Welcome to How to Love Your Body, this is Jenna and Lauren, your UnDiet Coaches- on today’s episode we are going to be talking about how you can improve your body image. 

Before we get started you can download a free worksheet to go along with this episode- www.thebodylovesociety.com/90

Body image is such a loaded topic that we’d like to break it down and make it simple for you. We don’t expect you to LOVE your body over night- if there’s been negative body talk for maybe your entire life it makes sense that it wouldn’t be the easiest task to turn around and say “Hey, I actually love my body!” 

So to make it simple we don’t want to give you 10 million different steps and different tools on how to improve your body image, that may just get overwhelming, and it may discourage you more. 

So what can you do to make some progress? 

It takes 21 days to create a habit so we want to invite you to take on 21 days of neutral/ positive body talk. 

What to do: 

Every morning or every night (whenever you like to journal) write down 5 neutral statements about your body or if you’re feeling a bit farther along and want to take it on- you can add in positive body statements. 

The reason you may want to start with being in a neutral place with your body is because it may feel more true to you or more comfortable. 

Saying… “I have legs” - is neutral, it’s just a statement. 

You could add….

“I have legs that allow me to talk a walk outside that I really enjoy.”

This adds a bit of gratitude and may cause you to feel grateful for your body. 

If you really want to add more to it… 

“I have strong powerful legs that allow me to move my body in ways I enjoy.”

Which statement feels most comfortable for you. Maybe it will take some time to get to a more positive loving statement about your body and that’s okay. 

Here are more examples: 

If you start judging your stomach - turn it into “I have a stomach.” 

Feeling negative about a body part - this could be something to shift to- “I have eyes that allow me to see.”

Hating your arms? Teach your brain to shift to- “I have arms that allow me to hug my kids.”

Here’s another neutral place to sit when having body image thoughts- “My body allows me to live my life”

Over all feeling like you’re having a bad body image day? Just say “I have a body.” - No need to pretend to love your body if in that moment you don’t. You can still be kind and respectful to yourself. 

Things like hair, your smile, and eye color are easier to talk about...

I like my hair. 

I like my smile. 

I love the way my eyes look when I wear blue. 

Having neutral feelings will bring you one step closer to improving your body image and soon enough you’ll feel much more comfortable to start seeing your body with kindness instead of judgement. 

For the next 21 days - commit to yourself! You’ll start to see the shift when you take the time to write down 5 neutral/ positive body statements. You may even find yourself defaulting to being kinder to your body… you’ll recognize when a not so kind comment or thought has come up you can immediately shift it to something neutral/ kind. 

We get that this is a very small step to take and that’s actually the point of this… we want you to start off feeling like this is something that you can achieve and not something so extreme… 

It’s also just one action step to take (for 21 days in a row) - instead of giving you 10 different things to do that could get way too overwhelming you just end up doing nothing. 

Remember, we don’t expect you to love your body over night - maybe you won’t ever get to LOVING your body and that’s okay - as long as you treat it with kindness and respect that is most important.

And turning to gratitude is always helpful as well. Shifting your perspective - we know that not all bodies are abled bodies and we’d like to point that out - that no matter what kind of body you have you still can be kind and respectful and find statements you can say about your body that can feel good