We are bombarded with messages to lose weight and at the same time there is a growing movement of body acceptance at every size. In this week’s video, Self-Love Practice: Is My Weight Healthy, we will explore how to determine if you are at a healthy weight for you.
Video transcription:
Hello, amazing women. This is Rachel Kieffer, of healthnutgirl.com, helping women fall in love with a healthy life. Please subscribe to my YouTube channel. Thank you.
In today’s Self-Love Practice, I’m going to talk to you about how to know if you are at a healthy weight. I’m going to share a little bit about my approach to weight. This is a huge topic. I can give you ten full-day workshops on this topic and there would still be a lot to say. I want to touch on just a few points today. This came out of the discussions we have been having at our Women Health Circle.
We all get a really big push to lose weight in our society. I think it’s almost impossible to be a woman who lives in today’s world and not want to lose weight. It’s just that we get so many messages. You know, we would look more beautiful, we would feel more comfortable, we would love ourselves better — if we lose weight. A lot of us have that message playing in our minds. There are whole industries that profit from us having those messages in our mind and that’s why they continuously send that message. Those industries are gazillion dollar industries that sell products that cater to them.
There is now a growing movement of body acceptance. You see more and more things that are being portrayed as for every woman of every size. There’s a lot of large women now who are modeling and teaching yoga. You see them on the cover of yoga magazines. We can see this growing trend of body love and body acceptance. This is a wonderful trend, but it kind of leaves some of us feeling, should I accept my weight? Is my weight healthy for me? I want you to consider these three questions when you are in that place of dilemma:
Number one is: How do you feel about your body? A lot of the way we feel about our bodies is conditioned. It’s conditioned by outside influences, by some kind of standard that does not really apply to us, by the influence of the media, and those industries that want us to buy their products. Really take a look at, how do I feel about my body? How much of that is influenced by all those outside messages?
The second question I want you to look at is: Do you need to lose weight in order to feel good about yourself? If the answer is yes, and it is a yes for many of us, I want you to question that because you can feel good right now in your body just the way it is. Actually, we’re thinking about it the other way around. We think if we lose weight we’ll feel good. But, actually when you feel good, your body will reach its healthy weight. So feeling good helps you to take better care of your body and bring it to a weight which is healthy for it.
The third thing I would like you to ask is: Is your body size limiting you? Are you in a body that limits you because of its size? Do you feel physically limited from doing certain things? Do you feel like you don’t have energy because you’re at a certain size? If you feel like your size is the limit in you, I also want you to look at the goal of weight loss as a result, or a product, of living a healthy life.
What I find from working with women, and I’ve been working with women for over 35 years in groups and one-on-one consultations, is when you focus on weight loss you usually don’t get long lasting results. When you focus on health, happiness, on treating yourself the best way because you love yourself so much, the weight loss follows if you really need to lose weight. Look at weight loss from a more holistic and loving approach.
I would love to hear what is one thing that you liked about this self-love practice or something you learned about it. I would love to hear from you. I will see you at the next video. Don’t forget to subscribe.
xoxo Rachel
