I spent decades of my life overweight.

Before I lost weight, I had learned to cover up with clothes, hide the parts I didn’t like, and stand in the back of any group photos. I didn’t feel confident in my body and I didn’t like how I felt in it.
Since I lost my weight 15 years ago, it’s amazing how much more I enjoy living in my body. It’s not a perfect experience and my critical eye can try to ruin my fun, but the confidence I feel when I try on clothes or get dressed to go out is a dramatic difference from before. I want you to have the same experience. So if you don’t enjoy living in your current body, let’s talk about what you can do to change it so you can love being in a body you’ve created on purpose!

 

Welcome, welcome, welcome! It’s so good to have you here!

 

Can you tell I’m excited about this week’s post? This series on the costs of NOT losing weight has been such a great topic to teach. I have said it before and I’ll say it again: The first step in change is awareness. Once we can see what is, we have a chance to change to create what we want. Permanent weight loss begins with awareness; awareness of the situation, the desire for change, and the costs of not changing. These weeks that we’ve been looking at the costs of not changing have reminded me to go get what I want – I hope they’re doing the same for you!

 

This week we’re going to talk about the loss of confidence that comes with NOT losing the weight. I want to make a disclaimer first: I am a fan of the body positivity movement. I do NOT believe that you have to be a certain size to be confident, and I celebrate women who strut their stuff in any size body!

Your body is a gift, a temple, and it’s to be cared for and nourished, not shamed. Shame is one of the worst places from which to make a change – I never, ever teach my clients to lose weight from shame. Shame sounds like, “I shouldn’t be this big”, or “I really should get this weight off”. “Should” comes from judgment, and judgment produces shame, and shame is corrosive. It eats away at us, tears us down, makes us shrink from living this beautiful, glorious gift of life we’ve been given. Shame is not good weight loss fuel!

 

 

But what if you’ve decided that you just don’t want to be in the size body you’re in anymore? What if you’re ready to change it? Let’s look at what happens when we want to lose weight but aren’t doing it. What’s the cost in terms of confidence?

One way we figure out what we’re missing is to ask what we’d do differently in our lighter bodies. If we were at the weight we feel comfortable with, how would we show up in our lives? Would we try new things, ask for the raise, create something new?

Another idea to consider what we aren’t doing now because we feel like we can’t. What aren’t you going for because “it’s not what someone my size does”? Are you missing out on a dance class because you don’t like how you’d look in the class mirrors? What about that massage you’d love to schedule but hate the thought of getting naked and exposed for the therapist? There’s something you’re not doing because you feel hesitant to try it in the body you’re in right now. What are you missing out on?

Sometimes the shame is more insidious. There’s a mean little voice in our head that tells us, “You don’t deserve to feel good in your body. You made this body like this by being greedy and out of control, so now you get to live with it. When you decide to get yourself together and stop stuffing your face every chance you get, then you can feel better. Until then, you ought to feel like trash.” That’s the kind of judgment and shame that went through my head all the time before I lost weight. That little voice is a liar! You get to lose the weight because you want to, not because losing the weight makes you any more worthy than you are RIGHT NOW. When that’s the voice you listen to, you freeze, you wait, you don’t move ahead. That voice is crippling, and it has got to go! You get to choose what you make of this life and you don’t need any self-constructed roadblocks preventing you from creating the life you are called to live. You create the confidence to live the life you’re here to live!

 

 

You can lose weight and you don’t have to sacrifice your confidence to do it! If you know you’re ready to move forward and you want help – I’m here! If you want support, guidance, and accountability from someone who’s been there, email me at drandreachristianparks@gmail.com and ask for a time for your free consultation. Let’s get started!

 

 

Here’s your video help for the week!