Would you agree that often the concept of body image and the media are intricately connected?
It’s definitely not something new. For many years both men and women have been subconsciously pressured by dominant images and ideals portrayed in the media. We have been subjected to seeing those images and the way people act and in turn we begin to believe that this is what’s meant to be normal.
As a result, many people feel inadequate that they can’t live up to the ideal. They feel less of a person because their body isn’t perfect. And we find ourselves judging others solely based on their appearance.
Normal and Beautiful Women
It’s quite sad really because when I look around me at all the normal and beautiful women I’m surrounded by, very few of them look like the dominant ideal of the skinny svelte model, and would they really want to?
Some people are naturally built like this, skinny and svelte…I’m not making a judgment here. That’s perfectly fine. BUT why is every single person so influenced by an industry, why do we believe it to be the truth when it really isn’t at all?
Even all the healthy women I know, still have soft curvaceous bodies and if the images we were fed by the media were of real women such as this, then this would be considered normal, wouldn’t you agree?
Men are subjected to it too. The six pack abs and tightly packed guns…but really how many of them look this way??
The external and internal forces of weight loss
When it comes to weight loss people often struggle internally to find the balance between external and internal forces when it comes to constructing a healthy body image. It’s difficult to let go of these dominant ideals that get portrayed as the ‘norm’.
We create a concept of ourselves based on appearance, self-observation, input of information (aka media) and from the reaction of others. But often this concept is unhealthy, untrue, and greatly harmful to us.
But the concept of body image has changed over time. Women of renaissance were voluptuous, women of the 1900′s had thighs, and curves, as can be seen with the women in the photo, shapes were all different, as they still are. If we saw images such as this and society as a whole considered this woman to be beautiful, would so many women have such a screwed up concept of body image?
I highly doubt it.
FOCUS ON HEALTH NOT IMAGE
“How many women think daily, even hourly, and obsess about the extra weight they’d like to lose? How many dislike themselves because of their extra weight? This stress alone is unhealthy for women. When the focus is solely about the looks, then we are always on a “diet” and focusing on deprivation. On the other hand, when we focus on trying to eat more healthy whole foods, the focus is on the benefit and the nutrients”. Source – I copied this from somewhere but forgot to get the link 
Stop focusing on dieting, stop focusing on how many pounds you have to lose. Start focusing on living a healthy lifestyle. Start focusing on living a happy life. Start focusing on loving yourself.
When you do this, a great shift happens on the inside, you begin to live your own truth, you begin to realise that none of what’s ‘out there’ is real. You start listening to yourself and your own needs, and living by them too. All those negative ideas in your head begin to dissolve funnily enough the healthy body image and the weight loss will often follow.
If you are as healthy as you can be, then it doesn’t matter if your body isn’t ‘perfect’. What is perfection anyway? A photo shopped air brushed image?
Be yourself and love yourself. It’s the greatest gift you can give yourself and those around you too.
Talk soon
Jedha
Nutrition and Health Coach
P.S. I’d love to know your thoughts….please join the conversation and leave me a comment 
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