This is why you’re so self-conscious
Loving our bodies, whilst great in theory - isn’t something you can just choose to do when society has a very clear bias towards a specific kind of body.
What I propose as an alternative, is learning to be ‘ok’ with your body.
Just like when you were a child, you didn’t necessarily ‘love’ your body, but I’m sure you were at least ok with it (up until a point, right?).
When you’re ‘ok’ with your body, you accept that you might not fit into the clothes you used to wear, but that doesn’t mean you’ll stop looking after your body.
When you’re ‘ok’ with your body, you accept that you’re not gonna love every photo taken of you, but that doesn’t mean that the people close to you don’t see your unique beauty.
When you’re ‘ok’ with your body, you’re more likely to stick to your health and fitness goals - because you’re not desperately trying to change yourself, you’re doing things out of respect for your well-being.
Not ‘loving’ your body doesn’t mean that you have to hate it. In fact, for most of us, loving our bodies might be unrealistic, but I also don’t think it’s completely necessary.
Getting out of your comfort zone
When circumstances change and therefore so might the way that you appear - your comfort zone equilibrium is shaken and you believe this puts you in a more vulnerable position subject to criticism or negative thoughts from others. We must get back to how things were! - you panic internally.
It’s all perspective. We want to minimise our risk of feeling like people are staring at us, judging us, nit-picking us the way we nit-pick ourselves, and wondering if they can tell how self-conscious we are.
The little apartment you’ve created for yourself of how things ‘should’ be confines you to keeping everything in a certain, specific way to remain cosy and comfortable for you. Except it still isn’t going to be resilient to an earthquake, or a power outage, or when you realise that there are only so many old sitcoms you can watch by yourself before you realise your life’s actually a bit sad really.
Is it ok to not have goals?
Regardless of whatever your values are, if you place too much importance on chasing a specific goal for the sake of only aligning with one of your core values (in this instance, well-being or aesthetics) - you will inevitably neglect your other core values - meaning you won’t be satisfied at the end of it.
You’re putting your own happiness and life satisfaction on the line.
Why your relationship with food matters
Many of us might not even be aware that our relationship with food needs working on, but if you are caught in a yo-yo dieting cycle, a binge-restrict cycle, or you feel overly consumed by emotional eating - then perhaps next time you are tempted to jump on another diet or restrict your calories in some way, consider working on your relationship with food instead.
Improving your relationship with food will benefit your overall health, happiness and quality of life. You will notice better body image, more mental capacity to be present, improved relationships, more consistency with eating habits and a more stable body weight.