” and there were some days that I felt like a total fraud because I didn’t feel that confidence all the time. I still have days when I don’t, when my anxiety gets the better of me, when I doubt myself, when I get changed five times because I don’t like how I look – but I’ve realized that it’s okay. Loving yourself is a journey full of ups and downs, it takes work and there’s no magic fix that will guarantee that you will love your body every day. But how do you start that journey? Well here are a few of my practical tips…

1. Ditch the magazines and the media that tell you you’re not good enough. Changing the messages you’re being told about your body will help to start changing the messages that you tell yourself. Surround yourself with positive influences – blogs, books, magazines, people – that build you up and make you feel great.
2. Change the way you talk to yourself. There are so many things that we say about our bodies or to our reflections that we would never ever say to our best friend because they’re nasty and hurtful. Instead, try to talk to yourself with love and kindness. What helped me was writing down three good things every day – things about my body, things I’d done, things someone had said about/to me. I’m not going to lie, it was really hard to start off with – I struggled to find even three good things to say about myself. Isn’t that sad? After 100 days I found that I was a lot more positive in how I spoke to myself (and I had a more positive outlook in general). I also had all of these great things to look back on if I was ever feeling a bit crap about myself.
3. Look after your whole self. Once I’d been working on that part of my self image, I came to see that I was worth taking care of in other ways – eating food that nourished me, making sure I got enough water, enough sleep, taking great care of my skin, ensuring that I got outside and enjoyed nature and exercised regularly… Doing those things because you love yourself and they make you feel good rather than because you’re trying to lose weight or change your body makes a big difference to both your mindset and how sustainable they are – I mean, how many times have you been on a restrictive diet that has lasted a few weeks only to feel deprived because you’re starving your body and you end up gaining back any weight you’ve lost plus more?
4. Wear things that make you feel fabulous. I’ve stopped paying attention to what other people tell me that I should and should not wear. I wear beautiful lingerie. I don’t try to squeeze into something too small or too tight because I don’t want a bigger number on the label. I don’t wear colours and patterns I don’t like, or things that don’t look great on me, because my style is a reflection of who I am, and I AM FABULOUS. I ignore the size label and buy clothes based on how well they fit my body – sometimes I need to size up and sometimes I need to size down. Those numbers don’t matter to me, it’s all about how I feel in the clothes. Liberated. Powerful. In charge of my own body. Loving the body I have right now.

This is just the start – as I said there is no quick fix and the relationship we have with our bodies is an ongoing one. Have you had a defining moment that made you want to show your self more care and compassion? Tell me about it and share any tips you’ve picked up along the way.

Photos used courtesy of Emma Joyce