8 Powerful Tips to Gain More Body Confidence
Do you struggle with loving your body and finding confidence? I understand. This post is going to help you love your body more and find true confidence in who you are.
Not feeling confident in your own skin is a common problem that many women experience. In today’s culture with social media being such a focus in our lives, it can be really easy to compare yourself to others and tear yourself down.
However, you can learn to love your body more and embrace who you are with a few key tips. Even small changes in your mindset and lifestyle can help you to be more comfortable with your body and the way you look.
Why is it so difficult to feel body confidence?
Before we talk about how to love your body, I think it’s important to understand the many factors that could be preventing you from loving the way you look.
Social media
Social media is a huge factor that can lead you to feeling bad about yourself. When you scroll through your feed every day and see pictures of other women with perfect hair or a flat stomach in a bikini you can start to feel less if you don’t have those things.
However, what’s important to remember is that social media is not an accurate portrayal of anyone’s life. People only post photos or stories that they think make them look good.
A lot of photos are taken from flattering angles or photoshopped so they aren’t even showing realistic beauty standards.
And no one is going to be posting photos that aren’t flattering – so social media is overwhelming skewed to show attractive features, leading us to feel like we must be lesser just because it doesn’t look like an influencer’s Instagram account.
Diet culture
Another factor that can often prevent women from loving their body fully is diet culture. Today’s society places a large amount of weight (pun-intended) on losing weight. We value people who are thin and shame those who are not.
Diet culture is where we equate size to health. So we think that in order to be healthier, we need to be thin. And that someone larger isn’t healthy. But the truth is we don’t know how healthy someone is just because of their size.
There are so many diets out there right now – keto, intermittent fasting, etc. We’re bombarded with contradicting information about what we should be eating, what we shouldn’t be eating, how many pounds we could lose if we just cut out this one kind of food…the list goes on and on.
However, this diet culture can lead to not feeling confident in your own skin and can even perpetuate eating disorders.
This post is going to help you learn 8 powerful tips to gain more body confidence.
1. Address negative self-talk
A major first step in learning how to love your body more is to address negative self-talk. A lot of times we are far meaner to ourselves than we are to anyone else.
Negative self talk is damaging to your confidence and self love.
The more your tear yourself down and feed yourself negative thoughts about yourself, the more you will start to believe it.
Working to reduce the amount of negative thoughts and self-talk you engage in will help you love your body more and find new confidence.
For 6 tips to deal with negative self-talk, read more here.
2. Shift your mindset
An important way to love your body more is to shift your mindset from one of second guessing and negative thoughts to one of positive vibes and confidence.
Now I know this is way easier said than done – but it can be done!
A good way to shift your mindset to a more positive one is through daily self affirmations.
Daily affirmations are essentially just positive sentences you say to yourself. And the best part is that they are really easy to incorporate into your daily life.
You’ll choose a phrase, take a few deep breaths, and repeat the phrase to yourself 3-5 times daily.
Be sure to choose a phrase that addresses what you want to accomplish, in this case embracing yourself as you are.
Examples of daily affirmations for this purpose could be something short and simple like “I am beautiful” or you could focus on your abilities with a phrase like “My body gives me strength and grows stronger every day”.
For a list of 35 daily affirmations that will help you find self love, read more here.
3. Ditch the scale
If you feel uncomfortable with your body, you might find yourself stepping on the scale often. However, it can be easy to obsess over the numbers you’re seeing and start to feel less confident if you don’t like what the scale shows.
However, a scale does not tell the whole story at all! First, a scale does not tell you how much of that weight is muscle vs. fat. If you’re getting some extra exercise in but still feel discouraged by the scale, it might be because you’ve added some muscle.
A scale also doesn’t necessarily show an accurate picture. Your weight can fluctuate for so many reasons – water, bloat, time of day, when you last ate, etc. Your weight could change by several pounds just from the morning to the afternoon.
Instead of focusing on your weight, focus more on how your body feels.
By ditching the scale and focusing less on numbers, you may find that you’re able to love your body more and find greater confidence.
4. Focus on health over size
Similar to how the scale can impact your mindset and confidence, an emphasis on size can also take away from your body love.
Do you go into a store and feel bad about yourself when you have to reach allll the way in the back of the rack to grab your size?
Rather than worrying about the number on your clothing tags, shift your focus to being healthy. Focus on making healthy choices throughout your day instead.
Size does not equate to health. You might be your healthiest in a body that is larger than you would have pictured, but that’s okay.
I personally find that when I eat healthy food and do good things for my body like exercise, I feel more confident as a result – regardless of whether or not I am losing weight.
Be sure to talk with your doctor at your next appointment about how you can be healthiest and if they recommend any changes specific to you and your health.
5. Embrace your natural features
Another way to love your body and find more body confidence is to embrace your natural features. If you fall into a habit of curling your hair, putting on lots of makeup, etc. every single day you may start to feel less comfortable as your natural self.
While makeup, beauty, and hair are all great ways to express yourself and boost confidence, they can also start to make you feel like you need those things in order to look good.
I don’t know about any of you, but during this pandemic I’ve had a lot more days of no makeup and natural hair. And it’s done wonders for my mindset.
I used to think that my skin needed foundation to look good, and now I have embraced my natural skin. Sure, I will still use beauty products for special occasions and days when I want to have some fun with makeup, but I no longer feel like I need it in order to feel comfortable leaving the house.
I encourage you to try a no-makeup day at least once a week. It will help you embrace your natural features and love yourself as you are.
6. Stop comparing yourself
Another huge factor in building confidence and loving your body is to stop comparing yourself.
With so much emphasis on social media these days, it can be really easy to compare yourself to other friends, celebrities, fitness trainers, etc. However, as we touched on earlier, social media is not an accurate representation of who someone is or even what they really look like.
Comparing yourself to someone else will just make you feel bad about yourself and crave to have what someone else has. However, you truly don’t even know if they are happy with who they are either. They could be looking at you and saying “Her eyes are so pretty, I wish mine looked like that!”
In addition to comparing yourself to others, you should also stop comparing yourself to your former self.
I feel like I often compare how I look now to how I looked in high school or college. Or I’ll look at a picture from a couple of years ago and think, “Wow, I looked better there.”
But that is an unhealthy mindset to have! Your body will change as you get older – that is completely natural.
Rather than compare how you look now to how you did then, think about positive things you love about your body right now.
For example, instead of looking at old pictures of myself wishfully or hanging on to that dress from college that doesn’t fit anymore but could if I just lost a few pounds…I list out what I love about myself.
Maybe it’s how strong your legs are, your smile, your arms, your curves…whatever you feel confident about.
7. Find things that boost your confidence
Another way to find great body love is to find the things that make you feel confident.
Do you have a certain pair of pants that always make you think “Wow, I look good”? Or is there a particular lipstick that you think makes your smile look brighter? Embrace the things that make you feel confident in a healthy way.
8. Allow yourself to feel confident
The last way to embrace your body and feel your best is to actually allow yourself to feel confident.
Now I know you might be thinking, what do you mean allow myself to feel confident? But stick with me.
There is sometimes a stigma with people who are confident or “full of themselves”. However, as with most things, it’s all about balance.
Sure you shouldn’t be so into yourself that you put down others or get an inflated ego. But you also shouldn’t put yourself down just so you can look modest!
Think about the interactions you have with other people.
Sometimes it can start to almost feel like a competition where someone says they need to lose weight or alter their body in some way and then instead of helping her feel more confident, everyone else joins in saying how much weight they need to lose.
By letting yourself feel confident, you will embrace your body even more.
Those are the 8 ways to gain more body confidence.
Things like social media and diet culture can lead us to feel bad about our bodies and the way we look.
However, while loving your body and finding true body confidence can be difficult, it’s not impossible.
Use the tips in this post to love your body and embrace the way you look every day. You will soon be on the way to becoming the most confident you’ve ever been!
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