A New Way To Love Your Body

If you’re one of those people who feels an innate affinity for your flesh then I salute you. I’m not going to call you lucky because whether you worked hard to develop a sense of body-love where there previously was little or whether you had it instilled in you and have since had to rail against media messages about the ideal female physique, there’s no doubt you’ll have fought somewhere along the line.

For many of us however the war still rages on and this time of year is particularly brutal. In my case Christmas has historically been difficult, full of addictive behaviour and residual guilt. The New Year’s resolutions that followed were always stringent, ill-considered (with the emphasis on ill) and, probably because of that, short-lived. On the surface they might have seemed ‘healthy’ — quit gluten, no sugar, exercise daily and give up caffeine — but the intention was always punitive.

Of course, when resolutions come from the shadows (I’m not good enough, I’m unworthy, unloveable) then they will never facilitate meaningful, long term, positive change. I learnt that, the very long and very hard way. This year, my resolution is only to continue the quest to love my body. But what oh what does that really mean? For many years I haven’t known and, for even more, I haven’t cared. I’ve been far too caught up in trying to change the way I look to have energy leftover for the way I feel. You see, I’ve spent decades trying to love my body the way a pushy-parent loves their child: conditionally and without room for doubt. The result has been either burnout or rebellion, or usually a chaotic lurching between the two.

Not only does this get painful really quickly but it’s also grossly unproductive. Thankfully however (and with a lot of professional help…), I’ve found a route out of this repetitive agony and it’s one I’d like to share. We could call this ‘the path to self-acceptance’, or something equally enticing, or we could just call it The Truth About Body Love. Whatever its name, it’s important to note that this way out of self-defeating, self-hating, self-destructive behaviour is less like a 12 week quick-fix kind of motorway and more like a muddy, hilly track with trip hazards.

For those of you still reading (you must have tried the motorway a few times…), this is how it works: firstly, we have to embrace all the sides of love and apply them to our bodies. So that’s the good, the bad and the really goddamned ugly — all rolled up into one big ball of messy love. Let me explain. If I think about how I love my wife, or my best friends — how I love my siblings and my parents — it’s almost always complicated. With the exception of my two cats and a few of my much younger relatives, I feel some degree of ambiguity about every single important other in my life. And that’s natural, right? Because love is just love — it doesn’t override irritation, fury or disdain, as much as we might like to pretend it does.

Why then, should the way I love my body (or, for that matter, my entire self) be so different? Once I got a handle on this — that is, the fact that contradictory emotions can co-exist — my relationships to both other people and my mirror image improved dramatically. Because love isn’t about feeling supported and happy all the time. It doesn’t involve only pleasant emotions. In fact, long-term love at least, beyond all the incredible, fist-pumping, life affirming bits, is surely about finding the willingness to be kind when all you want to do is hurt. It’s about finding the bravery to risk when all you want to do is hide. And sometimes it’s also about letting something be wrong, when all you want to do is make it right. Like my upper arms for example, or the lower part of my stomach (ie. the fattiest bits of my body), both of which I have wasted years hating, only to recently realise are actually kind of ok, exactly as they are. Sure, I’d still love them to be more ripped, but when I stop focussing on aesthetics (ie endless solitary, bodybuilding style workouts) I have the opportunity to focus on performance (ie. a sport that I enjoy, surrounded by people I now call friends).

So, let’s go back to that question: what does it really mean to love our bodies? I’d say it’s to care for them in spite of the bits we hate. To thank them in spite of how ungrateful we might feel. Like all the greatest of life’s challenges, loving one’s own body is a never-ending contradiction. If I can embrace my occasional disgust about some part of myself and still not hate my whole self for it then I am actively engaged in the act of self-acceptance and with that comes the tiny suggestion of messy, honest, real love, from which resilience can grow and true potential can therefore thrive. What does it mean to love my body? It means compassion, committment and ‘it’s complicated’. And, for today at least, that’s ok with me.