As a woman, I can feel how women look at their bodies full of expectations and beliefs around having the ‘perfect body’. Fitting a so-called ‘ideal‘ body image for me has been about my weight and becoming slim.
Becoming Slim to Feel Good about Myself
When I was a teenager, I didn’t feel I was good at many things, especially at school, and I didn’t like the way I looked. I thought that my thighs and my nose were too large and I didn’t consider myself as beautiful or good in anything, even though there were areas I was good in but didn‘t see at the time.
So when my sister lost weight through dieting and became very slim, I thought I was fat and started to go on a diet as well. For about 4 weeks I ate only yogurt and pineapple, losing 7 kilos.
At the time, I only felt good when I was slim. I wanted to fit in with what I thought was the ideal body image to get recognition and love from other people, especially from boys and men. For me, to be attractive and sexy as a woman, was to be slim.
I struggled and dieted for many years and it was horrible. I thought if I was slim or could maintain a certain weight, that I would feel good, however I was not listening to my body about what food and how much food it really needed. I was dis-connected from what I was feeling and therefore could not feel what weight was true and natural for my body. I used food as a filler and a distraction to avoid what I was truly feeling about myself and my low self-image.
I can feel how unlovingly I treated myself during that time because of wanting to be slim and attractive. At times I was overeating and then at other times I strongly controlled how much food I allowed myself to eat. I had a constant focus and struggle with food.
A few years later I stopped dieting because I had realised it did not make sense because I always ended up going back to my original weight, which I now realise as not being overweight at all.
I then shifted my focus to clothes, wearing clothes which were different that got me the desired attention. I was still looking for the recognition, but this time through the way that I dressed myself.
Starting to Feel the Effect of Food
13 years ago an illness made me stop and look for a different way to live. So I looked at all areas in my life, including food. I started to feel the effect of food in my body, what food supported me and which foods made me feel racy, agitated and unsettled.
Later, after attending some Universal Medicine events, I began to deepen my awareness of the effect certain foods had on my body. I could feel that after eating bread I felt very heavy and bloated, so I changed to gluten free bread. But at some point I could feel how racy and unsettled I became after eating that too, so I started to slowly drop carbohydrates from my diet as I could feel that they affected me and my body just like sugar did. I lost a lot of weight, and again, I noticed that I loved the idea of being slim.
I still was attached in a way to the image of a ‘perfect body’ and blind to see that I actually became too thin.
I thought it was great that I finally reached a slim body without even trying to lose weight, as I was still eating plenty of food. However I began to realise that if my body was too thin, my body may be showing me that something was not in balance.
My family had commented to me that I had lost too much weight (which I ignored). After some time, I read a quote which made me realise that I needed to take loving care for my body and what it needed. As I began, I started appreciating myself more and embracing the beauty that I bring; I found that my body naturally began to gain weight again.
Learning to Love just Being Me
My struggling with my weight and striving to be slim was because of how little I really loved and appreciated myself for just being me. The process of beginning to appreciate myself began with my listening to myself, especially with how I felt. I then began taking better care of myself in general, including:
- What and how I ate.
- Going to bed early, when I felt tired, usually before 9pm.
- Watching less TV and especially not before I go to bed, as I found this too stimulating.
- Having sessions with Esoteric Healing Practioners whenever I feel I need the extra support.
During this time what has changed in a big way for me is that I have started to love and accept myself more and more. This foundation makes it possible for me to deeply appreciate myself. This is ever expanding and there is much more to embrace and love….
What I have realised is that what is important is not looks or a certain weight, but the quality and way we live every day – and how loving and tender we are with ourselves and others.
Now I can say, not only the way I look at myself but equally the way I look at others has changed. I can look at myself in the mirror and look deep into my beautiful eyes and truly see the depth and beauty that I bring in just being me. When I do, I know that I am fully connected to myself. Often now when I look into peoples’ eyes I am amazed as I see and feel that same beauty in them too.
The way I dress has also changed. I bought myself many beauty-full dresses which support the beauty-full woman that I am. I see clothes now as a way to express my own beauty (which is in me) to the world, and to share this beauty in the way I dress and the way I take care of myself.
Everybody (including men) has their own natural weight, which is truly supportive and perfect for them, and the measure should not be dictated by a society or by outside factors – like our own ideals and beliefs about having the ‘perfect body’ – or by fitting an ideal body image, but by loving and appreciating ourselves and our bodies in whatever shape we naturally have.
Forever inspired by Serge Benhayon and Universal Medicine.
Trying for perfection only takes us down the road further away from our essences or inner-hearts so simply feeling what works for our bodies allows us to walk in a way that fuels the appreciation of that connection and thus the way we eat fits our movements.
We are bombarded with images of who we should look like and behave. But have we stopped to consider the possibility that we are actually the ones who are dictating or demanding this. So my question has to be, why are we behaving in a way as a collective that is actually harming us?
Striving to be beautiful makes one ugly. Allowing the beauty to flow out confirms heaven.
Forget being fat or thin, it is the energy that really makes the difference.
“I wanted to fit in with what I thought was the ideal body image to get recognition and love from other people,” I remember feeling like that too Janina, Yet when I look back at photos of my younger self I wonder how did I think I looked fat? I never did diet, but there was always an underlying anxiousness about how I looked. Now I know that if you feel beautiful within you exude beauty – no matter if you are thin or fat.
There is nothing more attractive and beautiful then a person connected to their essence and moving from there.
“What I have realised is that what is important is not looks or a certain weight, but the quality and way we live every day – and how loving and tender we are with ourselves and others.” Yes, yes and yes. This is gold.
” For me, to be attractive and sexy as a woman, was to be slim.” I too had this belief Janina. Learning to accept myself – ourselves – just as we are – is still a work in progress for me, as I have recently been eating more than usual and thus have added an inch or two tho surprisingly not gained that much weight, but am feeling ‘less than’. Good to re-read your blog – thankyou .
Learning to love ourselves no matter what shape or size we are is about getting rid of imposed ideals, beliefs and body perfect images that we need to live up to. To love myself as I am, is a practicing art, but one that is well worth developing.
“My struggling with my weight and striving to be slim was because of how little I really loved and appreciated myself for just being me.” A profound awareness that allows the natural beauty to shine.
I can feel how this still holds true today; ‘For me, to be attractive and sexy as a woman, was to be slim.’ There is a certain picture that is held up that most of us try and live up to, for many this simply isn’t our body shape and so there is much pain, time and expense trying to become this shape. Accepting our bodies as they naturally are feels like a much truer, simpler and more joyful way to live.
True – accepting and appreciating ourselves is the way to go. The constant struggle of trying to become something we are not doesn’t support one bit.
Rebecca, I have a young friend and they appear to be obsessed with how they look, their hair, teeth, body, clothes, shoes. Nothing anyone can say to them has any effect, it’s as though they have been taken over by something that constantly encourages them to look and compare to others, which then makes them feel inferior in some way so they are dissatisfied with themselves which is part of the vicious cycle because it always has them looking out and comparing without ever once stopping to consider their own deep and exquisite beauty.
Body image has a way of taking who we are into a forever deepening distraction but when we begin to understand how to be self-loving our bodies naturally find the most loving configuration to serve us.
As I change and re-imprint my movements to love, accept and appreciate myself and what I bring others can feel and sense it. I do not have to say anything. Some will say yes to the change and others will react however what matters is the holding and deepening of this love for self and others. How another responds comes down to the relationship they have with themselves – that is not my responsibility.
It feels very expansive in my body when I see and sense the beauty in another. There is no comparison or jealousy in my body but the absolute love I have and hold for another – a reflection of the love I hold for myself.
With so many magazines, papers and the media in general touting the. ‘Slim is beautiful ‘ meme it’s amazing how many girls are actually not on a diet. However this doesn’t necessarily mean they accept what they look like and who they truly are.
Without acceptance of ourselves as we are, everything will be not enough or too far. True acceptance starts with opening up to our relationship with God.
Rather than becoming thin to feel good about ourselves, there is feeling good in ourselves living and accepting our natural shape.
I am loving the process of embracing my body and all the curves that it holds. I have stopped looking outwardly and wishing for a slim body and really loving what my body offers and feeling the womanliness.
This is really interesting; ‘I always ended up going back to my original weight, which I now realise as not being overweight at all.’ I had this experience with dieting and it makes sense that we go back to what is our natural weight – so it can just be a mental picture we have of our weight being different to how it naturally is.
Reading this article makes me realise how hard and unsuccessful dieting has been for me. I tried many different diets and they often felt very unloving for my body and sometimes very extreme. I love now that I feel what to eat and that I notice how certain foods feel in my body and whether they have any reactions or not, this feels much more true and simple for me and my body.
In all of my years of being amongst women, in friendships, at work, or just out and about in the world, I have never seen less than beauty, no matter the shape of the person’s body, the gorgeousness inside each woman is never truly hidden.
My body looks different when I look in the mirror depending on how I feel about myself, from my eyes perspective…what I eat shows itself, not just in weight, but in energy and I can feel heavy even if I look slim….and in these moments, we need to connect with our essence and return to that, and our natural beautiful angles and curves will show themselves. The energy we choose makes the outer what it is…so honesty about what we put in our bodies on all levels really does matter, energy first.
Samantha what if we all reflect angles, is there a possibility that women especially are encouraged to diet so that they do not reflect the true angles, when we are not reflecting the true angles of our bodies then we are not able to see the true reflection of God, without the true reflection of God we get lost in the mire of life.
I’ve just had a baby and I am really appreciating coming back to my natural size and shape without pushing myself but as a natural building. It feels so different to the pushing I’ve done before.
I think a lot of people’s sense of dissatisfaction with their bodies comes not just from the “ideal shape” but also from knowing that they have mistreated their body in one way or another and it’s not their natural shape. It’s when I lived in a beautifully cared for body that I feel most content – regardless of my shape or size.
So true.. when I go the extra mile to take care of myself, I enjoy being myself and being with others so much more. We can reduce how we feel to what we look like and blame that, but in my experience, that’s more the end result of a whole load of other choices based on how we’ve reacted to something.
Dieting doesn’t make sense. What I found was that all of the issues I thought I had about myself all came down to being a certain weight, or so I thought. In reality being thin would not solve the lack of self-worth I had chosen.
Your blog reminds me Janina, just how much we let our bodies fill up with thoughts and beliefs that simply are not true. When we see this is not us we can discard this stuff. Keep entertaining it and we are stuck with it wherever we go.
I love what you share here Joseph, our thoughts can be so destructive, we have a choice to let these negative thoughts and beliefs go, they are not true anyway, so why give them any space.
Joseph have we ever stopped to wonder where these thoughts come from? We are driven by these thoughts that we think are ours because we think them, but what if they are actually something we pick up from a pool of energy we live in. Where does the thought to murder come from? Does it really come from us, or is it something like an impulse that passes through us that we then act upon?
Every true shape of a woman or man represents an angle of heaven, said once by a very wise woman. And it is true. Our society bastardised the fact as they conformed a certain type of shape as THE shape to have, which reduces and suppresses the multidimensional purpose of our bodies. Question though is, are you living and representing that angle in and with your body or are you sabotaging it by your own (food) choices.
We always think we are attracted to shapes and looks when in fact what attracts us is the energy of the other person. Are we attracted to an energy that is lifting and pulling us up or leaves us in our comfort zone and will never ask us to be more.
Great question Stefanie and one we would be wise to ask of all our relationships and interactions.
I agree, we do have looks that appeal, but it’s not that that draws us to people….energy is what we first read, will we be challenged, inspired, stay small, stimulated, optimal fulfilled, or will I be able to play victim, bully, disgruntled and full of blame…what flavour of issue will this relationship offer me? Our body shapes share a story, a story of choices…and our movements, posture and walk, tell so much as well about who we are…no conversation needed. We can read it all and get exactly what we are looking for / need to learn more about who we are.
The most beautiful body is the one that holds itself in love and does not allow anything lesser.
The way we look at ourselves is the way we feel within and this, affects too the way our body looks like. Everything feeds everything and love is the best ingredient ever we could add in this feedback cycle.
Appreciation is a key ingredient in our relationships with our bodies and the more we accept ourselves and open to a deeper level of appreciation the more our bodies will reflect our loving attention.
Appreciation and acceptance of all of ourselves are definitely really important, and as you say the more we accept ourselves the more we can keep gong deeper with appreciation.
I love me more then ever, I am more satisfied with the way I look and feel than I have been for many years – and why? because I am starting to feel who I really am, – we are so much more then what we see physically and when we really feel this we feel the beauty in our connection with the universe.
After a myriad of failed diets, I came to realise that there was something missing from my understanding of why it was so hard to maintain the diet and why the weight would always begin to creep back on again. It took quite a few more years to come to understand the why and that was simply because I had no idea what the reason was for putting the weight on in the first place. For me, the understanding that I had been feeding my emotions and my exhaustion and not my body, opened the doorway to a new and a much healthier relationship with food. As a result the weight was released with no planning and no effort; it was simply a very natural by-product of caring deeply for my body.
So so much energy is wasted on wanting to look another way, we are all gorgeous, knowing and claiming this is the key to true undeniable beauty.
At the moment I would say I am carrying too much weight. This morning I started to moan and dislike my body over this then asked “How does my body feel about the weight? what energy/quality is this weight reflecting?” And I felt into this, got the understanding and the dislike faded away. The body doesn’t dislike or hate itself its the being being shown it’s own reflection of what energy it’s been running with that we don’t like.
It’s crazy what we can do in order to feel better, we can really go at it from the wrong direction and end up worse than how we felt to begin with.
So many of us in society feel dissatisfied with how we look, it would bode well if we made it compulsory education to understand how to love yourself no matter what.
We cannot ever truly find deep settlement in who we are through diet, ideal or picture of how we ‘should’ be or behave as all that we are is signified by our connection to our essence. When we live guided by this quality we embody the truth of who we are, and our body then reflects the degree our Soulfulness is naturally lived.
It is interesting how ideals can bring us so far away from reality and or feeling what is actually real, such as being unhealthy slim even when people share or warn you, that it doesn’t reach you. How important for us to see the message here shared and becoming aware that we limit ourselves by allowing ideals and beliefs to run us.. So far fetched we have become.
When we are attached to a certain image, like ‘the perfect body’ we lose sight of what is the truth of whatever subject we are talking about. Outside factors like ideals and beliefs will never determine the quality of our being it will only measure what we let out. It is what we feel inside that gives us the truth of who and how we are with ourselves, with food, with weight, with our looks and so on, and so on.
“What I have realised is that what is important is not looks or a certain weight, but the quality and way we live every day – and how loving and tender we are with ourselves and others.” With out self love we are left to drown in our making.
So many people suffer from low self worth and self-esteem who could be supported to see that there is a different way to be and live, just by reading this testimonial. Self-doubt, lack of self worth and low self esteem are not who we are, but it sometimes feels like that when we’re in it. Starting to make choices to look after ourselves more deeply starts to turn this around, slowly and steadily. The more we allow ourselves to feel how awesome it feels to make more self-loving choices, the more we build on that, and so our sense of worth and solidness, that knowing of who we are, builds too.
If we try to loss weight because we are unhappy with the way we look we often end up eating more – why because we have not looked at the self worth issue that underlines most harmful eating habits.
If you use food for a certain superficial approach instead of supporting your body to bring out and let through your multidimensionality as much as possible (through not overeating and the food that supports that) , you will never really have a true relationship to your body. It will be an instrument for your needs instead a vehicle for the all.
Absolutely the more we get lost in obsessing about how we look the less space there is for us to be available for others.
It is actually more about why and when we eat certain foods instead of what we actually eat. You can eat things that are in a way healthy but if you use them to numb or even obliterate yourself they have the same effect in your body like not so healthy foods.
Coming to understand the power of food to “numb or even obliterate” myself has made so much sense of my relationship with food and why my body, and my life, suffered so much from many of my food choices, choices I have come to realise are so disregarding to the precious vehicle that supports me through life. Our relationship with food, what we eat, why we eat and how we eat, is definitely a science worth deeply exploring.
Society changes its views on what is beautiful depending on who the latest celebrity is or fashion modal, and this often dictates to us the shape we should be that would make us more and yet aren’t we, in fact, less if we adhere to pressures outside of ourselves. Finding our natural weight and shape is far more rejoicing of us than listening to what’s trending.
I find it crazy and completely contradictory to witness women who I can see and feel are very beautiful not only not register or think of themselves as beautiful but act in ways that completely crush or diminish that natural beauty within them in an effort to be ‘more beautiful’. Most models for example are very self-abusive in an effort to look beautiful based on a picture they think they should fit instead of simply letting their natural inner beauty out which is way more beautiful than any outer appearance on its own could ever be.
We are impacted from images when we are very young and it feels like this pressure for the perfect body is intensifying as almost all of children’s dolls and toys have extraordinarily thin bodies with large heads and big eyes. You might say the fashion worlds idea of attraction. So young girls are first bombarded with this message when they are very young and then as they grow up they see all around them imagery of what the ‘perfect woman’ looks like, all of which is outside of themselves and has nothing to do with who a woman truly is. It is only when we get to connect within to feel ourselves from our essence and value what we feel over what we are being sold from the outside that we can feel settled in our own skin and love every part of ourselves.
If we are to have any education at all it should be an education that tells us we are all beautiful – we need to have a society that reminds us we are gorgeous, and a world that accepts us for exactly how we look. This can and will happen one day.
Not utipia – just the future waiting for us to choose it.
I like the observation that you have made here about the connection between being slim in body weight and feeling accepted for who you are, which seemed to mean at the time being seen as attractive or sexy. It’s a strange mix of ideals and beliefs which personally I am very familiar with, but there is something about it in your writing which really brings out just how mis-aligned this way of thinking is.
We always first need to ask ourselves why we want to lose weight – unfortunately in our current climate we are imposed upon so much so, because we don’t claim ourselves as the true beauty we are, we end up taking on so many images of needing to be thin.
Only true self love brings us to the weight that is true for us.
The thing is when we start being our true selves our true size and weight will follow naturally.
Yes wisely said Kev – as our bodies only know how to reflect the truth of how we are living. Thank God as we then have a constant marker on hand to guide us whenever we are willing to be honest.
The ideal and beliefs associated with height and weight ratios can be soul destroying. There is nothing more honouring to watch than a man or woman who stand in all shapes and sizes in their natural presence.
The way we feel about ourselves, the extent and the depth to which we love ourselves, is constantly being reflected back to us through our choices of how we take care of ourselves, in every way, from how we put ourselves to bed, how we get up and get ready for the day, to how and what and when we eat, how and what we wear, even conversations: what we allow, what we dismiss, and what we are prepared to express.
Janina, reading this makes me reflect on my own journey with dieting and wanting to look a certain way. I went on diets and lost weight but I would get very tired and at one point I was so tired I could hardly walk, at these times I was not listening to what my body needed. I was following a diet set by someone else instead. Nowadays I listen to what my body needs rather than follow someone else’s ideas and this for me work brilliantly and is much more enjoyable than the control and hardness of following diets.
Yes getting to know what our body needs is a wonderful journey and well worth the effort
Learning to Love just Being Us can be one of life’s hardest challenges – so worth the effort though as with out that self love basin we literally have no where to go but down.
Developing a loving relationship with our bodies has a very solid foundation for what is next. I know the more I pay attention to what my body is saying, the more it speaks and there is a communication that happens all the time, one I can tune into and respond too. And that is my guide. I don’t need diet plans and exercise plans and magazines on what to wear – I just need to deepen the connection that is waiting for me – and in doing so, everything my body needs is shared with me.
I love how you say listen to her rather than listen to it. Somehow this makes me feel more like deepening the relationship with my body as I feel her more intimate. I am reclaiming myself as a woman in this intimate connection.
From a young age women are told that if they are slim they are “better”. This could not be further from the truth. When we are living with love our body naturally configures to a shape that supports us and it has nothing to do with losing weight.
I went in the opposite direction for most of my life, I wanted to avoid any attention so I put on weight and made myself very large. It was a form of protection and a way to keep people out. It has taken time and a lot of healing to start to let this go more.
The emotions and energy we consume is the most powerful thing. We need to be more honest this way – that we just sat down and had a plate of reaction, a bowl of self-doubt or a side helping of comparing ourselves. They all have a much greater effect than we imagine. Thank you Janina.
Yeh it’s easy to have a picture of how we’d like to look or think we should look, but who gave us that picture? And could we be discounting one of the very things that’s unique to us?
I think how we feel is actually the biggest impact on how we look, I know when I take amazing care of myself, my food, my diet, my exercise, my body and I am really loving life and the opportunity to learn I feel great and I’m SURE that I look different to when things are getting me down or I’m doubting myself or whatever. It makes sense…. that if we feel content inwards we also feel content with how we outwardly look.
Being thin most of my life (self created choice) is a gift to allow myself to truly accept myself and all my choices, to consistently feel my quality step by step and to always hold myself through it all.
I have been going through the “I’m too thin” phase over the last couple of years. My first reaction when I lost a lot of weight was to eat more but that just made me feel sick and heavy, with no increase in my weight. I finally accepted this is the weight that is true for my body but those ‘thin’ thoughts still pop in on occasion. It is at those times that I choose to deepen the love and the care I have for myself instead of listening to the thoughts whose only purpose is to make me feel less than the beautiful woman I am, no matter what my weight.
A beautiful article, bringing awareness to how much time we spend in criticism of our bodies and that it is not until we spend time in appreciating them that any change in how we treat them occurs.
Loving ourselves is the antidote to excessive anxiousness. I know that a high level of anxiousness that I lived in contributed to my body becoming too thin. As the anxiousness has and is continuing to dissipate, my body is again becoming full and voluptuous. I can again feel and experience the curves and true beauty that my body has always had and now I feel comfortable to express.
I struggled with my weight for many years and found that at that time I was very anxious, stressed and tired. I also had problems with my skin and another health concern that cropped up. It was at this time I took the time to stop and consider what my body was telling me and seek support. I appreciate the steps I made to seek support via healing sessions with practitioners looking at what foods felt supportive and what wasn’t and taking life back to basics making it really easy to begin to find a rhythm that supported me to truly begin to love who I was. Not only did my weight drop and I found my natural shape but I began to really enjoy life and the body I was in. Our bodies will never be perfect but it doesn’t matter because once we begin to drop the behaviours and or patterns that no longer serve us we blossom and glow from the inside out and that is so beauty-full.
In seeking to meet a picture or expectation we are already in abuse to who we are in essence. Our bodies are constellated, shaped perfectly in order for us to live the essence of who we are and shine our light in the world. To disregard this is to disconnect from our innate way of being and our bodies become distorted as an indication of the corruption of our connection to our essence. There is much to love and appreciate of our body and being and the relationship between the two, and more we do the more we are able to freely live guided by a real indication that knows the truth of who we are.
I sometimes still find myself sizing up my body in the mirror, is it okay, have I put on weight etc and I have to remind my self it is not how I look but how do I feel within? ✨
I fell into the belief that my life would be perfect if I was a perfect size and would constantly diet, go to exercise classes and nothing changed. Then I came to the courses of Universal Medicine and let all of the dieting go, stopped worrying about my size and looked at the foods I was eating. I started to feel healthier, and my weight still stayed the same for many years, but I did not care because my health had improved. Then very slowly and naturally the weight came off, and it has been stable now for around four years. I do not worry about weighing myself or what size I am – all of that has gone.
I too was obsessed about my weight and went on every fad diet possible to no avail. Since attending Universal Medicine and realising I simply needed to accept and love my body as it was, the weight dropped off easily. I feel I am too skinny now and am applying the same principles…love and acceptance
Yes it is absolutely wonderful to just be ourselves and really who else can we truly be?
I pondered on what it means to me when I look into another’s eyes.. I appreciate this line and now going to honour and fully feel why I do not hold another through my connection with my eyes. “Often now when I look into peoples’ eyes I am amazed as I see and feel that same beauty in them too.” In all honesty I shy away from that. I am wondering if it is because of the depth I hold in my eyes – I might make another feel uncomfortable.
True beauty is in how much you deeply take care of yourself. Nurturing your connection in those ways it is confirmed in all your body. From feeling your feet, to your toes, to the back of your neck and head, to behind your eyes, and the softness of your tender fingertips. A fullness of love emanating from all your body in connection no matter the weight or size. Connection is connection – to all of your body.
In our current times the false ideal of beauty is to be slim, in the 1940’s it was to be curvaceous… in either era women felt a pressure to conform to this ideal, looking outside for recognition and acceptance. As you say Janina, by loving and appreciating ourselves whatever shape and size we are, we can “kick these ideals into touch.”
I have always judged my body harshly, tonight I did a sacred movement class with Natalie Benhayon and I was able to let all of that judgement go and for the first time really start to move freely in my body and it felt incredible. I felt the beauty in myself and I allowed this to be expressed out and I didn’t care how I looked or how this was perceived, there was just a fullness there that I really enjoyed.
Janina, I can relate to this; I wanted to fit in with what I thought was the ideal body image to get recognition and love from other people, especially from boys and men’. What a shame that as girls and young women we do not value and appreciate ourselves and all that we are are and all that we bring and that we give our power away to others and how we think we should be.
How much effort, time and energy has been spent on wishing we looked a certain way, the whole world is at it, trying to be something they are not.
Celebrating appreciating and accepting who we all are – beautiful amazing divine beings is the way to go. Let’s forget this incessant call to put ourselves down and a wish to look like someone else, we have it ALL already within.
I can relate to your experiences of food, from a young age I took on this belief that I was unattractive because I did not have a small frame like my mother. I ate to numb what I was feeling around me and then became overweight and lived like this for many years. Now I am back to a healthy weight but I can still carry some of the old thoughts and ways of thinking- although the weight has dropped there is still more letting go of the stories and pictures I took on of myself and how I view myself.
Love the inward progression from looking outward to be able to feel good about yourself, through questioning things, into the contentment of ‘being you’.
“Learning to Love just Being Me” this must be the best teaching one could ever learn.
You describe a relationship with your body that I think a lot of woman could relate to – I remember in school the slightly obsessive focus girls had on their bodies and their inability to look in the mirror and see anything but their imagined faults. We are not taught to simply love ourselves for who we are.
We are obsessed with the end result in life. We preen and polish outer appearances, the visual image of what people see. We are so adept at slapping a new coat of paint on or renovating but as you point out here Janina it’s very rare that we look at the energy that got us there. When we make our internal state our number one, suddenly many things fall into place. When we drive and push and pull to get things to be a certain way the only outcome we will get is pain.
A timely read Janina, thank you for being so open and honest about your experience. I have never given too much energy to my weight and how my body is – Or rather I never gave anyone the impression that I cared enough, out of a reaction to everyone around me caring what felt like way too much. But as I get older and as my body seems to be changing slightly, everything I ignored in the past feels like it’s coming to the surface now and I’m finding that actually, I have very little to no relationship with my body. It’s something to look at more closely as I realise how much negative talk goes on in my head about it.
This article is a gem. Though I disagree with some of the comments thereafter, along the lines of ‘change the inner and you will accept the outer, no matter your size or shape’. Whilst at the fundamental level this is absolutely true, and this is the loving path to take to lasting weight loss, where pockets of excess weight remain they remind us of the buried hurts still to be examined… and that feels uncomfortable, physically and otherwise. This article makes the same point, and others, beautifully: http://www.unimedliving.com/diet-and-weight-loss/how-to-lose-weight/the-6-best-ways-to-lose-weight-authentically-hint-it-doesn-t-involve-fad-diets-or-gym-memberships.html/?utm_source=newsletter&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=november05
I know from my own experience that when we stop chasing the perfect body image and let go of the need to lose weight, there is a level of acceptance within the body that says we are enough and it is ok to be me.
” Becoming Slim to Feel Good about Myself ” This is one of the traps set up in life , “feel good” or ” be good” once we are seeking these objectives we will never get to the truth of who we are in truth. The truth of our being comes from the inside out and therefore no one can know this, until they live the essence of their being no matter how their body looks or fulfils the self imposed influenced images of the world.
Its crazy that we follow so many diets, fashion trends and the like when all the time our body will naturally communicate what it really needs and we can feel what is the right clothes for us on any given day.
Janina it is truly a transformation to go from feeling a false sense of worth in a body ideal and clothing, and the subsequent attention of others, to feeling a deep connection to who you are in essence, to your inner qualities, and eating and dressing to love, appreciate, and express yourself. There is nothing so gorgeous as what’s within us
Trying to keep up to an expectation or image only takes us further away from the true well-ness that is on offer when we otherwise listen to and honour the body from the inside out – images aside.
So much wasted energy invested in trying to attain the perfect body whatever that may look like. It is only when we let go of the pictures of how we ‘should’ look that we have the opportunity to build a relationship with our body based on love and acceptance and reflect this out to the world.
Any issue we have with ourselves in the end comes down to the quality we choose in our lives.
It is crazy how we let in society’s judgements on how we should look, I know as i am now getting older I catch myself worrying about my skin etc when in truth we are all so beautiful what ever age. We need to realise when we let these thoughts in, we are doing an injustice to all women everywhere.
I notice that there is a difference between accepting how our bodies look and accepting the people we are on the inside.
That’s one trick I am starting to realise, we think that our struggle is with food but is actually fed by a struggle within ourselves.
I was always on the thin side, losing weight easily taking ages to put it back on but when I started caring, accepting and then appreciating myself I have filled out. I’m still slim but my face has filled out and now I have curves and I love it. It is a powerful thing to love accept and appreciate yourself, in many ways.
What I have realised is that what is important is not looks or a certain weight, but the quality and way we live every day – and how loving and tender we are with ourselves and others. This is a very important point that you make her Melinda, we may have the so called perfect body shape but are we moving and using this perfect body in a way that reflects true quality, tenderness and grace?
Its funny and absolutely crazy how we judge ourselves against others, and criticise our own looks when God loves us absolutely warts and all. In Gods eyes he sees us as all as equally beautiful.
I wonder if anybody would be interested in hundreds of people who are able to simply hold their weight in the healthy range?
What an amazing sharing of the weight loss diet factor and looking outside of ourselves when it is all within us , our own innate beauty from within waiting to be connected to “.What I have realised is that what is important is not looks or a certain weight, but the quality and way we live every day – and how loving and tender we are with ourselves and others”.
Yes, and the strange thing is when we look away from dieting in the right way the need for dieting disappears.
Having a loving tenderness with ourselves is utmost in our daily life.
We hear it so often, that we shouldn’t worry about how society dictates body image. But gosh, we are up against a huge force really aren’t we? We are literally being slammed from every angle to think that we are not good enough. It took years of me being somewhat aware of this before realising just how insidious it actually was. I knew the media would portray a certain type of ‘right’ body image, but what I didn’t realise was how affected by it I was. I thought not having an eating disorder meant that I got away unscathed. So wrong was I. It has always been a running thought in the back of my mind that I don’t have a nice body. So it’s interesting to feel just how much we are impacted by what we put out there.
Simple and beautiful Janina; ‘loving and appreciating ourselves and our bodies in whatever shape we naturally have.’
I use to be a lot heavier through my teen years and never really liked looking at myself in the mirror. What I have observed more and more now is that I really like mirrors and it shows the more we accept and appreciate who we are with honesty, we begin to drop the images and beliefs we have held around ourselves and our looks and we begin to see the real jewels that we are. My weight has shifted and changed a lot over the last few years and will continue to over the course of my life. Our bodies shift as we shift and confirms who we are from within that is then reflected on the outside too.
‘For me, to be attractive and sexy as a woman, was to be slim.’ We are being fed this image of sexy and slim, look at any magazine and you will find how girls and women are encouraged to get ‘the perfect body’, go on a diet or exercising in extreme ways and it seems to be never enough. Connecting to ourselves and feel we are enough as we are and how beautiful we are is the only true and joyful way to go.
It is so interesting to read your words on feeling good about yourself from having a body that is slim, and how part of this feeling good would come from the attention it would bring. I find this interesting because all my life I have been very slender and the attention this has brought to me has never been something I enjoyed or wanted, I longed for a curvaceous body so I could feel like a real woman.
Your comment is showing me that as long as we don’t love and appreciate ourselves no matter what shape or size we have we will find something wrong about it.
I have been on so many diets in my life and have come to the conclusion that the Self-Appreciation diet is the best by far.
One would think that with all the diets and nutritional awareness out there would be no problems with our diets but something is clearly not right as we have more diets than ever and at the same time have more issues with food than ever before too.
This line really stood out for me: “I thought if I was slim or could maintain a certain weight, that I would feel good, however I was not listening to my body about what food and how much food it really needed.” It is so interesting the mind can think it will feel good when it reaches its goals but it totally forgets the fact that how we feel is governed by the body… yes. So great blog and a wise message to listen to our bodies to feel settled and great in ourselves instead of following extreme diets from the mind.
‘What I have realised is that what is important is not looks or a certain weight, but the quality and way we live every day – and how loving and tender we are with ourselves and others.’ When we choose to live in a way that is very self loving there is no space for those old negative thoughts about our looks to take hold and they drop away. In its place is a knowing of our beauty radiating from the inside out.
‘For me, to be attractive and sexy as a woman, was to be slim.’ This is such a strong ideal that we can buy into… but leaves us feeling even more desperate when we actually achieve the picture on the outside but don’t feel content, sexy or attractive on the inside – and then put even more pressure on ourselves to attain a different picture because the current one mustn’t be ‘it’ if we’re not feeling the way we had hoped.
Thank you Janina. This is a topic that needs to be explored. Your story shows how damaging weight loss regimes are and also that the most important factor in our weight is the energy we are choosing.
Learning to love just being me; what a wonderful lesson to share with us Janina, thank you. What you express here is beautiful and so true;
“What I have realised is that what is important is not looks or a certain weight, but the quality and way we live every day – and how loving and tender we are with ourselves and others”.
Isn’t it crazy to have this monumental condition on ourselves, that unless we look a certain way we can’t feel or express joy! It may not be being thin, but so many women carry around terms and conditions!
The weight loss cycle is often what we repeat time and time again with the intention that if we lose weight we will feel amazing and therefore be amazing. My experience of losing weight this way left me looking slimmer yet not feeling that my self- worth had changed one bit.
Thank you for sharing that the changes come from our lifestyle choices that are not only food based, but our movements each day that lead to raciness, fatigue or overwhelm. When we choose to pinpoint how these elements can overtake our day and leave us feeling out of sort then we are heading in a direction of more truth and before long the self- loving choices start falling into the cycle of growth and change.
it’s crazy Janina – we are given so many critical thoughts about how we look, it’s like they eat us up from inside. Then we try to fill this gap by stuffing ourselves with food that is not right. And so our distemper with our body seems to be well placed. But what if we tried living the other way around? What if we made the thoughts we had and energy we chose our most important diet? What if we regularly celebrated ourselves? Perhaps then we would see our true weight depends not on food at all but the Love we have for us and the world.
When I was a teenager I didn’t like my body as well. Reflecting on this now it was more do to with me comparing myself to other women in magazines etc thinking they were prettier, slimmer etc than me; so for a year or so I become pretty much anorexic only having a few calories a day and watching everything I ate and constantly weighing myself. It was a very miserable existence thinking I was constantly fat even though I wasn’t. I know one of the reasons I did this, it was also because I felt I had no control or say in my life so when I started to take this back for myself the anorexia fell away. So food was okay and got a bit better, but the level of disregard, lack of self-love and self-esteem was still there. This has completely changed for me now though and it is with the teaching and support of Universal Medicine and the willingness for me to heal that has changed this, but body image is still a very big consciousness we need to break for both men and women making it instead about the love for ourselves.
For me the aim of having a perfect body, or rather a slim skinny body, was always related to finding a partner. Culture kind of tells us that no perfect body = no perfect man. However I absolutely agree with you that no matter how good my body looked, nothing compares with feeling truly content in myself, and when I feel content being me I couldn’t care less whether I have a partner or not AND what could be more beautiful than a woman who loves being who she is?
When we can look into our own eyes in the mirror and see the inner beauty reflected back to us we can do the same with everyone we meet and see the same inner beauty.
Thank you Janina for sharing your experience, I did not have a problem with body weight through most of my life, but after a couple of operations and changing my diet my weight slowly dropped off and I became too thin, I realised my body was telling me something and in a sense it was starving for my love and acceptance , I am finding lately with bringing more tender loving care into my life and letting more of the beautiful woman I know I am out, I have started to slowly gain weight and now I feel much stronger in my body.
So many years in my teens and adult life I would be laying flat out on my bed trying to squeeze into favourite jeans/trousers – only to stand up stiff and rigid like a robot not being able to move for fear of coming apart at the seams. Hence the start of many yo-yoing diets. Unfortunately like so many others I was trying to fit in with society and the trends that were being set up via TV and other role models of the times. What really was going on here was as Janina so beautifully expresses in this blog. I was trying to perfect something that required no ‘perfecting’ or squeezing into at all. All those visual inputs drawing us away from those inner connections that are so naturally available to us all the time.
Thank-you for sharing this Janina. The endemic scale of how we cruel ourselves over our outer appearance, and bring such harm to our bodies reveals just how much we have neglected and ‘forgotten’ even, that it is our relationship with the being that we are within that founds everything…
To re-connect to this, is our ‘essential’ for life – not to measure up to some outer-imposed standard that even if we succeed at meeting in some measure, can never bring us the love we are truly seeking.
“My struggling with my weight and striving to be slim was because of how little I really loved and appreciated myself for just being me. ” So true Janina, whenever we feel dissatisfied and unhappy with something about ourselves, it is reflective of a deeper disconnect with who we are in our essence. When we have a connection and relationship with this essential part of us, there is no room for any sense of discontent, we feel beautiful inside and out.
I am surrounded by some people who have resorted to gastric surgery for weight loss and some of these women are very young. The sad thing is they continue to rely on the surgery to help them shed the weight but make no other changes within themselves let alone what they put into their mouths.
The way we advertise beauty holds us all in a tight grip of perfection where we become blind to the beauty there is.
Appreciation is so important, essential for the wheels of the world and society to run smoothly, and appreciation of our selves is at the heart of it all.
It’s funny how we spend most of our lives wanting to be thinner, or curvier, or something different to how we are, perhaps part of this is because we lack true contentment within ourselves, but part of it is that we can feel that we are not our natural body shape.
I love being honest to myself too–is what I put on the outside an expression of myself or is it a recognition I am seeking? No matter what the answer is, the gold is in my honesty and acceptance. This is the way for me to truly express who I am.
It has taken a while for me to stop looking at myself with a critical eye especially when it’s to do with my weight. I still do it sometimes but it’s less. Appreciation of myself has helped to break the habit and focus more on how I feel first.
Nothing feels better than love in the body, and when we really, deeply love and nurture ourselves. I remember the ideal and concept of being thin is definitely something I brought into as a young teenager when thin was considered beautiful, but while I was always thin I never FELT beautiful until I started to take care of myself and love being who I am – it’s definitely not our shape that defines our beauty or how we feel.
Yes Janina, our lives are full of examples of how we seem to prefer to focus on the outside of things. When we skip over how they feel inside, we effectively make ourselves blind. It’s ironic to think how many of us focus on loosing weight when all the time we are reducing and reducing our senses down. What would our lives be like if we made every day about expanding – our awareness, not our waistline?
I was driving in Germany recently and there was a beauty salon called perfect… advertising the perfect everything … from body to nails to eyes to tans… it was like a mecca of idealism, and of course this is not unusual, unless one has the eyes to see.
Janina thank you for sharing your journey from disconnection to connection, and how it started around food and weight to how you felt and look. This is so common and many people fall for the same. It is about us taking responsibility of our life and our choices.
‘ I started to feel the effect of food in my body, what food supported me and which foods made me feel racy, agitated and unsettled.’ I had noticed that snacking on fruit juices and apples on a long haul flight made me racy and fidgety, so I dropped eating fruit in order to feel more still generally. Recently I broke my fruit ban to indulge in some ripe mangoes, but felt depressed the next day so that was a gentle reminder that I gave up fruit for a good reason.
The world seems to have us chasing something all the time – a perfect body, the right outfit, hair, makeup, house, partner, job, life….it’s a never ending list. What we don’t see advertised is self love and self care, that we are enough exactly as we are, or that beauty is within and shines out for all to see when we reconnect to ourselves and love and appreciate who we are. I used to chase the images and ideals sold to me, but now I feel so contented and beautiful in myself as each day is another day to deepen my love for myself. Chasing the images of getting it right or “success” left me feeling anxious and empty, by contrast self love and appreciation is a joy to live and has helped restore my vitality.
Women are fantastic at picking ourselves apart, looking in the mirror finding one fault after another and having an image of an ideal body shape. It’s exhausting, demeaning and leads to a woman living so much less that what she actually and already is. But it is a choice and we can choose either the above scenario or something different. One day I caught myself hunting faults as I looked in the mirror. I decided to try a different approach and look for what I liked. I trained myself to change the way I was thinking and looking at myself. A few years down the track and I love what I see in the mirror and I enjoy my body.
I have a very petite build but when I take on other people’s issues and concerns I feel myself bloat and instantly look much bigger. What I have come to learned is that everything comes from energy first so I end up looking like the energy that I have taken on which is heavy and dense. This has nothing to do with my weight changing but has everything to do with the energy that I have absorbed.
A great point Elizabeth, I feel the truth in this for myself also, bringing it home that it is always about energy.
For me food is an great indicator of how I am with myself and others. I recently realised how I use food to not express love to others or not to feel love from others. Instead of accepting the love and in doing so in my head risk getting hurt I cut off from the feeling using food, usually sweet food. I have so much more understanding for the struggle people go through with thier weight.
Janina, this is so gorgeous to read, it feels great reading an article that is encouraging us to be our natural body weight, that we do need not diet and try to live up to a certain look, that we all have a natural body weight that is just right for us and how loving and simple it is to accept this. I can feel why diets don’t work and why they are such a struggle because we are trying to change what is natural for us, the weight and size we are and so why we so often return to the same weight. How amazing it would be as women if we accepted ourselves just as we are and didn’t compare and think we needed to look ‘better’ or ‘different’ than how we naturally are.
In the future they will look back and realise the big mistake dieting was. Dieting never truly worked, what works is listening to the body and honouring that. When we let the mind run us we will always be slave to its unhealthy desires. The body always knows best.
There is no true healing when we make our issues or focus solely around food. From experience, it is never about the food alone, but why I am choosing to eat it and what I am getting from the effects.
Acting on the bodies impulse will ensure a healthy looking body and a clear mind
“Becoming Slim to Feel Good about Myself” I, like most women have spent a great deal of my life if judgement and criticism of my body. I wanted it to be more athletic, smaller legs, broader shoulders, nicer, perkier breasts, slim thighs, brown skin, straight hair…..and the list could go on and on. These days, I have a lot healthier relationship with my body image, but the pangs of old judgement still do creep in from time to time. I notice I have to really nip it in the bud, otherwise, it can really take a hold. I find it useful to come back to truth, what I know in my body is love, this helps a lot.
I too can feel “how unlovingly I treated myself during that time because of wanting to be slim and attractive”; how my precious body suffered through these times as I sought the illusion of perfection that had been fed to me from many parts of my life. To bring our beautiful young girls, and boys, up to know how wonderful they are simply by being themselves, will ensure that the men and women of tomorrow will be able to know and love themselves just the way they are.
I have been through a similar process Janina, from overweight to underweight and now normal for my body, No idea what I weigh but I can wear anything I choose which is gorgeous but I don’t abuse the body with food either, I eat according to what my body requires and I now appreciate the shift within myself to get to this self loving stage.
I relate to your struggle Janina and have also identified to the (so-called) need to be slim in order to feel good about myself – and to a large extent still do. Yet I can feel there is a truth in this too for me, as I have been someone who has been quite overweight, and I still carry some extra weight today. It is the energy of this unneeded weight that I can feel as something incompatible with the (energetic) light that I actually am; I can also feel the nature of the held-on-to fatty deposits in my body. So there is a discontent that comes with not being all that I am, and it is in this that the true discomfort lies. The next trick is not to react to this realisation with self-loathing but with understanding and support – and the certainty that with my ever-present dedication to evolution the current situation will dissolve and resolve.
When we commit to live with the care and love that we truly deserve and let go of the images of how we need to be in order to fit in, we create space for our bodies to settle to their natural way of being where the outer is just a reflection of the love within us.
“A few years later I stopped dieting because I had realised it did not make sense because I always ended up going back to my original weight,” I hear the voice of millions of people in this statement who have also found the same.
‘I can look at myself in the mirror and look deep into my beautiful eyes and truly see the depth and beauty that I bring in just being me. ‘ Janina, I do this too, often in the morning before I go to work and when I do I know that, that is also what I will see in others I meet in my day.
“As a woman, I can feel how women look at their bodies full of expectations and beliefs around having the ‘perfect body’. Fitting a so-called ‘ideal‘ body image for me has been about my weight and becoming slim”
When I look at my 2 year old niece who just emanates joy and naturally loves her body it saddens me that she will grow up in a society that imposes on her that she should look and how she should behaviour. We are all perfectly imperfect and celebrating that is something that many of us have to learn.
In trying to be a certain weight or look whether that is big or thin there is always an unresolved feeling within, and true self appreciation is the antidote which reveals we are MUCH more than our body, even though our physical body is very important and contains intelligent particles 😀
Yes Harrison, the body is the end result of our choices and the record of how we have been living. But, to bring awareness to more, to the energy and essence of who we are, our focus can change to encompass the enormity of our origins and why we are here – food and body image becomes totally minimal compared to this.
Janina, this is such a supportive blog for us to read, it is so open, honest and real. Many people strive to have a perfect body shape and size. Some people would even consider to go under surgery to achieve this, so what you’ve shared shows us that we don’t have to live according to these images and expectations. But choosing to live in a way that supports, nourish, care and love for our body, it will naturally resume to its natural shape. The key is to love and care for our body no matter what and we will feel the benefits in so many ways.
So many people are obsessed with what to eat – thinking about food all the time is a sure sign that the relationship with food is not balanced. Our relationship with food also reflects our relationship with ourselves. Same with clothes. If I’m not treating myself with deep love and care, my clothes don’t feel right and I hate the reflection in the mirror because what I see is my own self care or dislike, and not a true image.
There are so many pictures of what an ideal women should look like that we are bombarded with from young. It is up to us as women to deeply appreciate and claim ourselves to then know what is true for us.
What a great blog Janina. Thank you for sharing your experiences with us all. Appreciation is something we have to appreciate as being a very great and wonder-full tool! Not only does it support and heal in the way you describe here, but it also cuts comparison, jealousy, resentment, bitterness, in fact almost all emotions as true appreciation brings us back and confirms our love within, the natural essence we truly are. Appreciation brings out our natural essence!
Thank you Janina, you perfectly describe the way life feels when we focus on weight, body image, calories, and valuing ourselves as physicality only, instead of the wonderful being on the inside who is innately and truly beautiful. Life feels so miserable and empty when we aspire to ideals, instead of living in self love and choosing to be connected to the love we are in essence.
When we are dissatisfied and judgemental and hold these thoughts about ourselves we actually are putting exactly that energy, whether we intend to or not, into describing our body shape. That becomes our reality, but when you focus on accepting and appreciating the deeper qualities we are within, knowing we are more than an exterior image, our body shape will change and align to the love it is held in allowing for our body to come back to its natural expression also.
With acceptance we have the opportunity to actually have a foundation of re-connection with ourselves, and from this connection , re-build our relationships in the world
What I am realising is that when we begin to love and appreciate ourselves it is an ongoing deepening of the relationship with ourselves. There is always more to appreciate, more to accept and love.
Absolutely agree here Caroline. I have come a long way in the appreciating of myself even loving my petiteness when most of my life I wanted to be taller. This appreciation for myself as I am allows me to appreciate others as they are also.
There is more, perhaps, to self acceptance than liking the way we look. And there is perhaps even more than liking the person inside. Could there be a way that we move our bodies, which gives back to us the quality of the relationship we have with ourselves, a relationship that can be critical and unsettled, or content and even full of joy?
“My struggling with my weight and striving to be slim was because of how little I really loved and appreciated myself for just being me.” When we do not love ourselves it is easy to fall for all the pictures, ideals and believes that we hold and see around us about the ‘perfect body’. Your story shows that no diet regime will ever help us only the diet of truly loving ourselves and eating what we feel our body needs.
Absolutely Janina, how we are living everyday, our quality, our love, is super important, ‘ the quality and way we live every day – and how loving and tender we are with ourselves and others’ is key.
We are fed so many pictures of how we should or could be. Learning to love our body and ourselves allows our body to find its own perfect form. No more need to try to change or fix things. The root cause can be addressed and symptoms seem to magically disappear.
The body as the marker of truth is reflecting to us how loving or not we are with ourselves, but to have any kind of ideal is harming us deeply and stops us to be in our fullness and beauty.
Our particles are divine, so why then are we able to direct such hate at our bodies? Could it be there is something more at play that there is a part of us that does not want us to evolve or to truly feel Gods love?
I had fantasised about being slim all my adult life, so when I became not only slim, but skinny, for me this was success. It didn’t matter that I bones protruding from my somewhat emaciated body, or that my breast were shrunken sacs no longer full and voluptuous – all that mattered was that I finally fitted the ideal, the picture I had in my head of what it was to be a beautiful woman. Although I have let go of much of these beliefs, and have put on weight so that there is a fullness in my body that feel natural, I can still feel the ideal is there and I compare myself to it all the time. It may not be as skinny as it once was – for I know that didn’t work, but it is always slimmer than how I am now so I can never simply be at ease in my body. To cut this self-limiting image I am focusing on developing a full and loving relationship with myself and accepting the beauty of myself when I live from this relationship/connection.
I’ve noticed for myself that body image stuff really sneaks in there when you least expect it, or even when you think you don’t have any body image stuff.
I’ve always avoided talking about having any image issues because I know how crazy it is that society imposes this unrealistic ideal on us, but in saying that, it doesn’t change the fact that I second guess myself often with the way I look and the way I think I should look.
I agree Elodie body image comes with a big consciousness. One that goes hand in hand with the widespread issue of lack of self worth. It is important to become aware of the ideal and believes we have taken on as women which stop us to appreciate ourselves deeply. And to close all doors so that we do not allow an energy in that tells us that we are not beautiful and worth it.
Loving our body and the very precise build of our body is more powerful than we can imagine. Just reading all the comments here shows how much we can be affected by the thoughts of not being enough or that there is something ‘wrong’ with how we look on the outer. This is pure evil.
There’s so much pressure for women on the ideal weight, shape or size, though that’s only taken its ill effect because as you share too Janina, the love of oneself (let alone her true beauty) – as a woman, is missing or forgotten by the woman herself for a hollow gap to be filled by food, work, activity, sport, exercise.. anything and everything particularly as our age gets more technology-focused and distracted. In your words: “I was dis-connected from what I was feeling and therefore could not feel what weight was true and natural for my body” – yes, when we stop the race, and feel the body, we feel ourselves and if we go deep enough as I’ve been learning, our preciousness and gentle quality – qualities that have no weight, shape or size, just the gold of true beauty.
Thank you for writing about the other side of the spectrum. With a slim frame I would always have comments passed about how lucky I was and that every piece of clothing looked great on me. There was an air of compliment that was perceived by others but I felt the words were not said in truth and a loving way. I spent many years covering up, wearing loose fitting clothing to avoid the remarks. This blog is a great confirmation that our weight and shape are there to truly support us not matter what that may look like to another and when we embrace this there is no room to react but live the vitality we know is true.
It is more and more coming to light that the food we choose to eat and the weight we are a direct result of our state our well-being and the relationship we hold with ourselves and our bodies. Thank you Janina for lighting the way, of how developing a loving relationship with ourselves and our bodies is what guides to make choices in honor of the love we hold for ourselves.
It is interesting how we use an image to dictate the choices that we make, especially when we feel we need to lose weight in order to gain the image we want, however beauty comes from the inside out, and when we love and appreciate ourselves our body finds its own natural weight and size, and it is surprisingly easy once we make that choice.
As I did not have to worry about gaining weight for many years and having shared in this blog of rather loosing weight. Now I have gained weight within this year and recently even more. On the one side I know that I eat too much, on the other side I see many students getting thinner and thinner. So what kicks in here is I am in comparison which doesn’t help at all and then I forget my appreciation for myself, and weight is the only subject to look at. A few month ago I had to nominated how much I do not like seeing people being overweight. At the moment I can develop a loving understanding that there is a reason why people overeat and to hold myself and other people with love and understanding.
Wow as men and women boys and girls there are so many expectations put on us in what we should look like and how we should act. The fact is each and everyone of us is beautiful yet we do not live this, we hide behind an illusion that we need to look better when all the time it is the illusion that is ugly never ever is it us.
Reading this blog I could feel how loaded my expectations used to be as a teen and young woman, of what my body size should be able to do and give me. It is supposed to attract the right man, it is supposed to make us popular, get noticed or open doors to work etc. This is a huge imposition weight to bear for the body (pun intended) as it is divine by nature, a vehicle for our soul, not something that secures the things that we think we want or need.
The reality is that the perfect body or size does not exist. When looking for clothes one day I asked the lady where all the size 8 and 10’s had gone. She explained the most common size was now size 16. They get a lot of stock of this size but only one or two of the small sizes. It seems like as women we need to at least start being honest with ourselves that the norm is not a waif like super-model size and get honest about what the ‘average’ woman’s body. Whether this is what our true weight or size should be is another matter, which we cant look at until the false idea of our norm is broken down.
I have also lost weight, but now it’s not what the scales say, but how I feel, sometimes I feel heavy and dense, other times I feel light… usually according to what I have eaten and why. So refining what I feel to eat, is a relationship I have built that not only supports a vital body but also is the foundation for a deep relationship, appreciating the sensitivities I feel and allowing my body to have its say.
That appreciation for just being us feels key when it comes to our bodies shape and health. Over the last couple of years I lost a lot of weight in a short space of time. And I found that when my weight rose I felt healthier and I felt and looked fuller – but without an appreciation for this state of being I would start to not care for myself and loose weight again. Appreciating myself seems to be the only way to sustain a steadiness in my weight and in my relationship with myself.
When we stop listen and feel what our bodies are saying we can start to be aware of the consequences of food and what effects it has on us both mentally and physically. When I started to listen and then take action based on what I felt my whole life changed, my vitality increased and mentally I felt a lot more stable and aware of what was actually going on. Food choices impact us so much.
‘Everybody (including men) has their own natural weight, which is truly supportive and perfect for them, and the measure should not be dictated by a society or by outside factors’. I totally agree Janina. We all can feel when we fit perfectly in our body, or when it is too heavy or too light. Appreciation of who we are and what we each bring is ‘soul food’ and self-acceptance keeps everything light.
I spent years of giving myself grief and punishing myself constantly with abusive mental thoughts about my body not being as it was ‘supposed to be’ according to the judgments and criticism of others of what was acceptable and what was not. Bringing the self-criticism and self-judgment to a halt has completely changed – to a deeper appreciation and acceptance of myself as I am. There is no doubt from the lessons my body continues to bring, the true connection between our mind and body is key to true health, wellbeing and living from our innate stillness and joy.
I can agree Janina that our weight does not necessarily make us happy or more content in this world. For most of my younger life I was considered too thin, I received comments from people such as a strong wind would blow me away etc, yet I was healthy. After having children I put on a little more weight though never really overweight, but I wasn’t happy with this either! I agree that it is our inner beauty that is so much more important!
When we bully ourselves to fit the image we have of an ideal body weight and shape we make ourselves a victim of bullying. Janina this blog shows that when we listen to our body and appreciate our inner beauty our body finds its own balance.
Hello Janina, and you touch on a couple of big areas of life for us all, weight and food. As you say, “My struggling with my weight and striving to be slim was because of how little I really loved and appreciated myself for just being me.” We are raised and the world speaks to us mainly about what we do and little focus is about appreciating naturally who you are. No matter where you are, what you are doing or who you are with, there is always something to appreciate simply about you. I have found a little appreciation consistently can go along way and it’s a word and an action that is missing from our current world. Is it on trend, appreciation? Maybe not yet but one can’t deny the powerful effect it can have on you and the way you look at the world. We can be so critical of ourselves and yet there is much more than that to simply appreciate. Thank you Janina.
Being slim is pretty much at the top of the list for a lot of women… In seeking slimness, we tend to either not get there, or, if we do, realise that it isn’t it at all, and we’re back to square one in finding something else as the solution for why we don’t feel complete.
Realising that it is our quality, and not merely our physical appearance that brings a deep contentment and settlement within us, is an enormous and evolutionary shift out of the consciousness owning the way many women feel about themselves and their bodies.
“What I have realised is that what is important is not looks or a certain weight, but the quality and way we live every day – and how loving and tender we are with ourselves and others.” This is a beautiful realization and an incredibly loving way to mark how we are going in life.
It is just beautiful that you have developed a foundation of love and acceptance of yourself so that you can deeply appreciate who you are and embrace the qualities you possess… and from this your entire world has changed to reflect this, not only your body.
It would be exhausting to try to fit into an image of a perfect body by trying different diets. I am so glad you have shared your personal experience with this, that dieting doesn’t work. I know many women who struggle with their body image. Your blog exposes that these expectations and images we seek are not real, they do not support us in any way and can be very harmful. By appreciating, loving and caring for our body it will naturally return to its natural size and shape. So, by choosing to connect to who we are, appreciating every inch of our body I feel is the best medicine we can give to our body.
I have lost weight recently as the result of a much-needed change to my eating patterns. I’ve noticed how pleased I have been about this, yet also dismayed at the so-called less attractive changes to my middle-aged body. The key is learning how to be and feel our inner beauty – the beauty that is independent of our physical selves – and experience the truth of this first and foremost.
‘I had a constant focus and struggle with food.’ I can relate to many aspects of your story Janina as I’m sure can many others. It’s staggering to comprehend the degree to which we give ourselves away in the pursuit of a certain, socially-approved look or status and become enthralled with the changes to our physical forms and our attempts to control this or not. Playing games with weight loss and gain and food rather than just simply being who we are and connecting to that. Yes, the spirit loves the constant agonising we get caught up in.
The key word here is ‘self worth’. How often has the media depicted beautiful women who seems to have the ideal body shape and size and are constantly looking to enhance or change what they ‘think’ are their imperfections. Our willingness not to appreciate what we have and build this into our foundation with responsibility often sends us down a track of despair where no amount of dieting, enhancing or modifications can stop the need to be better or drives the constant thought of “I am never good enough”.
It was devastating to my body in the way I destroyed and abused myself to become super thin (too thin) because at no point in the process did I feel ‘enough’ or as though I ‘was there’ and so I kept going and going until it was almost too late. Thank goodness for Universal Medicine and the opportunity to choose a different way, a way of living in which the old merry-go-round no longer exists in my mind or body.
“At the time, I only felt good when I was slim. I wanted to fit in with what I thought was the ideal body image to get recognition and love from other people, especially from boys and men. For me, to be attractive and sexy as a woman, was to be slim.” This is such a strong ideal, one that I chose to hold onto for a really long time. It is easy to think that attaining a physical attribute will bring you the things you seek, and are void of inside; and yet, we are then at a loss when we realise that this does not and can not ever satisfy the deeper yearning we have to simply feel enough as who we are.
Beautiful Janina thank you, it is so important for us as women to shed this ideal around body image. I have recently come to see it more clearly at a very subtle level and how debilitating it is to hold ourselves to some arbitrary measure we can never live up to.
The nugget of gold in this sentence exposes the truth about expectations to be a certain way in order to be acceptable. The biggest lie we have ever fallen for is the consciousness that feeds us constantly, that we are not enough just as we truly are. Oh, the arrogance of thinking we have to continually ‘improve or be better’, by putting ourselves through shocking self-abuse through out-of control eating and / or dieting. Somewhere along the line, we have forgotten our innate essence and the glorious divine beings we are in truth.
“My struggling with my weight and striving to be slim was because of how little I really loved and appreciated myself for just being me”.
I realised as I was reading this, just how ingrained the beliefs are around what it means to have a good body. I like to think I’m not hung up about how my body looks, but the truth is, I have never stopped caring, and have never actually appreciated it for what and how it is. There has always been a need for my body to be different. A real case of, if I lost x amount of weight, I’ll feel so much better about myself. And then the internal conflict of knowing just how unloving those thoughts are. It’s such a huge common topic, but I don’t feel as a society we are taking it to the level it needs to go. Just saying we shouldn’t be feeling this way is simply not enough. Blaming the media, men etc is not enough. Where is it stemming from before the messages hit the magazines?
It is extraordinary just how forgiving our bodies truly are – our natural weight aligns the level of honesty we have afforded ourselves.
Images, ideals and beliefs are all symptoms of accepting a false message that I am not whole as I am. I am realising that this is an illness I have carried for lifetimes. What a set up to distract me from connecting with the truth that I am already enough to begin with and my life’s purpose is to allow this truth to unfold.
‘What I have realised is that what is important is not looks or a certain weight, but the quality and way we live every day – and how loving and tender we are with ourselves and others.’ And all this is reflected in our eyes, the inner beauty shining through for all to see and feel.
From an early age I can remember being unhappy about my weight, I never felt good enough so I picked at my body wishing I was taller or had slimmer thighs…. When not accepting of ourselves the pursuit of so called happiness is never ending. Acceptance and appreciation is the remedy to the poison of perfection.
So gorgeous Janina that you have rediscovered the divine person you are within; thus emanating out for us all to be inspired by. Great that you have exposed the pictures and images that take us away for our true inner wise selves, thank you.
“…what is important is not looks or a certain weight, but the quality and way we live every day – and how loving and tender we are with ourselves and others.” These are key moments throughout the day to come back to and observe just these points, to fully embrace this and make this part of our daily observations how we are doing,
A totally skinny body achieved through dieting and rigorous exercises does often not have at its core the vitality and love for ones self, – when we truly observe this we can see the lack of luster and love for life too.
How many people will be able to fully relate to this: “My struggling with my weight and striving to be slim was because of how little I really loved and appreciated myself for just being me.” It is so good that through Universal Medicine and Serge Benhayon’s presentations there is now a way to reconnect and learn to love and accept our selves and what we bring, so the excess weight or protection we have accumulated can gently start to leave.
“Often now when I look into peoples’ eyes I am amazed as I see and feel that same beauty in them too.” This is a beautiful way of living, to see the beauty in another, their essence, which is not defined by any outer physicality.
Seeing a pregnant lady out shopping the other day just completely ‘blew me away’. It was absolutely beautiful to see and feel the grace and love she was walking with, her tight clothing moulding over her body, making no apology for letting every nuance and curve be visible for the world to see the full bloom of her pregnancy.
How different from a few years ago, when society dictated that women should shroud themselves in tent-like clothing to cover their bodies over and not let anyone see their pregnancy. No wonder there are such strong ideals, beliefs and issues around body shapes and sizes of what is considered ‘acceptable’.
Thank you for exposing entrenched views we can hold around diet and weight lose, we have for to long let the media dominate what it is meant to be “beautiful” when the only true beauty there is, is when a man or women know themselves and expresses that in full.
Great blog Janina, and also great to hear from the men and how we can all be fooled by images of something ‘other’, ‘better’, ‘more’ than who we naturally are.
If we don’t have a relationship with and love of our selves, then we will never, ever be happy with our bodies. Ever. No matter how many diets, treatments, exercises or modifications we explore. So instead of burning all that time, money and energy – much better to put the same level of commitment into building a relationship with, and a deep appreciation of, the divine magic that we all are – and that comes in a cornucopia of shapes, sizes and colours.
Thank you Otto – what a lovely expression and true to the core.
It is incredible how powerful these images and ideals that we hold actually are. We do not even realise the extent to which they are present. Consequently are youth are growing up more and more obsessed with how they look, rather than how they feel.
Thank you Janina this is such a great article, having spent most of my life struggling to fit in with society’s image of a slim body, I understand how taxing and exhausting chasing this ideal can be. Since attending Universal Medicine presentations for approximately 10 years now I have developed a healthy loving relationship with my body and any excess weight naturally fell off and has stayed off.
When you simply act on what the body needs, everything else seems to take care of itself
I have returned to this article and I can honestly say I got more out of it this round. What I love is the candidness, the willingness to expose what does and does not really work in the body, is a beautiful inspiring subject to read on as it is such a global issue. The belief runs so deep in me that as I am reading the article I am trying to discover how to get a slim perfect body, even though you are explaining that that is not the way, you have got to laugh at yourself at times, too funny!
Hello Janina and this shouldn’t be something that is just limited to women, not to say you were. But men have struggles with body image as well and ‘how to look’. I remember training and training at the gym to achieve a chiselled body, only to get bigger and bigger and still want to be bigger. I remember not being aware of how actually big I was getting even though I was more then 20kg above the weight I am now. People were asking questions of where I was headed body wise and I remember shrugging my shoulders because I didn’t even have a plan, it was just lift more weights and more weights. It’s amazing when we have an image in our head, how this image doesn’t let us rest and more still the image keeps moving. In other words when you achieve this ‘image’ it puts on an extension for you then to chase that, it’s like the image never has a place of rest and will have you running after it until you crash. It took a crash for me and it was a psychological one that put a stop to this part. With the support of Universal Medicine I’ve seen things a little clearer and bring my focus to how I am feeling in each moment and leave the images for the media.
There is such a game we can play where we fit into the moulds of how we should look and the weight we carry. When we start to put aside these beliefs there is a built in relief button that gives us permission to not be ruled by others but to make choices that we know are coming innately from us.
Our relationship with our bodies and food is and has been an ongoing tension. We are always looking at our bodies to do, feel and look a certain way, expecting our relationship with food to just unfold and be perfect. Well we know that all relationships no matter what type needs constant work and refinement, our relationship with food is not different.
My body shape has changed recently, and for months, I kept trying to lose the extra pounds and would not buy any clothes in the next size up. I judged that I was not the right size and gave myself a hard time for it. When I finally let go of the judgement, and simply embraced my new size, life became much easier. I also have some new clothes! I still haven’t let go of the smaller sized clothes. That’s my next step.
Recently i had to admit to myself how much judgment and dislike i hold concerning people who are really overweight.
Now having taking on some weight confront myself with the same judgement of not fitting in that slim image i still have.
And even having written this blog and understand what it is really about the body images we have accepted are very ingrained. As long as we accept them we set us up to go against ourselves and not understand that we are much more than our bodies. And that our body are reflecting to us which choices we make and how we live.
I find it very humbling that life gives us exactly what we need to grow out of old ingrained ways to then find our way back to the love that we are within.
Perhaps also it is that you register what isn’t true. I have experienced a feeling of upset when I see someone struggling inside a body that does not even allow them to walk with ease. I find it sad that we can leave ourselves to that extent when we have lost connection to all we are. This is an obvious reflection of it but have we not all left ourselves at some point and that is why we react?
It is so important to be aware of our own natural weight. Especially as a woman I was very caught up in looking a certain way. I’m going through my final stages of pregnancy at the moment and the whole experience has really supported me to love my body for where it is at. And all the fears I had about being fat and pregnant have not come into play because I have pulled myself out of indulging in them, and I have kept listening to my body throughout the pregnancy. At the end of the day – it is about listening to the body first – in terms of what to eat, how much to eat and when to eat. If this is truly honoured – then our body will be the exact shape and size that is needed to support us.
Only feeling ok when looking slim is a perfect example of how much images can influence us and it goes way beyond affecting levels of wellbeing. Taking an eating disorder as an example, the image of looking a certain way has such a hold it can grossly affects health and even survival.
Thank you for highlighting what really matters is how much love and acceptance we are prepared to give ourselves, with out that we will be forever following the illusional carrot.
I can relate to a lot of what you have shared here Janina. I also remember when I was young, before I left home and started to travel I also wanted to have a tan. So having what was considered a good figure and a tan, good posture and having a certain amount of knowledge covering most topics was what expected to be acceptable, or so I imagined from what I could glean from the magazines and those around me. These, of course, are just a few of the ideals and beliefs I carried with me in my body. It is so wonderful to drop these and then continue to find others that , as we let them go, leave us lighter and more free to be the awesome natural selves we are.
At a workshop presentation by Serge Benhayon last Sunday, the opportunity arose to let go a heap of ideals and beliefs about being a woman and having the perfect shape etc. It has been a beautiful experience to claim that which I am returning to within, no ideal weight or perfection required.Whilst having the support of a small group of 3 men and 7 or 8 women listening to each woman expressing from their innermost the acceptance and re-claiming themselves was inspiring and confirming for all.
The more appreciation and acceptance we bring to ourselves, the deeper our re-connection within is possible. Living this way brings the confirmation and embodiment of who we are in truth.
We do indeed have our own natural weight, but finding our way back there can be such a process of letting go and surrendering, and finding that the only protection we need is the connection within.
We learn lots of different subjects at school yet never do we learn about true self appreciation, if we do not love, appreciate and respect ourselves then we are contributing to a loveless society. If we want to see change around us first steps are learning to appreciate, this is something with the help of Universal Medicine I am learning more to do. Self appreciation is a game changer.
It is really interesting the whole topic of weight- I have been overweight for most of my life. I would have avidly thought I desperately wanted to be thin, over the years as I have lost weight I can feel there is a pattern of not wanting to shed the final kilos- of holding onto these and feeling almost too vulnerable to be without them- it is still holding a level of protection. The more I embrace my delicateness and fragility and learn that there is a power in honouring this, the more I will be on the way to move to my natural weight.
It is very interesting what you are saying here about how the more you learned to appreciate yourself the more your body was able to come back to its natural weight. This is what weight loss/gain programs ought to be presenting to people.
Appreciation is the antidote to jealousy and comparison, having appreciation for oneself or lack of it has a massive impact on our health.
‘ I used food as a filler and a distraction to avoid what I was truly feeling about myself and my low self-image.’ Food has become such an accessible and ingrained way of dulling our senses, our feelings and our hurts that we’ve stopped seeing what we’re doing for what it is – just how we’re eating, how often, when and in what volumes. We’re surrounded by the stuff and we tend to live our lives by it and through it, wearing our dysfunctionality with it literally on our bodies.
What I am noticing is how different my body looks and feels depending on how I have been living. If I have been holding back and not looking after myself, then my body so quickly gets thinner and weaker – this is irrespective of the quantities that I have been eating and I suspect is also not necessarily directly linked to weight – we don’t have scales so I can’t confirm. But when I am feeling committed and connected to life and purpose my body fills out and I look much stronger and more powerful. It’s amazing how quickly the changes happen and shows me categorically that my body weight is down to much more than just the quantity of food that I am consuming. Dieting is nowhere near the full story.
Great point Otto, it has nothing to do with scales. The more connected and committed we are in life, the more fulfilled we feel. It is this fulfillment that is felt in the body and that makes it look strong and full. It has nothing to do with being slim or fat, but with an energetic state of being.
I can totally relate to that Otto, great point and sharing!
Learning to really listen to our bodies is such a huge thing in and unto itself, when most of us have lived a life of constant numbing and distraction. So when we do, it can be another unfolding to constantly be refining what foods to eat to best support our bodies. I know for me it has been the constant refining of foods that has been the biggest challenge, as it warrants ‘really’ listening to the body and ‘acting’ on what it is telling me. This is a constant daily choice and awareness building.
Janina this is a sharing of true wisdom “My struggling with my weight and striving to be slim was because of how little I really loved and appreciated myself for just being me. The process of beginning to appreciate myself began with my listening to myself, especially with how I felt.”
Why oh why don’t they print articles like this in magazines for both women and men! Real experiences with real answers which can be brought about by simply choosing to bring true appreciation and acceptance of just being who were are – we are perfect, even with our imperfections, we are all still perfect!
Seeing our bodies as more than just functioning vessels to get us through the day is vital for the true health and wellbeing of all.
We have a responsibility to deeply nurture and care for ourselves on every level and our next generations should be inspired by our self-care not influenced by our lack of it.
Its very refreshing to hear a woman talk about weight in this way, I love your honesty. I am not overweight but I do have a little bit of weight that I can feel is not natural, I am carrying this weight due to the foods I am eating that don’t support anything but my taste buds!!
The weight loss game keeps us fixed on what is not rather than appreciating what we are. Another simple mind game that brings in doubt and the choice to say yes or not to it.
Through Universal Medicine and the regular women’s groups I am learning to appreciate me more, it is crazy because appreciation is such a huge healer yet it rarely encouraged and even frowned upon in society.
The dieting thing has never made much sense to me, and I was interested in what you were saying about how you would practically starve yourself, but then of course found that difficult to maintain so followed it with binge eating… inevitably feeling bad about that. The cycle creates a perceived issue with food, but that is just the surface of it as really the issue is about our own feeling of self worth.
Men have their own way of misinterpreting a natural weight, often with a view to looking more butch, adding excess muscle as a way of protecting ourselves from the world.
Thank you Christine for sharing that “Something very beautiful happens when we fully claim who we are and choose to honour this in every way”. It is only recently that I too have started to really appreciate the many ‘miracles’ that happen daily as my awareness grows as to the more self-loving gentle support and choices that are lived. As you share this is so reflected in our amazing bodies naturally so.
Something very beautiful happens when we fully claim who we are and choose to honour this in every way – from how we move, go to sleep at night, get up in the morning, eating the food that supports us etc. Our whole being, our body shape becomes naturally who we are, it holds an ease that feels so natural. An honest and truly loving blog Janina, thank you for sharing with us.
I haven’t done it yet but I too have an impulse to get beautiful dresses, feminine tops, skirts and comfortable shoes to reflect my delicateness, steadiness and gorgeousness. It’s my birthday tomorrow so a shopping trip is well and truly in order!
Clothes can very much support us in expressing the beautiful and tender woman that we are. It reflects back to us the relationship we have with ourselves. So if I don’t take the time and effort to choose beautiful clothes or dress in the morning, and instead just wearing anything, really this has an effect how I feel during my day. I can feel that the clothes I choose to wear can support me to keep me small/hold back or support me in claiming myself and the beauty that I bring.
Love your sharing Emma. My first ‘dress’ shopping trip after my weight naturally started to decrease it took me a while to actually buy the right size garments as the old pattern of going for ‘baggy’ covering everything, hiding clothes had left its mark. Not for long though as I felt lighter, brighter and more inspired to buy clothes that truly represented how I was feeling. Enjoy celebrating all of you.
How was your cloth shopping trip Emma did you find some beautiful and feminine cloth?
What I have realized is, the thoughts to eat more than I need come from wanting to hide my gorgeousness in expression from the World. How brilliant to finally see this and to be able to find more and more ways to bring my expression forth!
Dear Janina
I have only just discovered your article and I feel that it would be extremely useful for many women, and also men, in understanding and accepting ourselves deeply.
I have always had the same approach to my body, constantly feeling that I needed to be lighter; and when I was younger I used clothing in the same way, to be noticed, to be different, unique and special. It is awesome to see this for the attention and recognition seeking activity that it is.
I make a practice daily now of observing and enjoying seeing my body first thing in the morning & last thing at night when I am dressing and undressing; as well as throughout the day – appreciating it JUST AS IT IS and really feeling how I feel in it, rather than getting carried away (literally) by my taste buds which then trigger thoughts of what kind of food I want to eat.
I am consciously simplifying my diet and eating enough, and no more.
It is very freeing to finally have such a loving relationship with my body whereas before it was all about how it looked and felt very much like a struggle, which obscured the natural beauty that was always there but I simply couldn’t see.
I know this feeling of being exposed and raw when loosing weight. Even just overeating always more than necessary is a strategy to avoid this feeling. Even when not struggling with weight.
I was one of those who had weight issues when growing up and I found it hard with the constant self-conscious feeling of insecurity I had with myself around others and what they thought of me. The issue is made about the weight and the way I was eating, but I realise now that this does not change anything unless the real issue I held which was a self-acceptance and self-rejection issue was truly dealt with and healed.
Reading your comment today Toni brought up a moment that someone shared with me many years ago. This lady stated “Here I am with this amazing slim body (still pointing out not perfect though) and no one to share it with” and yes she did look 20 years younger than her actual birth age but, it was not a matter of having sex or using her body in an abusive way but she felt very lonely. Lots of layers underneath I feel and very little self-love, and as you share, acceptance and appreciation of herself. Beauty just emanates and shine – you can feel it a mile off.
I experienced the reverse of this Toni – eating foods that were totally non-nutritious through constant dieting to attempt to get slim, the body was in total reaction and just stored it as body fat, leaving me lethargic and always tired as it was actually causing my body to react and be in starvation mode. Yikes! the lack of love and care for ourselves is shocking when exposed for what it is – living from external ideals and beliefs of how we should be or to fit in rather than honouring and loving ourselves for the divine beings we are.
‘As I began, I started appreciating myself more and embracing the beauty that I bring; I found that my body naturally began to gain weight again.’ This is beautiful – in bringing more appreciation to ourselves allows our bodies to respond accordingly.
Yes Michael appreciation is true medicine for our bodies, when I wake up feeling less or a bit empty I know I need a good dose of appreciation.
Body image is commonly portrayed as a major factor behind either high or low self esteem etc. The beauty, fitness, fashion, media and health food industries (to name just a few) make a huge profit out of perpetuating the perception that there is always something about us that needs improving. Yet what you offer Janina is an insight into the how our inner world holds the key to how we feel about ourselves. The more there is discussion about learning to value and appreciate ourselves, the more people will start to question how they have gotten hooked into the common ideals and beliefs and start to make different choices that allows their weight and shape to take care of itself. Thank you for raising a topic that is common to many people across the world.
Well expressed Helen Giles. the perception of improving and making something better about ourselves is a giant carrot on a stick being dangled before us – just out of reach, tantalising one to keep trying harder for perfection. It certainly does not work an leaves the body feeling contracted and tight. Coming back to our inner world holds they key to our expansion and living in a more harmonious way with our own body and thus the all.
Beautifully expressed Helen! It is definitely true that bringing more focus to developing appreciation in our lives is key to unhooking ourselves from those common (and destructive) ideas about body image and self worth.
There are not many messages out there in our jobs, schools, institutions, telling us that we are the most important component of where we are, so whenever there is a message that is clear and true, it must be listened to because this is what is necessary for humanity now to evolve out of the morass that it is in.
I agree Benkt. If we disregarding ourselves our body tells us straight away. It might me getting a cold, or a rash or other symptoms of disease like bloating or constipation. These are all reactions and refections of the body to tell us that we are not living harmoniously.
So true Benkt and Janina- becoming aware of the body messages, listening to them and making different choices to act on them begins to heal the disharmony being felt. How amazing our body is – Our own living, breathing scientific laboratory giving constant read outs to support our daily living.
Reading your blog today Janina I was struck by this very profound and true statement, “What I have realised is that what is important is not looks or a certain weight, but the quality and way we live every day – and how loving and tender we are with ourselves and others”.
I feel that all our body is reacting to are our choices. Showing us very clearly what’s loving and what is not. Our shape is determined by that, when we make loving choices our body will get to a natural shape.
“Starting to feel the effects of food”. It took me some time and several health issues later to really get the message how important it is to feel into the foods that work with my body. Not to make comparison to what others eat as my own body has its own set of self nourishing requirements. Instead of numbing out and using food as an escape. Its turned out to be a playful journey of experimentation and tasty sharings at the dinner table for all the family and a much lighter/healthier body in that process.
There are so many images of women today and it would be very easy for any woman to feel comparison against them and to reject her own body image. Self-acceptance is key in learning how to live these days, because without it we are at the mercy of what we are told above what we can feel is true and right for ourselves as people.
Well said Shami… images of what we should be or do are incredibly damaging. They ask us to live outside of ourself, rather than taking the time to just be ourselves, that that is more than enough, and saving us a lifetime of struggle trying to be something we are not naturally so.
This is such a beautiful honest blog. What you said about your body finding its true weight through your appreciation and love for yourself really stood out for me, especially as that is something I am working through myself at the moment. Since my having sessions and getting more involved with universal medicine the weight has dropped off my body as well, and I was quite petite in the first place. Now instead of worrying about being overweight, I am worrying about being underweight. Silly really the games we play in our minds. All I really need to do is accept where I am at and continue to build up that appreciation and love for myself. Thank you for that reminder Janina.
Great comment Joshua. Food is such an easy distraction. we know that we do need to eat regularly to nourish, support and as you share honour our bodies but, like many I used to eat with my eyes. Temptations galore as overruling what my body clearly shares goes out the back door. The term ‘comfort eating’ is so very true, just hiding away under the many layers.
“Food can become a very very easy and simple distraction to feeling this immense tension and conflict inside us.” Well said Joshua. If we don’t get supported by our family as children to learn to express how we feel, food is such a welcome distraction. And this continues in our adulthood. But dealing with food in this way is overriding our feelings and what the body truly needs because their is a drive of wanting to eat to distract away from the actual state of hurt. Which doesn’t work we add more hurt with our own behavior.
Whether we eat excessively, eat to little or eat all the foods that may not truly support and honour our bodies, it is all a reflection of our own relationship with ourselves, our acceptance of who we truly are and whether we are prepared to embrace that in full and let the world see it. We so often get hurt by the world and this tends to have impacts on how we see ourselves and hence our commitment to bring that to the world in full. Food can become a very very easy and simple distraction to feeling this immense tension and conflict inside us.
Thank you Janina for writing a much needed blog. I have seen so many women in my life struggling with dieting and food. This outer ideal image was unrealistic and impossible to achieve or sustain because it came from a loveless intent. The best diet we can ever follow is what our body is telling us. No book, program or anyone else is more capable then ourselves when we listen to our own body, it knows best when, what and how much to eat to lovingly guide us to make the right choices. I too have started to listen to my body more and more and I feel amazing for it.
I agree Chan Ly to truly change our relationship with food is to listen to our bodies and not our minds. I have been stopped by my body recently. After eating to much to much fat i started to feel sick and had to vomit. So my body is telling me clearly that i can’t just put everything i want in it. And look at a new way to eat and support my body with food. To make it about supporting my body and not eating because i don’t want to deal with what is going on or how i feel.
I agree Janina – the body never lies and has very clear ways of bringing home the truth of being in disregard. Having hit a sugar-craving day recently and completely overriding listening to my body by getting stuck in my mind, it was very clear to see and feel the effects only a short while later – my skin started breaking out with some pimples on my face and dry patches on my legs.
“The best diet we can ever follow is what our body is telling us. No book, program or anyone else is more capable then ourselves when we listen to our own body, it knows best when, what and how much to eat to lovingly guide us to make the right choices.” Well said Chan!
The concept that we all have a weight and shape that is based on what is right for our body and that energy has a role in this and that this isn’t formed on an external concept or an ideal really helped me see just how many beliefs I was holding on and that had taken on about bodies.
I hold a belief too Nicole, about how I think my body should look, feeling that the slimmer I was the more I would love myself and the more others would love me. That never worked of course, because I have found that it doesn’t matter what you look like, everyone is beautiful in their own way and I don’t judge another for what they look like, I just have to stop judging myself for not being perfect and know that I can love myself from the inside out, as I am not my body, I am more than that.
I used to live in a way that was constantly going into comparison saying things like “I wish I had a body like that” the classic hour glass figure. In no way was I taking responsibility for my food choices and the way in which I was living life. Our body shape is I feel as individual as our finger print. The body I have today is the result of all my choices todate. “We all have a weight and shape that is based on what is right for our body”.
I can feel the tenderness you have become Janina, the ever deepening of the loving connection we have with ourselves and through that with everyone else is all that really matters.
Learning to love just being me; I love these simple yet powerful words Janina, also what you express here;
“What is important is not looks or a certain weight, but the quality and way we live every
day.” Every day and in every moment.
A beautiful blog thank you Janina.
We are used to hearing about people numbing themselves with drugs and alcohol… my experience is that food is even more pernicious because it is so hard to come to a point where we can feel what the affect is that food is having on us… because to do this we have to actually stop, re-boot, and start again, feeling how we actually feel, both with the absence of , and the addition of food in general .
I agree Chris, to me using drugs or alcohol to numb out from what we feel are fairly obvious but I have discovered that I can feel the same influences behind some food choices as were behind the choices I used to make in the first instance. Food can be used in the exact same way but under the radar of what we deem acceptable.
Yes, I agree Chris – food is more pernicious to deal with. You offer wisdom here which is true in my own experience and sometimes quite challenging to do. Stopping the slide back down ‘the slippery slope’ and feel the effects of what is being done with food is vital.
“we have to actually stop, re-boot, and start again, feeling how we actually feel, both with the absence of , and the addition of food in general “.
That is HUGE Chris. Everyone has to eat, even the Monks who have stripped away every material posession, and technically every other vice, still have to eat! We simply play out the same games, numbing, dulling, making our bodies racy etc to avoid who we truly are.
A story shared by many: “At times I was overeating and then at other times I strongly controlled how much food I allowed myself to eat. I had a constant focus and struggle with food”. The ups and downs, the vagaries of the predominant theme at the time and then it changes again and goes to the other extreme. As you found out, food wasn’t really the issue, it was how you regarded and took care of yourself rather than thinking that once you were slim, the problem is solved.
The ups and downs you mention Gabriele feels like a yo yo dieter. Feeling good about self would mean I’d focus on eating ‘healthy foods’ then the other side of the emotional tread mill would be not feeling so good about life/myself and the weight would go on. The focus being about food and not about how I was actually living or as you share taking care of myself. So true, once slim the problem was not solved.
The more and more I have observed and built up a more self-love and deeply caring way with my food, the more I realise that what we eat and how we feel about our bodies and our diet is deeply governed by how we feel about ourselves and the way we live in this world. Your experiences also highlight this fact so clearly Janina. This remains something that is not brought enough attention to when we choose to go on ‘diets’ or ‘health programs’ as we make it about the food before the connection with ourselves.
Brilliant Joshua, ‘make it about the food before the connection with ourselves’, this is where many of us have gotten stuck, not focusing on connecting to ourselves first, using many different distractions to avoid this very thing we all crave for, a true connection to ourselves through making loving choices and therefore a loving connection with others.
A year or so ago I lost quite a lot of weight for someone of my small build, it worried my Doctor who kept asking me if I was eating enough and gave me lots of tests as she was sure there was something wrong with me. I knew why I had lost weight and that some of it was how I felt about myself, my lack of self worth and low self esteem, so I set myself a plan to build this through learning to love and appreciate myself and not beat myself up when things went wrong, and slowly I put weight back on. I didn’t increase my food or try fad diets I just became consistent in building a trust in myself again. This showed me that weight is not about food as we have been led to believe, but the quality in which we live our lives and how we feel about ourselves.
That’s so beautiful Alison and you are living proof its not about the food as is the normal assumption but ‘the quality in which we live our lives and how we feel about ourselves’. Learning to love and appreciate ourselves is I feel the vital ingredient.
Alison this is beautiful to read. It really highlights how being underweight or overweight has little to do with food but everything to do with how we feel about ourselves. Buried hurts and emotions are a major part of weight issues.
At the opposite end of the scale I experienced weight loss as I chose to deal with my own lack of self worth, low self esteem and made more loving choices for myself. The excess weight (7 stone / 44.45 kilos) literally seemed to melt away, with no dieting in sight, until it was true for my body and this has remained stable for the past 7 years.
“What I have realised is that what is important is not looks or a certain weight, but the quality and way we live every day – and how loving and tender we are with ourselves and others.” The quality we bring to everything determines our connection with the world and that is a truly beautiful thing. It does not matter our size, shape etc as it is the way in which we live and support ourselves lovingly that creates joy for life.
I agree Kelly I could throw my bathroom scales away as it is not what the reading reveals that tells me how I feel. It is the quality and way in which we live in our every day that truly supports us and to then connect us to the bigger picture of life.
Yes I agree Marion and this quality allows us to appreciate ourselves, to appreciate others, and life itself so we grow in the joy of living in a body that feels lovelier day by day.
I love that Marion “It is the quality and way in which we live in our every day that truly supports us and…then connect us to the bigger picture of life.” – absolutely every single thing that we do, say and think, and even how we move, impacts on this quality – focusing on one thing such as our outer appearance or weight as a measure of the quality we bring to the world makes no sense at all – and makes life decidedly less enjoyable!
Feeling the quality of who we are is the best feeling there is, why would we look for any other marker?
This is something I’ve struggled with all my life as well Janina and to a degree I still do. I’ve controlled my body weight through exercise and food intake only feeling good about myself when I reach a certain weight and this highlights how unloving and unaccepting of myself that actually is: “My family had commented to me that I had lost too much weight (which I ignored). After some time, I read a quote which made me realise that I needed to take loving care for my body and what it needed. As I began, I started appreciating myself more and embracing the beauty that I bring; I found that my body naturally began to gain weight again.” This blows away all the ideals and beliefs about diet and weight loss which is all about control and that if we are loving, supporting and accepting of ourselves our bodies will naturally find the right weight and shape for us.
I have discovered that if we don’t love ourselves, if we are in a permanent state of disconnection from our bodies and if we have an ideal of what the perfect body should look like, it doesn’t matter what size we are, we will never achieve the happiness we are seeking. To turn our search inward naturally re-connects us to the beauty that we are, and then by nurturing and caring deeply for this body it will gradually find the weight that is true for it at this moment in time.
That’s right Ingrid, when we are disconnected to our essence no matter how much we achieve or when we get to our goal, an elated feeling never seems to last and we very sooner become dissatisfied again leading us to go on seeking more and more. Yet when we truly connect to our essence to who we are and the amazing being we already are, we then realise that our outer never ending search was just a distraction to us truly finding our true self. It is incredible to also realise we are already so incredibly amazing that we can simply stop and appreciate all that we already are. We don’t have to achieve anything or go anywhere, we can just stop, feel and connect to our body to our inner love that has always been here waiting for us to connect to, and from here we start to really feel the fullness of our love and we can nurture this back into our lives.
Succinctly and well stated Toni – the true answer “lays in the love, acceptance and appreciation of oneself”.
I have put on some weight recently. When I looked in the mirror I wanted to criticize myself being bigger. But than I stopped and felt beautiful to see more of me and my rounder shapes are great and express more of the woman that I am.
Giving ourselves those ‘STOP’ moments are amazing and when we return to feeling and not visually being dictated to by the ‘look’ of ourselves that, natural beauty is truly felt deep within. Just waiting to shine and to express out into the world.
When we appreciate and love ourselves more and more this self-criticism will simply dissipate and not exist anymore. It will no longer be able to enter our realm of thinking, it will disappear because love is taking up the space instead.
Great blog Janina, I was not overweight nor under weight, but still had body image issues. Goes to show it is has nothing to do with what I am on the outside and everything to do with how I am with myself from the inside.
It sure does Jenny!
I love how this blog shows us that our body is a result of our choices, and our choices can come from a deep love and connection with ourselves – or not. It is true that when our choices come from a deep love and connection with ourselves that the changes in our body is not something that we need to work at or push – they occur very naturally and simply because our body feels supported and able to operate with its divine intelligence, rather than our ideals and beliefs getting in the way and bringing tension, disconnection and disharmony.
This feels so true for myself also Sarah. Changes in our body ‘occur very naturally and simply’ as the focus is not about body image but how we go about our everyday living and choosing to make those changes so the body is fully supported.
Awesome Sarah. Our body tells us so much about our choices, it is amazing and it really never lies. We can cover it and hide it but the truth of all our choices is revealed in our body.
I too had similar ideals and beliefs as you in regards to body image. I always felt that to be skinny was going to make me feel good about myself. I dieted on and off for years never being able to maintain a constant body weight. In the times I achieved being what I thought was the skinny I so desired I did not feel any sense of self worth. Through attending Universal Medicine courses I came to know that your self worth is not based on how you look but on how you feel about yourself on the inside and this is supported by the moment to moment choices we make to self love and self nurture. As I put this in place and learnt to appreciate and love me and my body my weight has stabilised and I am the perfect shape and size. And all with no dieting!!
“I was constantly judging others from their outside appearance and not from their true inner essence”.
So did I Marion. This has changed and I am learning to let go of the destructive ideal and believes to judge people and myself by the look.
Feeling into why I was dieting so much in my younger years there is a much deeper understanding now, that I was constantly judging others from their outside appearance and not from their true inner essence. I was basically judging a book by its cover. Trying to bring this into my own life was living someone else’s ideal and belief. Not a wonder that the all new weight loss programmes failed. Introducing self-love into my choices (most of the time) there is no NEED but a gradual choosing of what feels right naturally for this amazing body of mine. No trying or dieting a natural slimming down happens to suit the requirements of my everyday living. Such an inspirational blog Janina and the comments that come about from this sharing thank you.
What a beautiful transformation you have gone through Janina, from being too slim and constantly looking outside of yourself for acceptance and recognition ,to now accepting and truly seeing the divine beauty that you are, just being you.
‘ I can look at myself in the mirror and look deep into my beautiful eyes and truly see the depth and beauty that I bring in just being me.’ Janina if the world did this, we would have no wars.
Yes Kathryn, no wars and no diet and weightloss industry!
Kathryn, I agree the power to change the world is contained in what Janina has shared. I would like to add that if the world did this we would have almost no illness and disease.
I can relate to the desires of wanting to be thin at all costs, fuelled by the belief that being thin will solve all of my self worth issues, but after reading this I have gained a new sense of the abuse I put my body through and that there is not one ounce of gentleness or self love in approaching dieting in that way. Now I can feel that there was a battle going on between me and my body as though they were two separate things, but whilst I was harming my body, not only with my relationship with food but with the thoughts I was harbouring, I was hurting myself at the same time.
” I only felt good when I was slim.” How many women would probably agree with this statement – and why? Would this be a true feeling? Or would this be something we had already decided was the right thing to be and that we had made it- if only for a little while? A great article thank you Janina. As you share here truly feeling good about ourselves has nothing to do with size but all to do with the quality in which we live and the loveliness we feel from the inside out.
If we honor and appreciate ourselves we are able to express love and joy through our body, these qualities are within us and can be than felt by others.
I love what you have shared Janina. It allowed me to realise that although I have lost a lot of weight over the last few years I have been slow to see myself as being slim, as the reflection I see in the mirror is often of an overweight woman. With this old belief still active I have had a few reactions to people saying I’m too thin, that I need to eat more etc. as I do not see myself as that. Slowly I am realising that the weight I am right now is the weight that my body is feeling comfortable with and these type of comments are just people’s reaction to the reflection that are getting back from me.
Coming back to this blog I could feel all the buzzing and craziness that I have previously chosen to be in my relationship with food. So much rocky ground that brings with it a lot of dis-ease, dis-content and illness to the body. Whereas my body knows what it does and doesn’t want and it’s this simplicity that I feel deserves far more appreciation. Thank you Janina.
Great comment Leigh – I feel too that our bodies share so clearly what it does and does not require to nourish/nurture it. Expressing this it feels very simple but, that oh so busy brain just wants to step right in and make a complexity out of something that is so simple. The tempting distractions are a plenty to visually pull us out of this natural process of feeling what works in our everyday living. Thank you Janina for this inspirational sharing.
It is great that you have exposed so beautifully the harm from attempting to live up to an ideal weight without consideration of what is true. Society is so busy projecting these ideals and beliefs about image and weight they do not see the damage caused through extreme fitness, dieting or eating disorders of those seeking to live up to them. If only we were all shown images and given messages of the importance of appreciating and loving ourselves instead, the world would begin let go of harmful ideals and honour what is true for them.
Reading this Janina has brought up a lot of sadness for me around how I’ve treated my body and myself. It’s a strong pattern but on its’ way out as I’m learning to appreciate myself more.
People can hide behind the ‘slim’ image and appear to be healthy and well when deep down they have such a problem with food and their own image going on. This probably happens a lot more in general society than we realise.
This is so true Joshua – there can be a lot of control around trying to manipulate body weight; obsession over food creating eating disorders and perhaps over exercising all to do with a deep dissatisfaction within which is then hidden by the illusion of the slim, fit person appearing to be healthy while in fact they can be in deep disregard of themselves.
True Joshua, there can be issues around food and body image regardless of one’s size or shape.
It is essential that we understand and start to engender self-love, because there are so many ideals and beliefs about this, that finding clarity to establish a foundation of this essential awareness can be daunting in a world that has totally lost its way in connecting with itself in this way.
In re-reading this blog again today I realised when for years I attended so many different slimming clubs I really disliked the part when you were given your ‘ideal weight’ for your height reading. As you share Janina “everybody has their own natural weight” and mine seemed an impossibility to reach from their perspective! Where as now it feels so natural to eat to nourish my body, along with this I fully appreciate the fact that the weight has naturally fell away – with no trying, and no scales in sight.
For many years I felt my physical appearance was not ‘good enough’. I never felt beautiful and couldn’t even look in the mirror. Now this is such a different story and I know my beauty is the outward expression of who I am. But what it is deeply cherishing is how this is never a finished activity – I love myself – but I am coming to understand that the love of who I truly am is so exquisite that I can keep deepening my connection and appreciation of me and deepening my appreciation of me because there is still a long way to go in truly expressing me.
Yes Gina the realisation that the deepening of my love and care for myself seems to continue is amazing. Every day a new level of understanding is revealed.
Janina thank you, what you write is so true, if we go on a diet we then find something else to find fault with. When we connect to ourselves and make self loving choices, we find a deeper connection to who we are and for me that was when I noticed a bigger change, I became more confident about who I am, and I am beautiful as the woman I am.
Beautifully said Sally ” I am beautiful as the woman I am”.
For many years I was trying to lose weight not, to fit in with fashion but something much deeper within me felt uneasy/unsettled. Losing weight meant getting attention from others, but also the distraction to buy new clothes. This brought about a temporary ‘relief’ of the underlying sadness that was being held within. Every time I read your awesome blog Janina it gently nudges me into appreciating the choices I make with allowing self love back into my life. Thank you.
It just goes to show what rubbish we have swallowed about a perfect exterior making us happy. We were disconnected and sad then Somehow we were convinced that having a slimmer body would make us happy. Really the only thing that was going to fix the sadness and disconnection was to discover a deep connection with ourselves and that includes treating ourselves with love and listening to our bodies.
I was also sold on this idea that I would feel better if I was slimmer. I feel better, More connected, more loving and more joyful and in parts I am still aware of this pull towards weight worrying, but I know that that is not the answer and it is important to feel what there is to feel and to lovingly unravel the truth and not to bury anything.
I love this blog Janina as it reflects the truth of how when we connect to who we truly are and lovingly care for ourselves and our bodies the pictures of how we should look fade away. And our true beauty from within emerges and emanates through our bodies returning us to our natural shape and way of expression.
Beautifully said Carola and how freeing it is to let go of ideals around how we ‘should look’.
Growing up I was considered too thin and often got comments about this, so naturally as an impressionable teen I wanted a rounder more feminine body. The truth is that we are beautiful as we are and to be made aware of this fact when we are young would be a great burden lifted from young shoulders and something we would take into the rest of our lives and pass on to our own children. We are not our outer shell but the loving core within! Thank you Janina for sharing your journey.
I work as a nanny. The other day i talked to the 8 year old girl. She has beautiful brown curls. She said she would like to have blond straight hair. With the lack of self worth among girls and women we often want to be the opposite of what we are. Like in your case Roslyn a rounder body. I wanted to be slimmer. Everybody wants to be different. Not many want to be themselves. Which is a clear indication that there is something going wrong in our society.
True Janina – “Everybody wants to be different. Not many want to be themselves”
I spent my early teenage years attempting to emulate the catwalk models and spent many years berating myself for not being as skinny or able to be constantly walking the way they did when modelling clothes! Not accepting and appreciating ourselves as we are for who we truly are, totally compounds the lack of self worth so prevalent in women.
It is as you share Janina so beautiful to look into another’s eye and see the true beauty within them too. No matter what the outer distractions want to deliver to you.
I agree Kerstin self love and self care is the answer to many issues, in my case lack of self worth which was the reason why I was dieting.
Weight is no longer an issue, now I am appreciating my choices that didn’t just support the weight loss, it also supported the return to a deeper loving true relationship with myself which affects “the quality and the way we live each day – and how loving and tender we are with ourselves and others” Who could have ever imagined this was available to us just by making loving choices!y
You met a true point in me when you described how you started to be more loving to yourself and this supported you in gaining weight naturally. I have the feeling that this love towards oneself supports the ones with too much weight to lose weight and the ones who are too slim to gain weight. So love and a caring attitude towards oneself is the answer.
Yes I agree Kerstin. Self love supports us all to find the harmony in our own natural weight and therefore balance is restored.
‘really loved and appreciated myself for just being me’ – this is everything Janina. There is not a person I have ever met who have grown up this way. It is no wonder body image has spiralled so out of control in the way it has in our society. It has been for me also a massive transition to make but one that I am forever committed to – appreciating me for me, not for how I look on, or to, the outside.
Wow, coming back to this blog I sat afterwards and asked myself: What is my ‘perfect body’? image. And what came up was only one thing ‘that it functions correctly’ This felt very harsh and through my choices to reconnect to my body and how it feels about the various aspects and situations that occur in life I could easily say that this ‘perfect body’ image was a complete lie and expecting very little from a body that can do so much! What this blog has got me appreciating is that there are many little signs and signals that my body gives me constantly that support me far greater than any idea or belief of how my body should look or act like. Expecting my body to just be this thing that goes through life regardless of what it encounters is downright horrible and cruel to something that is actually very precious – this is what I am learning more and more now through choosing to feel my body, that it’s way it far grander than any other way I have followed from outside of me. Thank you Janina.
Leigh, I really enjoy and appreciate reading your comments and the insights you bring to share from your self-questioning. Thank you 🙂
What an amazing thing it is that our body is constantly guiding us every day back to the truth. I have heard this before, Janina but reading your words has given me a whole new appreciation for what precious jewel our body is to us. I feel to listen to its wisdom every day and always hear what it has to say is a very wise way to be.
I so agree with what you share with us all Joseph – Finally I too am learning to appreciate my amazing body and the wisdom that is shown each and every day. Bringing self love into my life is the oil to keep her running smoothly.
Thank you for your blog Janina. It confirms that when we measure our worth from the outside there will always be some part of ourselves that will not hit the mark of the impossible standards we impose on ourselves and others. This line beautifully expresses a much truer and loving way to live ‘“what is important is not looks or a certain weight, but the quality and way we live every day – and how loving and tender we are with ourselves and others”.
Janina like you and many other people I have struggled with my weight and played the roller coaster of sizes and the ideals of what would make me “happy”. Choosing to stop and just look after myself with how I go about my day was a turning point in how I felt in my body. When I chose not to rush the urge to binge eat went. When I chose to work through my emotions the urge to numb myself with food decreased. Being me is the greatest gift and allowed me to break the cycle of what “I thought ” I had to be in this world to be happy.
The outer appearance can be so deceiving. The picture perfect body, hair, clothes etc can all look great, but our eyes tell us what is really going on.
So true Vicky. The disconnection from oneself cannot be hidden – as you say everything may look perfect on the outside with the clothes, hair and makeup but the eyes speak the truth of the under-lying sadness, hurt, pain, anger etc . As this is allowed to surface and is steadily worked through, the eyes begin to reflect the inner healing.
Then we can appreciate just how amazing the body is – a walking reflection of our state of being every single moment.
The perfect body is something that we definitely create and is different for everyone, but still from the same lack in oneself. If only then I will feel better and happier. What an trap to be caught in the pain of this daily torture.
Our body with the correct support will naturally shape itself to support us. The right foods and exercise bring it into harmony naturally. Size then does not become the issue as the confidence is confirmed back though the body that is relaxed and healthy.
Janina, I can relate to your journey. The more I listen to me and feel connected to what my body feels to eat, my weight found its own normal.
This line “learning to love just being me” really caught my attention this morning. Always learning and reawakening to feeling into life’s choices, of which there are so many, that we make daily is, ongoing no matter what comes up – this line says it all. It is such a celebration to feel that inner joy and ‘love just being me’ living in this way can only inspire another. Thank you Janina for sharing with us all.
Yes, this line “learning to love just being me” is the cornerstone in diet and eating habits. There is no food that can compare to the gorgeousness of being yourself. Thank you Janina for a great read.
Such powerful realization Johanne “There is no food that can compare to the gorgeousness of being yourself”.
Thank you Janina for sharing your story, what a blessing to be able to appreciate our self for just being who we are and when that appreciation is lived you can’t but help appreciate others.
I agree Sue it is crazy that we look outside and listen to ideals and believes about our own body shape. We are all different concerning our body size, structure of our body so it does not make sense to compare or to make a certain size as the ideal body shape. But as you say it makes sense to start listening to our body and what shape feels supportive to ourselves.
You are so right Amina, the world is full of ideals of what we should look and be like. But where do these ideals come from? Most if not all are driven by profits from the company’s trying to make us buy more to become more? As Janina has said, we are already enough… and require nothing externally to complete us.
‘What I have realised is that what is important is not looks or a certain weight, but the quality and way we live every day – and how loving and tender we are with ourselves and others.’ I have had many issues with food and my looks in the past and I am not entirely there yet but I do know that when at difficult times I connect with the beauty that is inside me, the disharmonious feelings just melt away. Getting in touch with our innate tenderness is a very powerful tool.
“This grace of having acceptance of me and that I am actually okay is really amazing as now I feel comfortable in my body and really enjoy being me.” Yes, Harrison amazing transformation we have all made! I think i have seen you playing the drums and that was such a joy to feel you enjoying being you and expressing with your body!
Thanks Janina. I too was worried and got caught up in thinking that I didn’t have a good body and I didn’t accept the body I had for a lot of years. At some stages I believed I was too chubby in my tummy, I didn’t have a six pack, I thought that I should have one. Then recently it’s been that I think I’m too skinny and I need to gain weight. But in all of this I never had any acceptance and appreciation for my body. Since naturally starting to accept my body I have felt how I have hardened within it and started to let it go a lot more, especially in my tummy and chest. I was sucking in my tummy the whole time, it was so awful!!! This grace of having acceptance of me and that I am actually okay is really amazing as now I feel comfortable in my body and really enjoy being me.
A very familiar story Janina. I spent most of my life trying to control my weight to fit my preconceived image of how I thought I should look in the mirror. When I became a student of Universal Medicine I became more aware of what I was eating and why and with listening to my body and taking greater care of myself there is nothing to control and all the protective layers have fallen away and I naturally have the body shape I knew was just waiting for me to find. I have fun looking in the mirror and seeing me.
Being a yo-yo dieter for many years I am aware of how destructive this cycle I was caught in ruled my life. I never addressed the root causes or emotional issues that caused me to eat so much and then have to diet to lose weight I had gained. I have addressed a lot of my issues with food now and my relationship with food now is much healthier and a constant refinement of what suits my body or not due to the loving support and self-care principles taught at Universal Medicine presentations and workshops. Janina what you share here is beautiful and such a great support for others, I especially love this line – “What I have realised is that what is important is not looks or a certain weight, but the quality and way we live every day – and how loving and tender we are with ourselves and others.”
Janina you have hit the nail on the head. We try and fit the ideal weight and image until we simply stop and appreciate the beauty that we already are, and focus on nurturing that – and then we find our true weight and celebrate ourselves with the way we dress and move.
Exactly, well summarized Anne!
My relationship with food is very revealing as to what is truly going on with me. In the past I used to abuse my body in relation to what I ate and the way I ate it. I had a very unhealthy relationship with food and my body. I used food for all sorts of emotional reasons, to numb what I felt, was very self-critical of my body and tried one diet after another which never worked. Since attending Universal Medicine events my whole relationship with food and my body has completely changed. My body and I have become very dear friends. As soon as I stopped dieting and started eating to support myself and my connection to my body, my body quickly took on a very healthy weight and felt great. Sometime I still eat emotionally which then gives me the instant and simple feedback (pun intended) that there is something going on for me to look at.
So true Nicola – “As soon as I stopped dieting and started eating to support myself and my connection to my body, my body quickly took on a very healthy weight and felt great. Sometime I still eat emotionally which then gives me the instant and simple feedback (pun intended) that there is something going on for me to look at”.
From my own experience, I can certainly attest to the fact that Dieting is a solution and not a true answer.
From age 15 (1965) I was on constant diets which continued until attending my first presentation by Serge Benhayon in 2008.
The years in between were a constant yo-yo of trying different diets and always failing as the previous diet never sustained the goal of what I thought I should look like by society and advertising.
After attending this presentation with Serge – the dreaded weighing scales went ‘out of the window’ and the focus, for the first time in my life, was a question I began to ask myself about food “is this food that I am choosing to eat actually supporting me in healing my body or is it causing further harm in my body? My eating habits began to change in response to what my body was feeling (having numbed out all feeling through previous food choices and dieting) and my body shape and weight changed dramatically. How ironic – searching in completely the wrong direction all those years (externally) and the true answer was waiting inside all along – through re-connection with my body and letting go of what was an ideal of what ‘should be’.
Awesome blog Janina, I have seen many of my friends go through similar struggles with weight loss and constantly putting themselves down. As a little girl I remember having comments about my legs being too thin, this was my first experience of body image related comments . It started me questioning how I looked and what my body shape should be. Then I was told my nose was too small and flat, to me I was ‘prefect’ the way I was. I didn’t even consider any part of my body needed fixing before those comments. So, throughout my teenage years I had some minor body image issues which dissipated in my late teens and early twenties. From a young age many of us are pressured to look, act and be a certain way. Your blog is so inspiring because it confirms that our body is very intelligent, it tells us how much and what we should and shouldn’t eat, not to be dictated by any diet or by other people when we connect to it and listen. When we live a loving life and make loving choices that naturally supports us, and our body will reflect those choices.
Awesome blog Janina, i can very much relate to everything you say and the damage of basing our level of self-worth on our outer physical appearance. I too have discovered that the more I accept and appreciate everything that i already am, naturally brings a fullness from within my body. I understand that i will always be tending to continual refinements in how i can be more loving with myself and others. Yet I know that i am no less while dealing with what needs healing. That I still am, as I have always been – the same beauty-full woman from the inside out.
Dieting while we are disconnected to the body does not lead anywhere.
Finding your natural weight requires connecting to you and your body and letting go, ideals about how things should be that feed the disconnection most people live in.
I feel the change in the low level to a much higher level of self appreciation in this blog. It’s a wonderful account of someone, who like myself, lost and then re-connected to that love of oneself – which as you said is ever expanding. It’s so important to our joy and vitality.
The key thing that has supported me is when I get to a point where I love myself and my body more than wanting to taste or fill the uncomfortable feeling with foods or drinks. Self care were the stepping stones to loving my body.
The ideals that push and pull us to be dissatisfied with our bodies seem prolific for both men and women. What a clever trick to keep the cycle of dissatisfaction or even repulsion repeating, when it is through our connection, care and love for our body that we connect with who we truly are.
Very well said Vicky. It is certainly true. When we are connected to who we are and regard ourselves, our body in a loving way it becomes almost impossible to disregard it with those ideals and beliefs. By being aware of our body, how it feels and how we use and treat it, this reveals the choices we’ve made and by listening to our body it can support us to making more loving choices. It is with ‘care and love for our body that we connect with who we truly are.’
It is great to read this again Janina. Growing up I too had worried about being slim and thought that equated to being liked, getting the attention that I wanted. The crazy thing was that I actually was slim and had a beautiful body but because I lacked self-love, was holding this belief thinking that this was how I would get the love I was searching for. I was not able to appreciate what I already had and was. We are indeed constantly bombarded with images of what the ‘perfect’ body is when I fact we are all already born with the precise body we need to express the love that we are. And when we truly nurture, appreciate and honor this love in the way we live we naturally reflect our beauty from within.
Its amazing isn’t it! If we can just bring up our kids to know they are enough just as they are, that they are beautiful just by their very being, we will be well on the road to healing society from so much ongoing dysfunction and stress.
Janina when I read your article I glimpsed the size of the weight issue for women, it’s an epidemic, ingrained out of control monster of a problem which will just keep steam rolling ahead if we can’t change things with young girls. If girls can have the foundation of deep self love and appreciation that we didn’t have then the issues to do with weight and looks won’t arise. Without that foundation girls and boys are adrift in a sea of constantly searching for recognition and identity and this will continue until, like you Janina, they learn to appreciate and care for themselves.
I agree Alexis, this perfect body image issue is consuming so many people’s lives. It is a huge problem we are faced with and we can do something about it by teaching our children to love and appreciate who they are and others too, we can do this by leading by example. We must first learn to love and appreciate ourselves to truly make a difference.
Thank you Kate! Yes it is so important to constantly appreciate ourselves..and others…and to know if we don’t than there is something going wrong.
In returning to this blog today just by reading the title brought up memories of all the struggles I went through at school and the pressures of ‘others’ to be slimmer particularly in my teenage years, when my body was going through many changes in development anyway . Being teased about my size – left me feeling quite alone and anxious. This was my start of many years of dieting – to fit in to life to be noticed as something more than being ‘the big girl’. When I reached 50 I started to attend presentations by Serge Benhayon and Universal Medicine it was at this point I started to really embrace making ‘self loving’ choices which, very much included feeling into what foods really nourish me. No more yo- yo dieting – but as you share Janina a time to really appreciate myself again.
You have such a beautiful light to shine Marion, people in school must have felt it and knew how to get you to self doubt more…
Yes, I can relate to this Marion – I can see clearly now how my lack of self worth was the underlying cause for my overeating to cover this up and the constant dieting was to want to feel ‘better’ about myself and feel less ‘worthless’.
What a tangled web to be caught up in.
Thank God, a friend took me along to attend a most inspiring presentation by Serge Benhayon and finally, in my late fifties this was exposed and ‘dieting’ has not been an issue since.
My body weight has found its true level without dieting – just listening to my body signals and making different choices in my eating habits.
There’s lots I can relate to here in this blog Janina, especially thinking that I would solve all of my problems if I was thinner and that my life would be a new improved version because I had achieved my goal. But what I found happening is that I would loose the weight which would take months to shift and then would feel uncomfortable and then eat all the wrong foods again, which would result in me putting the weight back on. It felt wrong for being over weight but at the same time it felt safer and I could hide behind being large.
This is an important aspect you bring in Julie. Many people protect, hide and feel safer with extra body weight. And if they don’t heal and resolve the issue underneath than they will prefer to put on the weight again.
Agreed Julie. I hated being overweight but I always felt much safer with carrying it. Once I began to deal with old issues, it was like my body began to release the stuck energy energetically and every time I really exposed something and worked with it, my body would quite literally re-configure its shape and weight without looking drawn as I always did when constantly dieting.
Janina, you are very gorgeous and its great to hear you are appreciating yourself too!
My body tells me very clearly when the food I eat is not supporting me. The next step is whether I listen to the great wisdom that is being shared with me or arrogantly ignore it and effectively make the choice to shut down my awareness and going into a form of self-abuse. Saying it like this sounds strong, but it makes it more real.
This is so true or me too Vicky – I know when I eat something that does not support me and I definitely shut down to the obvious signs that my body is sharing with me. Recently it became apparent I do this when I feel nourishment is over due and do not give myself enough time to plan and prepare my food- so therefore opting to overeat food that is available to my eyes.
This is extremely powerful Janina – “the way I felt about myself (the low self esteem and lack of self worth) did not change with losing weight” This is how it was exactly for me. I thought once I got skinny I will feel great, and life will be great, and this did not happen. A lot of young women have this perceived idea that life will be different when they are skinny and what you are exposing and what I and many others are saying on these comments is that it is not. We need to get this message out wider so as to support women with the truth of the matter.
Well said Mary-Louise! The message is very important to bring out that being slim doesn’t change the way you feel about yourself.
Yes Mary-Louise I was one of those women never happy with my weight. An illness had required that I take medicine for 2 years with the side effect of putting on weight. The comments and looks around me were enough to make me hate myself. Even when I recovered a normal weight I was disastisfied with my look. I know now that it came from a total lack of self-worth. The message needs to be loud and clear, we as women are so much more than our outer shell.
Janina what you have shared here is why diets don’t work. We may lose weight for a period of time, but unless we are strict in following the diet, the weight often comes back. Think of the multi million dollar industry that the weight loss industry is. Say if every person read this blog and could come to the understanding that our connection with ourselves is the key to discovering our own natural body weight, this vast industry would be out of business. It is time that we stop putting our self-worth based on our outer image and address our issues from the inside out.
What I appreciate about this blog is how even though many changes were made on a self care level, around food and so on, there was still acknowledgement around liking being thin. It does seem we can measure life by set standards and then once reached, we may limit what life offers. I know for myself I ‘put up’ with a level of tension in my body that is asking me to develop a deeper relationship with myself, and so live choosing coping mechanisms rather than making choices to evolve to a deeper understanding and appreciation of what life is about.
We all come in different shapes and sizes so to fit an ideal body shape or size is not even realistic for most of us. Learning to love ourselves on the inside and eating what we feel results in the perfect body for each individual.
Janina I never liked the way I looked, the way my voice sounded etc. and always wanted to be like someone else – over time with the support of Universal Medicine I’ve come to appreciate just being me and whilst that is a work in progress its an incredible difference to how I used to go through life. For me this feels similar to wanting to have the perfect body to allowing and appreciating your natural true weight.
Who would have thought Janina that our natural weight is found, not through diets, but through offering ourselves a very gentle, tender and loving way with everything and through this connecting to the beauty we are.
Yes Jennifer this is an important realization and revelation for all of us, as their are many people who struggle daily like I was with losing weight and become slimmer.
It is amazing how thick the layers of ideals are in us. Universal Medicine brought me to this awareness and it is an ongoing process for me to understand that body-weight has not so much to do with what I eat, but with the way I am in my day.
It is an interesting subject, our image and how this connects to how we feel about ourselves…I have lost weight slowly over the last 10 years, if I had done this alongside building my self esteem and self worth it would have meant nothing, it would have been very hollow if I had not done this with self care and learning to self love. I still feel I am heading towards the weight that fully expresses me, but I do know that without embodying the changes that have occurred it would have meant nothing. The weight loss has been a side effect of learning to love myself once again.
Hello Janina, thank you for your story. I agree with what you are saying and how the ‘world’ feeds us how we are supposed to look. But this is in fact a very individual and personal thing that can change and not a one size fits all. As you go through life your body and diet may change and if you attempt to apply ‘someone else’s’ thoughts to you then it’s not really you, is it? What is best I found is to connect to yourself and what you feel, build that feeling and relationship and from there all else goes out. So in other words I don’t focus on a weight or a build or try and live up to something. I just take care of myself, real care of myself and how I live in each moment. Yes this takes in food, relationships, everything really. It’s not a ‘care free’ approach but it is a deeply caring self responsible approach to life and all things. Thank you again Janina for this great article.
Gorgeous blog Janina, ‘…loving and appreciating ourselves and our bodies in whatever shape we naturally have.’ is so important, our worth should not be dictated by an image or ideal of how our body should be. And Ray I love how you so succinctly express “..I just take care of myself, real care of myself and how I live in each moment” – super simple, super inspiring!
Thank you Hannah, I look at all the complicated things we have in the world just around diet and weight loss. But what if, as we are saying it had nothing to do with any of these ‘things’ it just had to do with simply connecting to a feeling inside of you. I have experienced this in my life, I don’t focus on a goal or a wish or a point, I dedicate my life to feeling what is each moment. This is not perfect but a dedication to feel what is inside of me, simply. Life outside of me offers up all sorts of ‘carrots dangled’ in front of me but my dedication is to me and from there I live that same dedication to life. From this my body transformed itself and now I’m fitter, stronger and have more energy than at any other point in my life, I do a small amount of exercise regularly, no intense running or spin classes just stretching, small weights and walking. Life is simple, connect to what you are feeling in each moment and the rest goes out from there.
A very powerful sharing Janina, one that resonates so strongly with me, and with many others I am sure. The day that I understood that my weight was not just about what I ate, but the quality of what I ate, how I ate and how I treated my body moment by moment, was the day I actually began to lose the extra weight that I had been carrying for quite some time. I wasn’t on a “diet”, I was simply making loving changes to everything in my life that did not feel true, instead of just living as I had always been, and conversely, the quality of how I was nourishing myself naturally flowed on to the quality of my life. An all round healing!
Hello Ingrid, this is very well said and I agree. Your comment grabbed me as I was commenting on this article. You explain and layout this process very beautifully and clearly, thank you.
Hi Ingrid so beautifully expressed and what you describe here about losing weight was pretty much the same for me. I did not set out to loose weight it simply dropped off the more I loved me and my body
Such a beautiful blog to return to today – Your line “to love and accept myself more” So much has changed for me and I feel sure for many others that once we allow self love into our everyday the changes which occur are amazing. I did’nt always take the gentle approach to making those changes which would lead me into relapsing into old habits. Over time feeling more deeply into what felt right for my body the awareness becomes much more refined. As you expressed Janina “learning to love just being me” has completely changed my outlook on life and everyone else in it.
I agree Fumiyou, ‘ the way back home to true beauty is really just simply to connect with me’ and when I connect with me I know what to eat and do not need any knowledge about what is good or not good, what is too less or to much etc etc. In connection with me I am content with myself and guess what with everyone around me equally.
Janina, what you write is great. Once you don’t eat things that harm you, you can lose weight at will – if you then don’t eat what your body needs you can get too thin. That happened to me and I needed to learn to take more care.
Listening to the body is the key as I am finding is that is does change. The things I ate a year ago are now bloating me or giving me heart burn, which I haven’t had for a long time. I have also put on weight by not changing what my body needs or doesn’t need. This is a really good blog Janina for coming back to and checking in, thank you
This is a great point you share with us Kevin and I’ve also ‘clocked’ that listening/connecting more to my body that, as I change and develop through making more self loving choices so do my food choices change. Sticking to the same food regimes can create a stagnation and that’s when I can feel it big time. Our amazing bodies share so much with us – it’s our choice to listen. A very inspiring blog Janina thank you.
Thank you, Janina. Since this morning I was just pondering about loving and feeling the beauty of just being myself, so it was perfect timing to read your blog. What came to me was if I am not truly connected with myself, I have got the door open for self-doubt to enter and have a way with me. Anything and everything – the way I look, the job I do, what I wear, if I am married, how much I weigh, if I am healthy, how much money I have… is potentially an issue for me, and I start comparing, looking for confirmation and recognition outside myself. So, the way back home to true beauty is really just simply to connect with me.
I can relate to experiencing a changing relationship to eating too, rather than eating for comfort or to buffer difficult days or situations, I can now feel more what my body needs in terms of nourishment or fuel for that day and sometimes it is less food or lighter foods and not eating more heavier foods that will dull my ability to feel what is going on in life..
Such a powerful message here Janina;
“What I have realised is that what is important is not looks or a certain weight, but the quality and way we live every day – and how loving and tender we are with ourselves and others”
Thank you for your beautiful and inspiring post.
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It feels like your illness had a positive aspect to it as it made you ‘stop’ and look at all areas of your life, including food, which has brought you so many insights and much understanding around your eating habits… and as a result you are now able to maintain your naturally slim body weight without dieting whatsoever….. and great that you share this for all the women and men out there who may find your sharing very supportive on this popular topic of food, diet, cravings, weight loss, buying into ideals and beliefs of having to have the ‘perfect body image’, to coming back to: ‘learning to love yourself’…. Inspirational Janina.
Great post Janina. Yes food and the way we are with food, the pace we eat, quantity and its type, is so telling of the way we are with ourselves in life. A life that’s geared by ideals and beliefs about every aspect of living. There is a direct link as your post describes in eating to feel (good, beautiful, content etc.), as opposed feeling to eat (to confirm our beauty, joy, contentment), and in this, what resonated here were your words, “What I have realised is that what is important is not looks or a certain weight, but the quality and way we live every day – and how loving and tender we are with ourselves and others”. This quality you describe is what allows for food (and life) to be a confirming process, as opposed a feast gorging with hungry need, or with a starvation of love.
I really love this blog Janina, knowing that truly supporting yourself with the foods which nurture allows you to come to what is the right weight or size for you is huge. We are ‘fed’ so many ideals in the media of what we should look like that we often don’t stop to actually feel what is right for us and it will be entirely different for someone else.
I deeply appreciate the awareness about connecting to my body that I have now developed, thanks to Serge Benhayon and Universal Medicine. Janina for myself as an older woman, it has been such a gift to develop a loving relationship with myself, so that ageing can be accepted as an every day opportunity to let go of false ideals and instead enjoy loving myself just the way I am. It is all about how I feel, and when this is harmonious this is what shines from the inside.
Thank you Bernadette for sharing – this is very inspiring to read and worth writing a blog about as becoming older is a huge issue for women and what ideals and belief come with that!! And we need to hear that it is not about how we look but how we feel within our bodies. If we feel great within our own body it doesn’t matter if we are 20 or 60 years old it is simply awesome!
Janina, I can relate to aspiring to change my body shape and size and all the while missing the bigger picture that I was not getting to know and appreciate what I naturally am. What an endless see-saw that journey is! As I slowly learn to listen to my body and make adjustments, my body easily responds. It is quite incredible to come to understand that everything else ‘out there’ is a waste of time without having this connection first.
Great lesson that we shouldn’t have any preconceived idea about body image.
More likely than not it will send us down a desolate path.
I really needed to read this Janina. I’ve always pretended I didn’t care about my weight and have never committed to dieting, but that has always been in reaction to the many many women I know that have always focussed on it so much. I made a decision in high school to not go down that track. But the truth is I have never been happy with my body, it’s shape or size. I often self criticise and ‘wish’ I had smaller boobs, hips and thighs and a flatter stomach. It’s starting to become more and more obvious just how little regard I have for my body, which I actually find quite sad.
Issues with weight is something that I feel affects everyone at some stage of their life. There is so much emphasis on body image within our society that it is not surprising how many people struggle with accepting themselves, honouring their body and then living in a way that naturally expresses their ideal weight from their own personal body type and shape. Your comment is amazing as you share how much you have beaten the stigma of society and have truly deeply appreciated who you are and the beauty within and how much this has brought such a level of contentment within you that has allowed you to have the body that is naturally designed for you. No more comparison or ideal of wanting to be anything but you. Awesomely inspiring Donna.
Beautifully shared Donna : “However, true beauty, which comes from our inner connection resides within us, is everlasting.” Yes, this is important to understand that indeed the body is changing all the time especially in regards to aging. With the Students of Universal Medicine we could observe that people of all ages become more beautiful and women with 60 or 70 years old look better than ever in their lives because of the beauty which emanates from within. Awesome!
Seeing and accepting the beauty within ourselves as we naturally are can be hard with the outside pressures of what is beautiful and what isn’t. Trying to conform to what we think we should look like to be accepted is never satisfactory and there is always some part of us that doesn’t look good enough. Coming to know and accept our inner beauty is the only way to truly feel beautiful. There is no comparison in this way, as in truth if we all accept our own individual beauty we are allowing ourselves to reflect our true essence
Yes Deidre, once we start getting to know our true essence and naturally share it with others we can not but fall in love with ourselves and we are not longer seeking recognition or acceptance from outside because we feel and know what beauty we and bring.
Thanks Janina for sharing your story. There are so many images out there telling us “what is beautiful”. As you have shared here in your blog, our beauty comes from within. When we are reliant on our appearance to make us feel good, we are always going to ride a roller coaster of emotions, the ups and the downs, because our body is always going to change, it is never going to stay the same. However, true beauty, which comes from our inner connection resides within us, is everlasting. I’m choosing to connect with that.
There are so many ideals and beliefs about what the ‘perfect body’ is. What you have shared and lived Janina reflects a way to live free from these impositions. A way lived from within, with love and appreciation that who we truly are is already amazing. I love how you say – ‘I can look at myself in the mirror and look deep into my beautiful eyes and truly see the depth and beauty that I bring in just being me. When I do, I know that I am fully connected to myself. Often now when I look into peoples’ eyes I am amazed as I see and feel that same beauty in them too.’ What an inspiration you are – thank you.
I might be able to look into your beautiful eyes Carola, i will be coming over for the retreat in April!
Thanks Janina for this blog. I could really feel my own attachment to ‘being slim’ as I was reading this.. and despite no longer dieting or thrashing my body with exercise to achieve the desired result… the attachment is still there. I could also feel that the way I choose to dress can also be about gaining recognition. I have felt what it is like to dress for myself, to celebrate the beauty-full woman I am, yet your blog has exposed in me that this is not always the case and all too often a need for recognition creeps in and I am no longer dressing for myself. Thank you for the reflection.
I once read that the body’s highest priority is to keep its core temperature at 37C.
Maybe, when we try to lose weight but can’t, the body simply has a higher priority than losing weight and that priority is so strong that we can only override it using a lot of force.
I wonder if that priority is dealing with our emotions which are very hard on the body. Maybe one reason a lot of Universal Medicine students lose a lot of weight without effort is Serge Benhayon showing us how not to be controlled by emotions, giving us a choice. Most of us, given a choice to be emotional or not, choose not to be emotional, hence perhaps no need for the body to put on weight to deal with the physical consequences of those emotions.
I have always found it a near miracle that much of the rest of the world unsuccessfully puts great effort into losing weight and here 80%+ (more like 90%) lose weight WithOut effort.
It seems that a strong healthy non-judgemental loving relationship with ourselves is truly the key that unlocks so much. Self-love has so many positive flow on effects for our bodies, our relationships and our attitudes to how we are in the world and how we serve each other. Thanks Janina for sharing your experience.
Its really interesting to feel the difference, and what a big difference, between looking at ourselves in a mirror and just analyzing everything about us, to looking in the mirror and just loving what we see.
When I read this comment Madeline I felt first the analysing and lack of self appreciation that would perhaps come with it and the absolute joy and acceptance of loving what we see and I would like to thank you for bringing such an important point into our awareness.
Yes Madeline, to look with love and appreciation at ourselves or without, is a huge difference…
It took a while to get over an old belief of it being wrong to look at oneself in a mirror (drilled in during childhood!) and then from teenage years only looking to critique and judge – since attending Universal Medicine events, this has changed and I can really appreciate and love all that I see shining out from the reflection in the mirror.
Yes Stephanie it is such a gift to ourselves if we can look with appreciation and love in the mirror and welcome what what we see and who we are and the unique qualities we bring.
Stephanie; Like you I just love that I can now look in the mirror and appreciate the beautiful reflection that looks back at me. And the deepest appreciation goes to Serge Benhayon for showing me the way to pull back the self made curtain that was blocking me from seeing and appreciating that reflection.
I agree Ingrid, to look into our own eyes with appreciation and love is amazing and a great reflection for us to see where we are.
Thank you Janina – I loved reading this. When I was in my 20s my diet was so bad my doctor asked me (jokingly) to stop eating engine oil as my cholesterol levels were so bad. This shouldn’t have been surprising as donuts and coffee were my standard breakfast, I was a junk food junkie. Despite this I remember being shocked as I was very very thin and I had somewhat ridiculously equated my low body weight with being healthy. I still catch myself using food to numb emotional pain and distract from what I feel and the effects of these choices are very immediate. Now I know what is truly important is the way I feel and the messages my body sends me, not the way I look.
Our lack of self appreciation and self care is the root of so much suffering. Yet by simply listening to our body we get to the ideal weight, with the vitality and joy that ensue.
I didn’t diet but I do now have a healthy diet. I am finding a weight that feels good “Everybody (including men) has their own natural weight,” This is a lovely way of describing the way we can find what feels right our ‘natural weight”. Great to feel it for ourselves rather than be influenced by societies unrealistic and unhealthy notions of ‘beauty’.
In a recent conversation with a beautiful young woman, the damage caused by “societies unrealistic and unhealthy notions of ‘beauty’ have affected her deeply with a constant pressure and drive to excel at everything and being unable to appreciate the true inner beauty within herself which led to the condition of severe anorexia. The anorexia is being dealt with – the shocking damage to the physical body is severe osteoporosis in the spine.
Airbrushing of photographs and idealistic notions of beauty for women perpetuated in a plethora of magazines are controlling women’s perception of themselves in such an insidious way – thank goodness the inspiring ‘Women in Livingness’ magazine, which is offering a completely different awareness – the truth of a way of being for women as never seen before.
Wouldn’t it be wonderful if these sorts of articles made it into the Women’s Day sort of magazines, the ones in supermarkets, and news agencies. How amazing it would be for women to read that even thinking that this is possible, and how liberating this would be.
Maybe there is a magazine out there that actually prints articles like this… Wouldn’t that be wonderful. ☺
Yes it would Chris, we often walk past those magazines that are full of dieting tips and glamour photos and often start to compare and judge ourselves, the whole industry is set up to play on women’s lack of self worth. More honest reporting with real stories from women like this, that inspire and offer a different way are very needed.
Yes Chris and Kristy I agree. The world is on a diet of ‘junk’ magazines when all the nourishment they need is in this kind of article. 🙂
This is an awesome sharing with many ongoing discussions in the comments, all really power-full in offering a glimpse to humanity that there is something amazing going on for those who begin to choose to honour their bodies by listening to it – that the body communicates far more intelligence than the mind. A mind easily distracted by sweet tasting pastries, or indeed distracted by strong determinations to make the body look or be a certain way without any true regard for the body in the first place.
Super great blog Janina! I for one struggle a lot with my ideals about body image and weight. Cause I have gotten so caught up it in I find it hard to know what my natural weight is (because I think about it too much). Your blog has opened up the basis to be able to let your body be natural- just by listening to it and loving it a bit more… It’ll find the right weight then when you give it a chance and stop strangling it with all the beliefs. Thank you Janina.
Yes, I can relate to this Emily. Before attending Universal Medicine events – I was a ‘serial dieter’ since my teens through to my 50’s – every diet under the sun in order to ‘conform to the expected norm’ at whatever cost to my body.
Understanding how food affects the body energetically from my first attendance at a presentation by Serge Benhayon in 2008, turned my dieting mentality inside out and suddenly what became the focus for me was “Is this harming or healing my body?”. It was a very poignant moment realising how much of this food abuse was purely self abuse to stop me feeling the force through my mind perpetuating my hidden self loathing and anxiousness of never being good enough.
The scales went out the window and the ‘love affair’ with myself began and the emotional roller coaster affair with food began to change.
Slowly I experimented with how certain foods really felt in my body. First gluten and then over a short time span dairy and sugar were gently let go of as I began to feel their detrimental effects on my body (bloating, raciness, sleeplessness, dullness)
A very unexpected 42 kilos (6.1/2stone) quite literally melted away from my body over the next year and my weight has remained constant since 2009.
Thank you Stephanie for sharing your experience with dieting. How power-full to hear once you began the ´love affair´with yourself that your weight dropped naturally without struggle…people need to hear what is possible once we become honest and allow ourselves to feel again our body.
The new true diet – the love and acceptance diet that honours our body and truly cares for it so we are our natural, beautiful selves.
I love this Alison- “…the love and acceptance diet” – what a perfect way to describe a beautiful ‘diet’ …
A great article Janina. When I started making choices about what, when and how much I ate I began losing weight steadily and began to wonder when, and if, it would stop. However, it settled at a perfect weight and although I did not eat more or less than before my weight has stayed constant and I feel very at ease in my body. When I now look in the mirror I no longer look for faults but look at myself through my eyes and see the beauty of who I am – and always was but just chose not to notice.
This is so beautiful to read Janina…the shift in you is remarkable and inspiring. The ‘perfect body’ is such trap and can imprison us, especially women, for a lifetime.
Your blog, Janina, is probably, as women, something that we have all done. Having poor body image and low self esteem by focusing on the way we look and how we have ignored our bodies just to fit a stereotype. I, also, dropped a lot of weight by deleting gluten, sugar, and dairy from my diet, and that felt right for me. Friends were saying I had lost too much weight and I was starting to worry that that was the case. A Universal Medicine Practitioner suggested that my weight would stabilise and within a few months it had. I felt to nourish my body, not to keep indulging in comfort foods that made me feel bloated and racy. I left ideals of what I should look like behind and feel happier and healthier because of that.
It is so important to stay connected with the beauty within, the beauty that knows exactly what our natural body shape and weight must be and this connection will make it impossible to worry about this. When we follow our inner knowing of how to nourish and support our bodies through life, the shape and weight our bodies will come to will be what is required for us to serve in our fiery light for all of humanity.
I have just reread your blog Janina, so much common sense and so much wisdom, thank you for your beautiful expression
“What I have realised is that what is important is not looks or a certain weight, but the quality and way we live every day – and how loving and tender we”
These words spoke volumes to me.
I can relate to your blog entirely Janina. I have always struggled with the up and down of weight fluctuations and what to put in my mouth. I find it very confusing cause you have so many people saying so many different things and the constant bombardment from pictures and everything around you. I can imagine that the way you look at yourself and other people would now be totally different as you’re not so fixated on the body. There have been times where I have not seen the person (including myself) but just the body they have.
To me this blog is really supportive and offers a lot of answers to the struggle that I have with food, weight and self acceptance. I have a cycle in which I live where I have stuff coming up about 1 week before my period, and this is when I always find myself slipping into an old pattern of self loathing & abuse with food. Not liking my body for the extra weight that it has taken on from me not eating the foods that my body needs. Instead over eating on food that I know will weigh me down and also leave me feeling off for the next day or so. I would find myself feeling like this a lot of the time. My food choices are very important to me and its time for me to honour myself with food that supports my true body, as I am worth it.
‘From becoming slim to just being me’, this last part caught my eye. Just being me or just being myself is the simplicty in life I have found and now live every day, Just being me sheds all the false ideals and beliefs around the perfect body image that I had held and fell for and in which so many women do also. Just being me allows my body to reflect all that I am including my shape….my natural body shape. Just being me allows me to accept all the gifts and wisdom my body has for me, which includes knowing which food supports and nourishs me, how much food to eat, and sometimes when I have made the wrong choice, my body immediatley lets me know, thus my diet is constantly changing and refining by’ listening to my body’, for it has much to share with me. A wise man once said; ‘the body is the marker of all truth, the body does not lie’.
I love how you talk about your body being too thin not because of food but a lack of love. It makes so such sense that expression and love impact on our weight.
This is a supportive blog, I feel it communicates the process that you went through, concerning getting to understanding and accept your body with great insight. I have lost weight without trying and definitely feel more myself and more healthy, however the acceptance and appreciation of myself has been lagging and I now understand that how I feel about myself comes completely from the inside. It is interesting because I have let go of so many habits and emotional issues that I had taken on, which meant I ate food that did not support me, which meant I was bloated and overweight. The loss of weight is indicative of letting go of issues, not just eating an apple instead of a chocolate bar….this is huge and requires appreciating. We do have our own personal weight that feels right for us and we know this when we feel it form the inside.
Obesity is affecting so many people today, including young children. Therefore weight loss is the hot topic. Body image is definitely part of this. But there are so many different diets to go on, supplements to take, but do they work?
Your experience and advice makes a lot of sense, and is worth taking into account .
Thank you for revealing the missing link in attaining your natural body size and shape which is self love, self acceptance and self appreciation.
It is no wonder we have an image of the perfect body in our minds. From the dolls we play with as kids to the air brushed images of celebrities, we are constantly shown what we ‘should’ look like. Yet we all have a natural shape and weight. This is one of the things that makes us unique. When we start to appreciate that and love ourselves there is a feeling of contentment that no perfect image can shake. It stops all the chasing and seeking of perfection that leaves us feeling inadequate, no matter how much we weigh.
Thank you Fiona, beautiful expressed.
Beautifully said Fiona, if as children we were allowed to appreciate ourselves and others perhaps we would not lose or bury that knowing that we have as children. Perhaps we would not learn to look at the outer and in fact remain connected to that inner love we all are.
I can so relate to this lovely article having tried so many diets only to return to being heavier than I was in the first place. It was like an unspoken challenge I’d set myself to appear thinner and, get noticed and to wear clothes that made me ‘feel good’ which I could not if I was ‘big’ – its so clear now that I wanted something outside of myself to change the way I felt about me! When you mention “what changed for you in a big way” was that you started to love and accept yourself more and more – beautiful. The way I feel and look at myself now is so different with a loving touch and eyes that really see all of me – lovingly so. Attending presentations by Serge Benhayon and Universal Medicine have shown me there is another way. Thank you Janina
This is so true Janina,
My body has changed a lot over the years, from average weight, to underweight, to overweight and everything in between. Whilst the ‘scenery’ changed, the way I felt about myself didn’t- there was still the underlying sense of ‘not feeling enough’. The issues that I thought would be resolved by losing weight or having the ‘perfect’ body remained, and were compounded by the fact that my ‘solution’ of having the ‘perfect body’ actually didn’t work. And so, I then had to ask, ‘If this isn’t it – then what is?’ I could no longer use my body as a scapegoat, or a tool to ‘make my life perfect’; I had to go deeper and build my worth from within.
Amazingly, this worth has shaped my true body, which feels more amazing and natural than any of the body shapes I ever ‘attained’ through my strive for perfection. My body shape responds to my expression – the way I move, express, speak, the way I am in relationships, in life – as well as in the way I sleep, eat and exercise. It reflects everything.
If our bodies are the sum total of the way we live, it just highlights how crazy it is to change your whole life in order to shape your body to be a certain way (to be thin)… Rather than to firstly live the life that is true for you, and let it shape the body that reflects your truth.
Kylie, your comment “my body shape responds to my expression” sounds very true to me. I had a short period of overweight due to illness and extreme sadness in my youth and greatly suffered from the comments this attracted. I promised myself to never go there again. In retrospect I was in reaction, lacking in any self-worth and still struggling at times. Reading blogs and comments is a tremendous help for me.
Your comment really touched a feeling of familiarity in me too Kylie – that if I lost weight which I was feeling in ‘control’ of – all would be well!!! but all was not well as I still had a feeling of something still missing – using my body as you mention as a “scapegoat”, or a tool to ‘make my life perfect’. This is changing as I now know its not about weight loss.
That makes a lot of sense Kylie and from what others are sharing in their comments too is that ‘fat’, ‘thin’, ‘curvy’, ‘normal’ ‘average’ – whatever label one or others place on their or another’s body it is never enough. The body is a constantly changing environment – as we age, puberty, it requires certain behaviours at certain times (Sleep etc), even the weather can impact on it (becoming hot/cold), emotions and responses or reactions to others responses and reactions. It’s never fixed yet we try to pin down the body and fix a point to it – in this case being the ‘perfect shape’. There is a part of us that wants a stable base, a foundation to stand on and from there on we are content and know who we are – be it the body shape, the job, the partner, a list of pictures that could be longer than a toilet roll. But like you have shared Janina also and my own experience is that there is that platform we have searched for. This inner core I am discovering is the place that when I put my focus on it over and above my thoughts or actions (by focusing on how my body feels) clears away the uncertainty and doubts as to what I should eat, how I should look etc.
Isn’t it gorgeous Janina that when we start to look at how we care for ourselves, in every way, and we begin to feel that loveliness that is within, we begin to see that very same loveliness in others.
Yes Jennifer it is gorgeous. To appreciate my own beauty and tenderness makes it possible to appreciate these qualities in others.
Beautiful Jen reconnecting to the loveliness in self and all.
It is amazing how mostly every women is always striving to an ‘ideal body’, but this ideal is never achieved because we never feel like we have achieved it and can always make ourselves look even better.
So True Madeline – Letting go of the insidious ‘doing and achieving’ mentality is key to really appreciating and thus accepting ourselves just as we are.
Thanks to Serge Benhayon’s presentations it is now possible for me to choose the quality of being rather than doing.
Yes Madeline, through striving for the “ideal body” we want to make us feel better about ourselves but it just doesn’t work we won’t became happy or content through anything from the outside. No matter how many compliments people would make to me I would not truly believe or let them in as I did not accept and love myself. Since reconnecting with my loving essence and discovering the joy and tenderness I bring , I accept and love myself for who I am. Now I can let “compliments” really in because I feel them myself.
Janina thank you for your writing it’s really lovely and inspiring. I to have held many ideals and beliefs around how my body should look and be. I have always beaten myself up for not having the body I thought that I wanted, and even when I was thin I still thought that my body was ugly. Now like you I have begun to appreciate it more and more everyday, sometime I still slip into the old way but it is not everyday like it was. Sometimes I now catch my reflection in a window or a mirror, and see and feel the wonder and love in me.
Janina, your blog touched me and I can very much relate to what you shared. I too became very slim and actually too slim after quitting eating gluten and dairy as I still held the idea that I had to be slim but also I did have a huge lack of appreciation for myself and my physical body. I love your line about appreciating and how it relates to accepting and embracing our beauty and body: “As I began, I started appreciating myself more and embracing the beauty that I bring; I found that my body naturally began to gain weight again.” Your blog inspires me to not accept all the unloving thoughts that sometimes try to come in but feel what is truly in me, which is a loveliness, beauty and grandness more amazing than I could have ever imagined.
It seems like such a crazy thing to not accept our bodies and to not accept what we look like. As human beings why aren’t we able to give ourselves this most simple dignity? While it may not be an issue for 100% of people, it would have to be pretty close, to a greater or lesser degree and is equally an issue for men as it is women. To imagine myself for a moment as an observer hovering above the earth, this human tendency of non-acceptance and loathing of oneself would certainly have me scratching my head in bewilderment. And the other interesting thing is that when we are plagued by this body-loathing-issue it can feel like you’re the only person in the world experiencing it, it can feel very isolating, but the truth is that most people except a rare few go through exactly the same thing at some stage in their life. The way we each externalize it may be a bit different, but essentially it’s all the same.
But then in exposing this ridiculousness, I also admit that I was plagued by this belittling and separative energy around body image for most of my life. How awesome it feels then finally at the age of 46 to be thoroughly enjoying the way that I look on the outside, and loving even more how I feel on the inside. Thank you Universal Medicine and thank you Janina for sharing your experience of transformation, which has inspired me to claim mine.
Thank you Stevie for sharing. I agree it is very wrong that it is” normal” in our society for women and men to “non-accept and loathing of oneself” and to live in that way. Through Universal Medicine and especially the Benhayon Family i first met people who did accept and self love and who reflected this way of being and living with their own body. Especially for me Natalie Benhayon was an important role model in embracing the beautiful and natural sexy women i am. That we don’t have to hide our beauty and sexiness as women and can let it out.
Thank you Janina, what a beautiful sharing. I especially enjoyed “What I have realised is that what is important is not looks or a certain weight, but the quality and way we live every day – and how loving and tender we are with ourselves and others.” There is nothing more beautiful than a woman or man who is content with themselves, no matter what shape or size.
Yes it feels great what you say Caroline, “there is nothing more beautiful than a woman or man who is content with themselves, no matter what shape or size”. To feel content with myself in my body this is what I experience and see in many other women and men within the Universal Medicine Student Body. Awesome!
Imagine being told this everyday time you go to sleep at night. I would just melt every time.
I agree Janina it is about loving and appreciating ourselves and our bodies in whatever shape we naturally have. Although this is what I know in my body to be true, it still can be a struggle for me in the way that if I let thoughts feed me that I do not have to eat that much because it is about loving and appreciating myself I start eating less, not because of what I feel in my body but because of knowledge from outside. For me to accept that my body needs whatever it needs and to not compare this to what the body of someone else needs, can be a huge struggle which exposes the fact I was coming from my mind instead of what my body knows.
Thanks for sharing Janina, it is so true how we can say that we will be “happy” once we are thin and not look at why we are so unhappy in the first place. I too have had a complicated relationship with food over my lifetime, going from overeating to being over controlling with my food choices, but as I am appreciating more of who I naturally and beautifully am, I often feel I no longer need to control my food but use it to nourish and look after myself (and it still tastes delicious!)
Melissa Fox (what a great name) I to am nourishing and looking after myself more with food than ever before.
It has taken me years to realise what I have been putting into my body. Have made enormous changes on the way I eat, and what I eat. Without trying the pounds have dropped off, and my body feels fantastic.
Thank you Janina for such a beautiful article.
Thank you Janina for a very helpful and healing article. Now that is an article that should be in the women’s magazines!
Totally agree Karen a great article for all to read.
Indeed this type of article talking about dropping strategies such as dieting to achieve the perfect shape would allow us to really reflect on the underlying issues of low self-worth and self-loathing.
This blog confirms again that diets don’t work, and that an effective way to eat considers taking care of ourselves in all the other non food related aspects of our day. Because I find when we get give time and care to how we live then what we eat is a natural flow of that same care and respect for our bodies, and what diet can be more perfect than that.
Janina I love that you really appreciate and support yourself in the way you have shared in this blog. I too lost quite a lot of weight after changing my diet and have recently start to gain weight again which I love. It is true we all have our own natural weight and we should all celebrate this.
Thank you Janina for this great blog – body image is huge for women and men, there is always something we can find to make us not feel beautiful – how awesome to know and feel that our true beauty shines out from within and we can connect to that at every opportunity.
Body Image plays such a large part in how men, women and now even how our children see themselves. I hadn’t realised until I was beautifully supported by an esoteric healing practitioner how much food and dieting and how I looked ran my life. This was to the point where my periods ceased for over a year and I was incredibly thin. My friends and family and colleagues would sensitively speak with me about this but at the time I was very defensive and not open to what they would say as I really believed that I was doing the good and right thing in the way I was eating and taking care of myself. What was incredible is that the esoteric healing practitioner never spoke with me about this in a panic, or told me what to do. We would discuss food if I brought it up or if it seemed relevant but it was never the focus of our sessions – the focus was always on being more loving with me. Through taking more care in the smallest ways, eventually I came to an honesty and could share that I was hungry and with that more honesty came and I sought further help to assist me with eating in a way that was more nutritious and in line with what my body needed. I stopped trying to keep thin and just ate when I was hungry. Eventually my period returned and I have had them as regular as clockwork for the last year now.
I fully agree with “Everybody (including men) has their own natural weight, which is truly supportive and perfect for them, and the measure should not be dictated by a society or by outside factors”. Thank you Janina for writing this.
It is amazing what the body can teach us when we approach weight loss or gain in a way that isn’t linked to any ideals and beliefs but is connected to a truth of what the body should truly be to be a vehicle of loving expression.
Your blog Janina, seems to me to not really be about what you weigh, what you look like and what food to eat, but rather how you feel about yourself. All that other stuff is like a symptom of what you feel about yourself inside, and I relate well to this.
For me, once I decided I actually liked myself, I didn’t need to look a certain way and the focus was on how to show the world how much I valued myself, rather than the world telling me what I should like about myself.
I agree Suzanne, it is awsome if we start shifting the focus on how other people see us to how do we see ourselves. To accept and appreciate ourselves for the beauty that we are and then to focus on letting ourselves simply be. This is awesome and a joyful experience.
Suzanne great comment – show the world how much I value myself, rather than the world telling me what I should like about myself. This changes everything.
Thank you Janine a blog I feel that every women can relate to, it is exhausting always thinking we need to look better and is an illusion many of us have fallen for. ” What I have realised is that what is important is not looks or a certain weight, but the quality and way we live every day – and how loving and tender we are with ourselves and others.” SO true thank you Janine.
It’s crazy how so many of us women go through this phase of the way we dress and look is for men or to be approved of by people around us. If we do not fit to our idea of a ‘perfect woman’ we feel so worthless on the inside. From the inside out is the way our beauty emanates naturally and we all need to know that! So… the force and power of these ideals we are subscribing to, needs to be called out and nominated constantly and women are the ones to do that. I’m sure we will all figure out one day it’s a process not even needed to go through because there is nothing great about leaving your natural inner-beauty or pushing it aside. Nothing at all.
I too know your story Janina. So true that issues with food really only mask the much deeper more imbedded issues, like self worth and self loathing. How beauty-fully you describe your growing connection with the wisdom of your body and your journey of love and acceptance which is “ever expanding and there is much, much more to embrace and love”. Thank you.
So much of what you have shared, i can relate to. Being incredibly hard on myself when i was growing up, having a very self abusive relationship with myself and my body. Which bred comparison, self loathing and very low self esteem. I have made a lot of different choices in my life to build a different foundation for myself, so hearing how you have equally done that was lovely to read about.
What you share here Janina goes straight to the heart of how I have lived my life too. It’s crazy how we see ourselves only from the surface. I was touched by how you highlight this is not a new diet, but a completely different way to be. Its beautiful to feel at the end how this loving way comes full circle and results in you seeing that the world around you is full of beauty too.
Beautiful! Thank you for sharing Joseph.
its the self love that brings with it a natural weight. That is a great thing you say here. It is not about how we think we should look or be, but its our true self that has to come out.
Yes the key it seems is to be in constant communion with our body, listening and feeling what it requires and not constant communication with the mind and what it wants. I have been lead astray by my thoughts when it comes to eating many, many times over, by not stayed with my body, when really a simple ‘am I actually hungry’ would tell me if that handful of nuts is required or not. I too have always been slim and reading this I can see, I am still attached in some way to the “perfect body”. What you’ve shared here Janina, gives me much to consider. Thank you for writing about your experiences so we may all consider what we’ve allowed to dominate our choices surrounding food.
The importance of self love over anything else is paramount and this is what I am getting from this blog
Well said Joe. Cannot beat self love.
Beautifully written Janina, for me it was a matter of putting more weight on rather then taking it off. I struggled with this for most of my life. I had to let go of all those expectations on how I should look and like you started to listen to my body and live more naturally.
Every word you write Janina I can relate to exactly. Over my life my weight has oscillated wildly. I always loved being thin, although there were times when I went too far from stress and over exercising and was almost skin and bone. That was many years before Universal Medicine.
Right now I am the biggest I have ever been and struggling with it – I must be the only person who does not eat carbohydrates, because they make me so very racy, but has gained weight!
Your blog has stopped my in my tracks because I have stopped to recognise that I am still attached to a picture of how I think I ought to look to be considered beautiful.
I am still sold on “the measure …. dictated by a society or by outside factors” and dominated by an ideal that I picked up who knows when or where.
Thank you Janina for your reflection.
Thank you for sharing Rachel. The ideals and beliefs about how women (and men) supposed to look like are very dominant in our society and we are all affected in one way or the other. So it is important to become aware of them. And when they want to sneak in again not to accept them anymore.
Thank you for sharing Joshua, beauty-full.
I loved feeling my body as I was reading your blog Janina. It felt very warming inside to feel yourself honouring you in this way.
We all have our natural weight, I love that, what a great reminder. For a long time I was very much focused on my weight and was standing on the scales regularly, because I had this ideal about how much I was allowed to weigh. I think I got that weight from the magazines, looking at women with a certain weight and then thinking that this was the right weight for me as well. Years ago, I took away the scales and I have not stood on any scales for over 4 years. I have no idea how much I weight and the beautiful thing is, I don’t have to know, because what do I do with that number? What does it tell me? For me it showed that I had no acceptance and worth about myself and my body and I have been working on that. I feel so liberated to not have these scales any longer in the house, because at the end of the day, it is not about those 65 or whatever kilograms, but it is about how I am with me, how much appreciation and love I have for myself and how I take care of myself. Thank you for this inspiring blog!
Janina what a great blog and reminder once again about the games we play to fit into the harmful ideals of body weight and size.
I too struggled with the merry go round of diets and went into the ideals and beliefs of what weight I should be according to my height.
It is amazing that when we connect to our true beauty and make life about appreciating the glow in our eyes, how great it feels to run your fingers through your hair our bodies feel amazing.
Loving me is the ideal weight! A great blog Thank you
Thank you nb:
”It is amazing that when we connect to our true beauty and make life about appreciating the glow in our eyes, how great it feels to run your fingers through your hair our bodies feel amazing”
Yes that is what I am experiencing I enjoy feeling me in my body. To connect to my eyes and my tenderness my face shines and this helps me to embrace the true essence I am and to focus on appreciation.
This blog exposes the truth of the dieting consciousness / body image ideals that engulf us all and are particularly insidious. Until the focus is brought back to the root cause of why or why not we are eating, no equilibrium or true health will be possible. The eyes will always give away this fact no matter of the exterior packaging.
The other day I was confronted with the ideal of being slim. As I recently changed my eating habits eating less nuts which makes me often bloated and less meals in general I lost some weight. So I stood in front of the mirror and loved seeing my slimmer body. At the same time I can feel it is not about being slim or not but about supporting myself and therefore my body with what it truly needs in regards to everything: food, exercise, honoring when I am tired, choosing again and again a rhythm which supports a connection to myself and God.
“Learning to love just being me” this is a continuous process. I realized that when it comes to working and doing things I can appreciate myself now a lot more, which I did not before. But I appreciate myself for just being me and to know that my presence and being is more than enough and to let go that I need to “do” , to help or whatever-this is what I learn to embrace more.
What a beautiful blog, Janina. For me too “learning to love just being me” is a continuous process.
Great and powerful comment Melinda – love it!
Janina, I love what you share here, food and the way we look is such a huge issue for a lot of people, I have been struggling with my weight, not only my weight but to accept that how I look is perfect and just me. I had always the idea that I looked overweight even when I started to lose weight when I stopped dairy and gluten because this did not felt right in my body. The way the media is feeding us with images of how we should look is making me believe I am not okay. And just like you I discovered it is about appreciating myself and treating my body in a tender and loving way.
Hi Janina, I can relate to this very much. I struggled with my body weight for many, many, many years. Especially as a teenager I though that if I would be slim I would feel great and all my problems and issues would be solved – what a big illusion.
Janina.
On reading your great blog, my body is telling me that it’s high time I took a little more care. Have settled down to open listening and doing as it tells me.
I loved reading your blog Janina, especially your sharing that when you accepted your own depth and beauty you saw the same beauty when looking in other people’s eyes. Gorgeous!
Jane. I totally agree with you, our depth and beauty comes from within one’s own body for all to see.
I love my body, it’s the one I got when I was born. Slightly bigger now after all these years. One minute it’s up and the next can be down slightly. Just love what you have got, everything comes from within, and that is where the beauty lays, so appreciate what you truly are in this life. AWESOME>
Thank you, Janina, for sharing about the deepening relationship you have with your body, and the appreciation and acceptance of who you truly are.
I love your blog Janina. i can appreciate in greater depth that my body is a reflection of how much I accept and love myself. I am learning to feel what truly supports myself – with food, with how i move, what I wear etc, and really listening to my body rather than imposing what I think I should be like by discounting and disregarding myself to try and ignore my body.
Janina in recent years having also started to feel the effects of food on my body I agree that if we listen to our body we will know what to eat and what supports us. However what I am reflecting on is how I’ve always known what does not sit right within my body, this may have varied over time but how I’ve spent the majority of my adult life overriding those feelings. So as you say our body does have a natural weight that it will guide us to if we let it.
I feel that is so important, Janina, when you talk about the moment you started to appreciate yourself. I lost a lot of weight at the beginning of this year and knew I was really underweight and felt very thin, and was. During the summer I began to really appreciate myself truly for the first time time my life, and my diet hadn’t changed, but I have put on three kilos! I do notice that if I am disgruntled in any way with myself I feel thin, but if I am confident and feeling good about myself, then I feel fuller in substance and not thin at all, despite being so. And that is an energy affecting every cell in my body. It is not about food as such, except if I eat dairy and gluten which feel heavy in me and stick in my gut, but about how much I express, and appreciate in myself, who I am.
I agree Joan, I have found that it is not so much about the food I eat but more how I feel about myself. Over the last few years I have lost a lot of weight but I noticed the the biggest shift was when I started to express what I was feeling. The more I express the lighter and clearer I feel but when I hold back what I feel I notice that I feel slightly heavier and bloated.
This really is a beautiful blog Janina, we all have our different body weights and shapes . I was born with rounded shoulders and developed bad posture, not your ‘ideal body shape for a man’. I have to admit I was rather conscious of this throughout my life and there wasn’t a lot I could do about it. That now is a thing of the past and I am quite happy just the way I am.
This is gorgeous Kevin. It is interesting just how much we are our own harshest critics and often I have found that others don’t always see the issues we see in ourselves and especially not to the extent we do. What affects their view of us is more about how we feel about ourselves than our looks necessarily.
It is so true what you say, Janina, that we all have our own natural body weight and if we lovingly take care of ourselves and listen to our bodies, our body innately establishes that weight. That happened for me, resulting in the loss of five and a half stone (35 kilos) without trying to loose weight and I feel great for it.
This is awesome Jonathan. I have seen the picture of you and Rowena before when you were 35 kilos more weight. And now you are vital and shining your light that is awesome! And this was not a struggle of dieting but a a natural process to return to a weight which is perfect for you.
“What I have realised is that what is important is not looks or a certain weight, but the quality and way we live every day – and how loving and tender we are with ourselves and others.”
This is so true, and as we learn to honour everyone, including ourselves, for who they truly are, not what they do, how they look, etc. others too will learn this for themselves.
I agree Jenny and by taking care of the quality we live every day could it be that we a building an inner beauty, the beauty of our being which of course can be seen easily by looking into someone’s eyes? Yes we all have a physical body that needs taking care of practically as well but building that inner quality through tenderness and love affects everything including our body shape and health and vitality.
I agree with this Jenny completely and my current experience is that the more we do this, our body weight and shape takes care of itself allowing us to show more of the real us to the world.
Beautifully said Janine. Body image issues can start when we are very young so supporting children in accepting and appreciating themselves from an early age is key here.
Yes Elaine, it is shocking how many very young children (starting as early as primary school) have body image issues and suffer with diseases like anorexia. I am also seeing it in young boys who feel they have to train in order to bulk up their muscles. It affects both genders. It is something that does need to be addressed and given priority in schools from day 1.
My return to loving all of me as a woman has been deeply inspired by Esoteric Womens’ Health, Esoteric Breast Massage, Esoteric Ovary Massage, the Benhayon family and the presentations Women in Livingness by Sara Williams and Natalie Benhayon who have supported me to become aware of all these ideals and beliefs that were running me and seeing them for what they truly are – that I am not good enough if I don’t look like those role models out there, if I don’t have the right career, if I don’t have a marriage and children the list is very long…. All of these are looking out and in comparison of what I think I need to be and now I am re-connecting the Divine Woman that I am and wow she is AMAZING. I take my breath away.
Beautyfully shared Natalie. The focus from most of the people (including me) was to focus at what is not ok about their body and their lives, like you described and especially comparison with other people-is very harming to do and important to reveal as such. Especially between women there is also a lot of comparison issues, which is accepted as normal.
But if we start connecting with our body and our being first and start to accept and honor ourselves this is life-changing. For me this was only possible with the reflection and support of the amazing role models the whole Benhayon Familiy (men and women) are offering to us and now many more esoteric students.
Thank you Janina, for making it very clear about the quality being the important ingredient of our lives. That brings it right back inside us and to our own responsibility to be respectful to ourselves and everything we touch or take part in, no attachment to how we look or seem to other people. To choose an expression of ourselves. I heard an elderly and much respected Reporter giving an interview the other day, and when asked about fashion, which she had often reported on, she said she had always dressed in a style that was an expression of herself, and never followed a fashion trend. And she was always commended for how she looked, but that was because she was being her own unique quality of herself. That was so refreshing to hear from a fashion reporter. She now teaches young student reporters about the integrity needed for the job, that it is about quality first.
Well said Joan. It is great news to hear of a fashion reporter dressing to express herself and now passing on that awareness of quality to others – maybe this is something we can all learn from and simply enjoy dressing for ourselves rather than how others may view us.
You can see by the remarkable comments how strong a topic this is for us and for society. It really is such an insidious issue, how we have come to a point in society where body image has affected nearly all of us in one way or another. I know for me too I have struggled with my body. When i was younger it did not look right because I compared myself to other kids of different skin colour and features. When I grew up it was that my body was not right, it was not the thin and tall version that I had come to believe as the ideal body type. I was not glamorous enough, not blonde enough, my nose wasn’t petite enough, you name it, and my body was not that! What I felt that was lacking from a very young age was good role models to hold me with love and say ‘you are perfect as you are’. If we can nurture our young kids to accept themselves very early on, then when they see the distorted images in the media and on the internet, then they will have the strength and be able to hold themselves in a way to see it’s falseness. They will have the ability to discern, and remember how divine and beautiful they are and not feel the need to compare. And in doing so perhaps this tide can turn.
I can relate to all you say Janine. Looking back at some photos recently of myself in my late teens/early twenties, I was shocked to see how slender I was then, in my mind there was this very distorted image of being absolutely huge and the self loathing stayed with me until attending Universal Medicine presentations. An Absolute YES to All children being confirmed by great and true role models to hold them with love and say ‘you are perfect as you are’.
Thank you for sharing Janine. Very true what you say about children and how they miss true role models and people to confirm them in their being. This reminds me of a new children book just released by sunlight ink publishing the title “I am beauty-full just for being me”. But really everybody needs to be reminded children and equally adults as most of us are not raised in the knowing that we do not need to be anything except ourselves.
Janina – The Perfect Body – its a great topic to talk about as I think each one of us has had a different view of what the “perfect body” actually is, I know growing up depending on what I saw or experienced my views about the perfect body changed. But in all cases it was something I did not have and i hoped that if I did have it – it would solve all my life’s problems! I am learning more and more that there is no such thing as the “perfect body” in the way I used to look at it, rather the fact of how I feel within my body, and the shape or appearance will adjust and reflect that in different ways.
Thank you Janina for your your blog, I remember the days when I was obsessed with being over weight and very unhappy about it. These days I am at my own natural weight, which is not the weight I used to image I should be but for me right now it is perfect and I feel that it is perfect because I am more accepting of myself.
I agree with you Janina, it’s very true that the way we can appreciate our own loveliness allows us to appreciate that same loveliness in others – I love the way you say: “Now I can say, not only the way I look at myself but equally the way I look at others has changed”
Thank you for this beautiful honest sharing Janina. I really liked this part, ‘ what is important is not looks or a certain weight, but the quality and way we live every day – and how loving and tender we are with ourselves and others’, this is so important.
It is really interesting reading everyone’s comments. If we take them as a snapshot of how our whole society are as women and how many often view themselves and their bodies, I know that I have felt very negatively about myself, and to realise that so many women feel the same is quite shocking and is a saddening epidemic of our times. With the support of Universal Medicine, I have made huge inroads to my self-perception and am enjoying feeling my inner sparkle and beauty.
Thank you Janina for sharing your beautiful journey back to love and appreciation of yourself. Learning to love and hence listen to my body and all it is telling me has been an amazing turnaround to my life too. Building a relationship with ourselves first is an important start, with appreciation of oneself and others, as a natural way to be.
It’s amazing how much time and attention we give to worrying about our size and shape. And we identify ourselves by it too. I know that when I give time and attention to making loving choices for myself from the way that my body feels I then feel amazing from the inside and I am less concerned about how my body may look.
“I started to feel the effect of food in my body, what food supported me and which foods made me feel racy, agitated and unsettled.”
When we take the time to listen, our body does tell us what supports us and what does not. We are lucky to have this instrument at our disposal, and to be able to know how to play it and hear sweet music too.
Janina, your article reminds me of a feeling I have often experienced when I’ve met someone who is comfortable in their skin. It is nothing to do with their size, or what they are wearing, but its just an ease they have with themselves. It brings it back to the relationship we have with ourselves and our feeling of self worth or lack of it.
I can relate to this as well…“I was focussed only on my perception and what I was lacking.” Most of my life was spent around this sentence too, Stephanie! it is very sad to say that this is probably the experience of the large majority. I absolutely agree when you say, thank goodness for Serge Benhayon, Universal Medicine and the teachings of the Ageless Wisdom. Through this I have changed the way that I live and the way I now look at myself, the world and others. I am holding so much steadier than I used to and continue to develop a love and appreciation of myself that was unfathomable a few years ago. Instead of focusing on what I lack, I can now deeply appreciate what I bring and have. I have made an absolute “U” turn in life.
Thank you for this hugely supportive blog. One that so many of us can relate to.
The three are so intrinsically intertwined; how we feel about ourselves, what we eat and our body weight. Each seem to feed the other, either in a negative, self critical cycle, or the positive one you shared with us Janina, so beautifully expressed in “I can look at myself in the mirror and look deep into my beautiful eyes and truly see the depth and beauty that I bring in just being me”.
“My family had commented to me that I had lost too much weight (which I ignored). After some time, I read a quote which made me realise that I needed to take loving care for my body and what it needed. As I began, I started appreciating myself more and embracing the beauty that I bring; I found that my body naturally began to gain weight again.”
It is interesting when people lose too much weight, it is always very noticeable what is healthy and the natural balance and what is not. Somewhere in us though, through the media perhaps, there is not quite the opposition to being too thin as opposed to being too fat, and so often there is not such an alertness to what is being shown here. I love your honesty in understanding that your body was showing you something was not in balance and needed addressing.
I found that as a teenager I was looking around and comparing myself to the girls that appeared to be popular and to me at that time all I saw was confidence, lovely figures and nice clothes. It never occurred to me to that they would still have issues they were dealing with everyday; one had braces on her teeth, which I know she hated but I did not see that as I was focussed only on my perception and what I was lacking.
I have since come to realise that it is not the lovely clothes, false confidence or lovely figure that matter but the love and appreciation we have for ourselves which makes a true difference in our lives. Then no matter what shape you are the self love will be there first and there is no need to envy someone else.
I can relate to this Julie – most of my life seemed to have been spent with this sentence – “I was focussed only on my perception and what I was lacking.” This breeds comparison and jealousy and just undermines us further. Yikes! It makes me shudder to feel what was a ‘normal way’ of living. Thank goodness for Serge Benhayon’s (Universal Medicine) presentations with the Ancient Wisdom teachings for presenting there is another way, and it is true, “the love and appreciation we have for ourselves which makes a true difference in our lives”.
That makes a lot of sense Stephanie – that focus on our lacks only serves to undermine us. Lately my relationship with food has been one of ‘you must eat because you need to gain weight because you’ve been told that is the cause of your health issues’. I don’t eat to love or accept myself but to reach a goal of ‘no longer having that issue’. What re-reading this blog has got me questioning is what if I related to food knowing that it can support my body to heal itself as it is designed to do? Accepting that I can, and have experienced, my body can put weight on when I do not add extra stresses and tensions.
Interesting comment Leigh, that if we eat the foods which support our body and in the quantity we feel is appropriate, we will naturally reach the weight which our body and health requires us to be, rather than to gain/lose weight or be a different shape.
Yes and it is so easy when the body naturally sheds that which does not belong to it, awesome.
This is so true Julie, ‘ no matter what shape you are the self love will be there first and there is no need to envy someone else.’ I used to dislike how my body was, my legs were too fat and hairy, other women didn’t seem to have this problem, the list goes on with things I disliked about my body, but as I have started to love and accept myself this loathing of my body has changed into an acceptance of how my body is and a realisation that my body is beautiful, I love the curves of my hips, my elegant hands, my beautiful eyes, I can see and feel my beauty, a complete turnaround to how I used to feel. Instead, I compare myself with other women far less and have an appreciation of their beauty too.
I can relate to what you say here Rebecca – I used to have an endless list of what was wrong with me. Since attending presentations with Serge Benhayon, Universal Medicine, this list is practically non-existent now! As I have developed a deeper relationship with myself, there are areas of my body I am able to celebrate as ‘my gorgeous Goddess curves’ rather than the self critical, hard judgements and self loathing which used to be incessantly heaped upon my body.
This blog was a lovely companion to an interview I listened to today with Cassie Clouser and Nina Stabey on The Healing power of food. They complimented each other beautifully.
I have listened to Nina Stabey’s very interesting interview how food has the power to heal. I loved how Nina shared much on her own journey with food and talked about being your own scientist and experimenting with how foods made you feel. I highly recommend a listen.
I love your reply Amina and agree that articles such as these are very needed, as they dismantle the ideals and beliefs that we need to be skinny to be successful in this world. Magazines are full of skinny models that appear miserable and sad and perhaps think they need to look that way! Crazy. Yes, we need to love ourselves truly, deeply and the weight will take care of itself. Great blog Janina.
So true Amina. We are bombarded from every angle with images about what is the acceptable way to look. For many years this focus kept me in a loop of confirming that I am just not good enough, it helped me to avoid being conscious of my feelings by only paying attention to the appearance part of my body, it provided an all-consuming way of distracting myself from focusing on areas I preferred to ignore. But now that I am focusing more on the quality and loving expression in my daily life, those old patterns do not have such a hold.
“I can look at myself in the mirror and look deep into my beautiful eyes and truly see the depth and beauty that I bring in just being me”. I like this, it is important, to look way into the heart of a person. They say the eyes are the gateway to the soul, and it’s true. To feel the essence of a person first and foremost before what they physically present is something that is quite alien to us nowadays, but it is always something worth cherishing.
Beautifully expressed Jenny, this is something I wasn’t really aware of before I came to Universal Medicine presentations – probably because I never looked that closely into eyes since my self confidence was quite low. However now I look into everyone’s eyes and there is such a depth of beauty – how come I never saw this before? Well quite simply I never looked, thanks to Universal Medicine I now look!
judykyoung your comment has made me realise that its something I never used to do before – look into someones eyes. I used to avoid eye contact and when I first started doing it at Universal Medicine workshops it was something I felt very uncomfortable doing. For me it stemmed from not wanting to be seen. Now it is something I do quite naturally, and I even enjoy looking into my own eyes when I look at a mirror. It is a simple and wonderful way to connect with others and myself.
Well said Gill and I know of this when I see it in women that are living there innate beauty and reflecting it out. Seriously inspiring.
I have seen this too in women of all ages claiming their inner beauty and it radiates so powerfully for all to see.
It can be hard to imagine what we would be like if we didn’t have all those images and ideals thrown at us throughout our lives, being told what we should look like to be beautiful or successful or even ‘ healthy’. But actually all we need to do is bring it back to our own body and get to know what really feels right for us. I’ve found that it is like getting to know myself from scratch. It’s still easy for me to hear something is good for health or will make me feel better and accept that as true without checking my body. Even if it makes sense I have to feel it for myself otherwise it is just another belief I’ve taken from the outside.
That is the key here Laura-discernment. We will always be bombarded with ideals and beliefs of how we should look, feel, eat, dress, etc. Only by discerning will we be free to choose what is right for us and not be at the mercy of someone else’s interpretations.
So very true Laura, there are many images, ideals and beliefs that are thrown at us, what it means to be many things, healthy, successful and beautiful. But your are correct, it is the wisdom of our body that is the key and is a true commitment to oneself to get to learn what the body really is saying and listening to it.
Yes I agree we need to deeply connect to our body, listen to the wisdom it offers and act on it. We have all the answers we need to know that we know.
Having been ‘naturally slim’ my whole life I have felt there was something always to nit pick about – not ‘curvy’, not ‘womanly’, ‘too boney’- the list goes on. This article is great as it brings to the fore the fact that every man and woman is different naturally so and rather than focusing on what we don’t have or think we need, accepting our body shape regardless is far more supportive.
On the other hand, I am someone who has been overweight for much of my life and always detested it. I could never really understand what it might be like for much thinner people, as I always saw that as being the way to be. It just goes to show how utterly futile comparison is.
Yes, this is a great point Leigh, that no matter if we are slim, average or having more weight, it is ‘normal’ in our society to look at our body with criticism and find something wrong. I always looked from the perspective of wanting to be slimmer and was not aware what was going on for women who are slim.
Janina your reference to how society’s measurement of the way we look compared to how we truly feel, got me pondering about how clothes’ sizes have come about. I found that there is something called ‘vanity sizing’. Apparently some companies alter the dimensions of their clothes so that their clients appear to be able to wear a smaller size. So these sizes, by which society seems to set such great store, aren’t even a constant.
It does explains why I can be anything from a size 8 to a 12 depending on where I shop. And this pondering has helped me to begin to understand and accept the knowing and feeling about what I wear and what really fits is not about a numerical size – it’s about how I feel within me, and letting that shine through whatever I wear.
Great point Kathie, I hadn’t heard that ‘vanity sizing’ was a deliberate ploy by companies but have known for a long time that it goes on. I have always been a size ten and have jeans that I bought years ago in a particular store that are a size ten and still fit me and their size ten always did fit however in that same store today I buy a 6 or 8 – now my size has not changed that much at all and the original size 10 still fit me so that tells me the sizing of clothes has changed. When I consider the effect of this does it support an irresponsibility? Since people can think they are still a ten for example when in fact they are now a 12 – and the size is irrelevant but pretending we have not changed our size possibly allows a dishonesty about how we are living and feeding our body? It also buys into what the ideal size is and a lack of acceptance of what our true shape and size are or should be for us, since each and every one of us is built differently. Like many things in society it becomes about what is considered right from outside and not what we feel inside.
Kathie this is true. I remember really enjoying shopping in a particular high street store because in that shop I was a size smaller than in others. Its crazy that it actually made me feel better to say I was wearing a size 10 instead of my actual size 12. These days I don’t even get on the scales that often, let alone worry about what size it says on the label. Because I feel more comfortable in my body, what I look for now when I am shopping are clothes that feel comfortable and that I feel great in. This is a big turn around from being preoccupied with my weight and the size clothes I wore.
It is truly insane when we look at what women are bombarded with – telling us that having the perfect body, face, hair (well the list goes on) is what makes us who we are. We all really know within that these ideals are ridiculous but we keep striving to meet them. Once I started to look at these ideals and the devastating choices I was making because of them, I realised that accepting myself for the amazing woman that I am, I could really see how set up this whole game is…. to keep women from connecting to who they truly are and what they truly have to offer.
Janina, what a beautiful article exposing the myths of dieting, our body perceptions and weight, so lovingly. I find that when I feel really loving of myself I love everything about myself, my body and my weight feels lovely too and this changes how and what I eat and the appreciation of everything.
But when I lose that connection and how I used to live life before, that feeling disappears and nothing feels right and what I eat reflects this also; as does my body size and my perceptions. I have found and seen reflected to me the only way to live is through caring truly for oneself and in that caring for others naturally, with inspiration.
Thank you for your sharing and that of others here.
I have recently just put on some weight and realised I too are held by the belief that being slim is some how the ultimate body image I should have – the language gives it away ‘should’, ‘ultimate’ — big ideals! Its fascinating to feel how I judge my body and the image to fit that I hold of me. Instead of just feeling what is going on that I have put on weight as there is something deeper going on. Food is a whole other area, but it is very exposing of how I hold myself up to an image that I am comfortable looking like and if I don’t match that how it affects me by feeling less! What a load of rubbish! I am gorgeous at 60kg, 65 kg, 70kg, 75kg, 80kg, my body will not like being so heavy as it has to work a lot harder, but inside my divinity remains the same.
Great point Vanessa – it is more work for the body when we are uncomfortable with extra weight and it is not the weight or size of our body that determines who we are. Our inner essence and divinity does remain the same – always.
Interesting what you share here Vanessa. My issue was the reverse. I was very attached to my curves and hated it when I lost weight, for me I felt I no longer had a womanly shape. Crazy I know, because whatever size I am, I am still a woman! Getting used to my new size has taken some time, but I can now feel my body has reached its natural weight without any dieting or trying. As Janina shares, it came about through making simple loving choices.
Hi Janina, its a huge topic – the ideal body (which is a total illusion!) how women want men to be – but do they really? How men want women to look – but if you ask men and women who they want to spend a life time with, its not the picture painted by the media, it becomes more about love and tenderness. Your journey showing how you began to self nurture and allowing the right weight for you and truly caring for yourself, so in turn you can truly care for others, is inspiring.
Well said Elizabeth. I know that I can whizz through a plate of food being distracted and not really noticing each mouthful. There is something beautiful about being fully present with what we are eating. It is an appreciation and respect for food and also our bodies. Very important.
So true Rebecca we honour our own body when we are present to what it really needs in terms of nourishment.
It is inspiring to see in others that which I have felt for myself. The turnaround from having loathed and disregarded my body, to a full acceptance and appreciation that I am beautiful from the inside first and then radiating out. Thank you.
This is lovely to read Matilda, I feel this too, ‘The turnaround from having loathed and disregarded my body, to a full acceptance and appreciation that I am beautiful from the inside first and then radiating out.’ It is a truly beautiful feeling.
Good point, Elizabeth. If when we eat, we are present and connected to ourselves, and have actually chosen foods that we know will support us for the day ahead, then that lovely nurturing relationship with ourselves is going to fill us up in a great way.
Dear Janina, Thank you so much for such a poignant blog. I’ve had body issues and have always feared putting weight on. Recently I have lost weight and have became self-conscious about this. Rather than panic, your blog reminds me that, to lovingly return (or even discover) to my natural weight. I have introduced a greater depth of appreciation and self-nurturing in all aspects of my life so that I can hear what my body is telling me. Beautiful.
All ladies are wonderful, whether you are tall, slim, cuddly. It’s not what is on the outside, but the love and beauty inside of you all.
Thank you for sharing. Yes everyone does have their own natural weight and it is lovely to find a strength and balance in how we feel internally and how that is expressed externally.
I have just been reading through all the comments and this is clearly a topic that touches us all. I never realised that men were dealing with similar issues to women around food and body image only dressed up in a different form. Thank you Janina for bringing light to this subject.
Very true Vicky men also experience issues around body image which comes from issues of self worth
Well said Vicky. Women think they have the monopoly on food and body image issues but when you consider the only differences between men and women is a few different hormone levels and chromosomes and the rest of our bodies pretty much works identically, why would they feel anything less regarding their self worth. The reality is you only have to consider the use of anabolic steroids and go to any gym to confirm this.
Beautiful to read your story Janina, so beautifully expressed without an ounce of shame, and full of love in what you have discovered for yourself, and in yourself. I love your closing paragraph, especially as you have included men, many of whom also get caught up in ‘body image’ issues, ideals and beliefs – thank you.
The ideal of slim being attractive is deeply embedded in women and then there is voluptuous shapes that many of the slim women desire. It’s amazing how easily we can deflect and reject our natural unique gorgeousness through comparing ourselves to other women or ideas that we tell ourselves are better than what we have.
It is horrible how we are so eager to look outward and completely forget how gorgeous we are – and it is awesome to let go of that bit by bit with more self loving choices supporting that process.
So true Vanessa. It is empowering to let go of the old ideals and beliefs and make more self loving choices by letting go of comparison by stopping looking outwards. Bit by bit feels very do-able!
Well said Vanessa – taking some small simple steps to make more self loving and supportive steps is key. For example just stopping to feel how you feel after eating something – bloated, sleepy, racy – brings more awareness to what the body is constantly communicating to let us know what is not working for it.
I too have found that the greatest change often comes with the simplest steps. When we start to make many changes at once we invite complication in, whereas true change comes from simplicity.
Changing our relationship with ourselves is not an overnight job, but it’s the day to day moments – how we choose to be in those moments – that create the shift from self-loathing to self-love. For me this starts with being aware of my movements and my breath, checking in with how I am feeling and the quality of my thoughts. With awareness, we have the power to choose the quality of our movements and thoughts, or to stay stuck in the old momentum.
So true.
I totally agree Abby, as I know this myself always longing for another shape of my body. It is interesting how we manage as a human race to reject our bodies and ourselves on a constant basis and how we have learned to not love ourselves, appreciate and accept of who we truly are.
Very true Abby, and what this does is not just leave the woman making the comparison feel low about herself, and not good enough. It creates separation, competition and jealousy amongst women. When women are in harmony with each other it is so beautiful and the healing that takes place ripples across to so many. What has been fed to women, and what we as women have compiled with in terms of body image and what is attractive and what is not, does one thing very well and it is a tragedy: it diminishes our sense of worth and keeps the world away from seeing the true gorgeousness of all women simply being women together.
Yes Abby its quite ridiculous if you really consider this concept a lot of woman have fallen for, including myself, to be skinny is attractive and so, so important to achieve. I mean where has this come from and who says? It is something we have been feed and we follow with out questioning the validity and we waste so much time,money and energy trying to achieve this desired outcome. It is time for us to expose all these false ideals and beliefs that have controlled us for eons and get real with what truly matters and that is love . Loving ourselves and loving all equally.
And these pictures aren’t even real, they have a team of professionals working with them and then they are airbrushed. A supermodel gave a talk on TED recently to say these photos weren’t even her (not how she is really) and how insecure her and most other models really are. So what message is this giving out to the younger generation or all generations in fact? It is so false.
In reference to how pictures of models are brushed up didn’t Cindy Crawford once say something like ‘Even I don’t look like Cindy Crawford in the morning’. What are we subscribing to when we look at pictures that are virtual portraits and then think they are real?
Janina thanks for writing this, it is something a lot of people will relate to. I never really cared about my weight or body even when I got bigger. I was naturally slim until my mid twenties and never really related to having a bigger body but didn’t care enough to diet! I lost weight when I started to care about what I ate in relation to how it made my body feel, like with the stimulation from breads etc and I have been the same weight for 8 years. I too can now look at myself and love what I see not because of the body or clothes but from what is inside coming out. Its easy to love me then, as its the same love everyone has inside of them.
Yes Amina, I agree very much on the point you made about the pressure of the media on how both men and women are supposed to look, have the perfect body shape and how we need to break these ideals and beliefs to live in harmony with ourselves and others. I remember how much dance videos on MTV, influenced the way I was dancing, it was not about enjoying my body and the quality of moving but to dance sexy to get attention.
Beautiful Janina, I can feel the tenderness and appreciation of yourself in the way you express your experience. I love the bit about looking in the mirror and seeing the light and truth of appreciation for yourself in your eyes. This has been growing for me too, although I still struggle with food. That is becoming clearer too, though, and I am sure I will be able to listen to my body more and more as I grow in appreciation of it and care for it tenderly. How good it feels when we are able to make choices for ourselves that aren’t influenced by pressure from outside.
Thank you Joan for sharing. I have struggled all my life with food in different forms, from dieting or at times overeating. I was using food as comfort, to numb and to escape, a form of not dealing in full with what I truly feel and lovingly need to deal with and look at. I am learning even when it is painful to deal with my issues, that I support myself when I do. In accepting what is there to heal for me I get deeper in touch with myself and allow myself to be fragile, vulnerable and to open up more in relationships. So it is not the food which is the problem, but what lies underneath it.
It is a slow process for me, Janina, after so many years of forced eating for one reason and another, but now my body is showing me in no uncertain terms! I have to take notice, and address what is going on. As I do that I gain the body weight I lost, because I am more in charge and am not allowing the outside (food) to dictate to me. Also, the less I eat the more I return to my natural weight and shape! I realised only this morning that I was brought up with huge platefuls of stodgy food that I had to eat every last mouthful of, and have always been scared of there not being enough, either at home with my partner or when friends come for a meal. Consequently it becomes complicated and indigestible! I remember going to another women’s house when I was in my twenties, and she gave us something very simple and minimal – I was anxious there wouldn’t be enough for everyone, but it was delicious and we all left satisfied but not overfull.
I can relate to much of what you say here Joan regarding stodgy foods and clean plates. My body is certainly so much clearer without gluten, dairy and sugar being put inside it. It let’s me know in no uncertain terms if I have eaten it though!
Something definitely to ponder upon for more support for my body now – “I remember going to another women’s house when I was in my twenties, and she gave us something very simple and minimal – I was anxious there wouldn’t be enough for everyone, but it was delicious and we all left satisfied but not overfull.”
Nurturing first that is so sensible and makes sense, something I definitely did not do when I was growing up, in fact if you asked me what nurturing was then I would have given the example of a mother and her baby and that no one else could nurture themselves, we had to be tough! I now know that everyone can nurture themselves no matter what age and this is really important; however saying that I realised the other day I need to pay more attention to this in my life for me as it seems to have slipped a little bit at the moment.
This is so true Monica,’There is no ideal weight just what feels right for each and every body and your blog breaks this ideal for us all.’ It is beautiful for me to now love and appreciate my body as it is and not be in comparison with others or be trying to achieve an ‘ideal’ weight, this is such a waste of time and energy and distracts us from realising that we are already beautiful and that it is lovely to be unique rather than all trying to achieve exactly the same weight or look that isn’t naturally how our bodies are.
I love your blog, because the battle to be slim or skinny is almost like a disease in the mind – that distorts the image we have of our bodies, looking past our natural or healthy weight, to one we believe is what we need to be, to be loved.
A recent craze for young girls has been to have what is called a thigh gap, where you are so skinny your thighs don’t touch when you stand with your legs together. The problem with this trend is that for some girls their body shape just isn’t conducive to this kind of thing; and yet there where whole web pages dedicated to promoting a thigh gap, and belittling girls who don’t have one – calling super models that don’t have them fat and ugly.
The problem is that trends like this are not only not based on what is truly healthy for young girls, it only fosters a bad body image. The epidemic of not being happy with our bodies is out of control, but this blog so brilliantly shows a way back, thank you.
So true Rebecca, This has become an epidemic and is out of control.
Yes I agree, “This has become an epidemic and is out of control.” I just read an article about eight year old girls who are in middle school. Research has shown they are so much more conscious of the body image than other eight year olds who are in primary school because they mix with teenagers. They profess to hate their bodies and feel inadequate.
I have also been noticing a mind set that I still have, and a lot of my friends have, that if we eat food we are going to get fat, or we say “I am getting so fat” or “I need to work out more, Im getting fat”, despite the fact we obviously are not any where close to overweight, but it seems such a ‘normal’ remark to make, its not picked up on.
Great point, Rebecca. The number of times I’ve overheard this commentary traded around in High Street changing rooms by young girls in nearby cubicles who look anything but overweight. The statement is delivered in such a way as to be more of a request for feedback, to dismiss or validate their view. Essentially to obtain an external benchmarking from their friends, looking outside of themselves for approval or disapproval, because they haven’t fully accepted and appreciated themselves for who they are. What’s sad about this is that, in the process, they give their power away to others and open themselves up for potential hurt, since the perception of their body and by extension, their value, is now completely at the mercy of the response.
I can relate to your blog on many levels Janina. That switch in focus from how you look to how you feel is profound and life changing.
Janina, you tell the tale of me and likely many men and women out there… It’s amazing that you have come to appreciate yourself and see your true beauty. It’s also so ironic that the thing you were striving for was easily obtainable should you have listened to your beautifully intuitive body in the first place.
I agree Rachel, about it being attainable quite easily when we listen to our bodies.
I agree it’s very ironic that we strive and search for something we already naturally have in abundance!
Janina, thank you for sharing on your experiences of striving for the perfect body which I can relate. I did more of hating my body and doing very little to change it. It is only since I have also began to listen to my body and eat according to what feels right (most of the time) that my body has taken on its natural shape. This happened to involve losing over 25 kg that I did not try to do. Although my body is not like it used to be as a young woman, I definitely appreciate it more and feel that it is a lovely reflection of me.
Awesome Sharon, miracles happen every day when we start to listen and feel what our bodies truly need.
Janina this is very interesting reading your relationship with your body, food and how you felt in the world. Such an inspiring insight into breaking down ideals and beliefs that burden us heavily in today’s world. Thanks its really great to hear your unfoldment, your ups and your downs and coming back to accepting who you are and how you look; not how you look making up who you are.
I can really relate to what you have written Janina.
Janina what an absolutely beautiful blog. I can feel your beauty and how expressing it through how you move and the clothes that you wear feels gorgeous. I so relate to ,’striving to be slim was because of how little I really loved and appreciated myself for just being me.’
Your line, ‘As I began, I started appreciating myself more and embracing the beauty that I bring; I found that my body naturally began to gain weight again,’ is very inspiring to me. Thank you.
Janina, as with you, I came to the point where I realised that “My struggling with my weight and striving to be slim was because of how little I really loved and appreciated myself for just being me.” At that point, it was like a light bulb went on and everything changed, without me having to, or even wanting to, focus on my weight at all. As I started to take more care of myself, which included listening to my body, not only in terms of what I ate, but also how I went about all the activities in my day – the weight naturally started to drop off.
There has been no struggle to maintain my weight or to ‘watch’ what I eat… what I am finding is that the more attention I pay to my body, it will tell me exactly what it needs – which includes not only what I eat, but also whether I need to rest, slow down etc.
And the most amazing part is that by focussing on self-care, all of the other things I have always struggled with – not feeling good enough, feeling stressed, having difficult relationships etc. have also started to change at the same time. So now I can feel more and more that how I feel on the inside, is being reflected by how I look on the outside. Such a big contrast to my experience of trying to change the outside in the hope that the inside would change, which in my experience, never did… 🙂 Thank you for sharing.
A great point that when embracing true self care, the emphasis on body image moves to body ‘feeling’ and our shape takes care of itself, rather quickly.
This is an awesome piece of writing Janina! Thank you for sharing your inspiring journey back to you – beautiful!
Its a great blog Janina – thank you for sharing it. I was particularly struck by the sentence, “I can look at myself in the mirror and look deep into my beautiful eyes and truly see the depth and beauty that I bring in just being me.” When you truly look, there is no judgement, simply a window into the essence and glorious you that is always there inside.
The sentence you wrote Simon “When you truly look, there is no judgement, simply a window into the essence and glorious you that is always there inside” resonated deeply within me, beautifully expressed.
I love this Simon, this is so true and the way you’ve expressed is straight from heaven. When we look without any expectation or any agenda, when we simply look in innocence we see the timeless beauty that is forever there within us… a beauty that society cannot put a label on, a beauty that is untainted even if it’s covered up for us not seeing or appreciating it. True beauty is in the eye of the beholder who simply lets himself truly see.
Beautiful Katerina ‘ True beauty is in the eye of the beholder who simply lets himself truly see.’
Thank you so much for sharing your story Janina
This is a beautiful article. ” What I have realised is that what is important is not looks or a certain weight but the quality and way we live every day – and how loving and tender we are with ourselves and others.” This is also my experience Janina. I’ve noticed that if I react to something someone’s said or if I allow myself to get upset in any way I lose that quality, and my food choices or how I eat become a lot less loving and thus nurturing to my body. This is when compassion for myself and appreciating myself for who I am, not what I do, is my saving grace.
Thank you Janina for such a revealing blog exposing the complicated relationship that so many of us have with food. I can relate to initially rejecting my body and body shape, to using clothes as a way to gain attention. It feels so great once we start to let go of some of these beliefs, to which we do not always fully subscribe. I would know that when I felt good it was something more than my body shape and clothes and yet when this feeling passed, I would lose my sense of self and revert back to the old beliefs that were in line with what was presented in women’s magazines and the media generally. As I continue to connect more deeply and consistently I am now building a relationship that is more sustainable and I am not affected so much by what I see and more aligned to what I feel.
This is a beautiful article Janina in which will give healing to a lot of people. I too can relate to this. I spent years dieting and had a belief that I should look a certain way. On top of that I had an eating disorder. I viewed my body with such revulsion that my way was to binge on food and then make myself sick. I was not even self aware of this at all, as the disorder was buried so deep in my body. I have supported myself to heal my eating disorder through having sessions with Universal Medicine practitioners. Through my sessions I was able to peel back the layers as to why I was doing this and slowly I started to develop a relationship with myself first and accept who I am. Roll on present day, yes I have lost 3 stones without dieting but I now can look in the mirror and love me! I also had issues with holding back but once I started to express more, this allowed me to be myself and food no longer was an issue, where I sought relief and comfort in the past. It is for me a work in progress, however, each day gets easier and easier. Great article well done.
Hi QA I love reading the comments because often there is something within them as equally healing as the blog and I found this comment to be so. thank you
It’s a relief to finally realize that we don’t need to change ourselves to fit anyone’s expectations of us, or need the recognition of having the ‘perfect’ body. Your writing is inspiring for anyone who has ridden the dieting yo-yo.
Yes! Michael this is exactly how I feel – it’s a relief to realise that we are absolutely ok as we are, and that we don’t need to look or be perfect.
This is so true “What I have realised is that what is important is not looks or a certain weight, but the quality and way we live every day – and how loving and tender we are with ourselves and others.”
Wow, as I read all these comments I’ve realised that weight has played quite a significantly hefty part in my life….the constant judgements about whether I looked ‘right’ . I always felt I was doing pretty well in comparison to ‘others’ – in particular, my genes didn’t seem to follow one side of my family who are all very large ‘big-boned’ people. Yet I’ve learnt that it all had little to do with genetics and more to do with my choices as I love feeling healthy and vital and it is that feeling I hold in my body that enabled me to appreciate my physicality. I’m always monitoring how I feel, and sometimes I lose the plot and let myself go, yet it never takes too long before that feeling of vitality pulls me back into line. So it is with appreciation I thank you for this very confirming article, Janina.
I too totally relate to the struggle that comes with “thinking” I am overweight, disliking the clothes I wear, and generally not feeling great about myself. Gosh when I think back (although actually quite recent) it really makes me appreciate where I am today. It’s amazing to think that we can be so hard on ourselves and so mean to ourselves. In fact I remember distinctly what it’s like to be happily paying everyone and everything around me compliments but then going home and not being able to look at myself shirtless. Wow. Without a shadow of a doubt the support offered by Universal Medicine has inspired me to really let myself feel my feelings and listen to my body. I love what you have written Janina as it resonates deep within me, I am also loving looking at the depth within my own eyes and truly feeling beautiful – it’s such an awesome place to be.
Thank you Janina for sharing your insights with us in such a clear and accessible way. It is great to realize how much we are driven by ideals, pushed by pictures the world keeps forcing unto us and to realize what this does to our health and wellbeing. I agree with you there is a natural weight and body form that is there when we listen to our bodies and take care of them.
Janina this is a stunning blog. I know I too as both a young girl and a woman have always held an ideal that it is better to be thin, and that to be thin makes you attractive. It was especially obvious to me at a time when I began to become a little softer and rounder and fill out more as a woman and my thoughts became incredibly self critical and ugly. Now I can feel more and more of what you said – that how we feel is down to the quality we live in and that our body has a natural size and weight that is different for everyone, and so I’m starting to appreciate my body just the way it is.
It is so very beautiful when we start appreciating who we are, appreciation of oneself has to be the best beauty product we can give to ourselves.
I agree, it’s very beautiful when someone is totally content in their own body and fully aware and appreciating who they are and what they bring to the world.
Thank you Janina, I really like the way you have explored feeling too thin as well as too heavy, and discovered that it was never really about food at all, but your relationship with yourself. I can relate to this very much.
I agree Shami, it is great to hear how Janina has felt that it is not about being ‘too thin’ as well as ‘too heavy’, but it is about how we feel about ourselves and your relationship to your own body
So true Shami and Jess, its not about food, but all about our relationship with ourselves – do we love ourselves or not? When we make it about food, body shape and image, we are distracting ourselves away from the real issue, that we have not established or nurtured a true relationship with ourselves. I know that the more time and care I take to build that relationship with myself, the less I fret about my weight, appearance and body shape. Self care and appreciation is enabling me to feel more and more comfortable in my own skin and I have stopped wishing that I lived in some else’s!
This is a great point Rowena, self appreciation is massive – because actually there is nothing to be self loathing about when we truly appreciate ourselves.
So true Shami. It’s like the focus on body shape is a huge distraction from building a loving relationship with the inner-self.
To be able to look at myself and appreciate my own beauty with out judgement and with out comparison is huge. It then makes a massive difference on how I present myself to the world, and people can see that beauty no matter what my body shape is.
Thank you for sharing your story, Janina and one that many women can relate to. The thing is dieting has become so normal as a solution to weight or body issues that they are often not questioned by ourself or other women. What is coming to light more is that men also have issues with body image. So great to bring this out and share there is another way to embrace and enjoy our bodies, no matter their shape or size.
Beautiful Janina, I can identify very much with the ideal weight image and it too has governed my self esteem for many years. And what an amazing evolution to now see and feel the beauty in your own eyes and the beauty in other people’s eyes and its so true, that is where our true beauty can be really seen, felt and appreciated and it does not depend on what shape our bodies are. Thank you for opening the discussion on a very important topic and one that dominates the way both men and women regard themselves.
Beautiful Janina, you raise some great points in your blog which a lot of people can relate too, myself included. There are so many ideals of what beauty is outside of ourselves. Inspiring to read your journey in deepening your appreciation for yourself.
So true Janina “Everybody (including men) has their own natural weight”, as even for men there is huge pressure to be bigger and muscular however this is never expressed in society because as men we don’t talk about that kind of stuff…
I have not often considered the male equivalent problem but have recently become aware of ‘bigerexia’ (yes actually a word, you can google it) which shows that men are also experiencing intense issues about the way they look too – and it seems that if you don’t have the muscles then that is going to make you unhappy (and when you get some muscles, you will just want more….)
Yes it is a good point to raise Simon and Oliver, men too are plagued by the ideal body image, only it goes the other way, rather than resembling a stick with breasts, men are supposed to be big and muscular. What a relentless, loveless pursuit it is, either starving yourself into thinness or pumping yourself up to look big, all fuelled by a big cry for Love!
So true Rowena the pursuit for the perceived ‘perfect’ body all fuelled by a cry for love.
Rowena, your comment exposes the ridiculousness of it all. A severe lack of love all round!
So true Janina, “… the measure should not be dictated by a society or by outside factors …”. Thank you for sharing so beautifully and honestly your journey to discover this – it is very supportive and inspiring.
Beautiful Janina, what you have said is so simply expressed, and accessible. You are writing about things that I struggle with, but the way that you have written about them doesnt challenge me, it is more like an invitation.
Your article is a beautiful peek at what it can look like to heal ourselves from the inside out. How upside down is it that we try to look healthy and happy on the outside thinking that will bring us the love and happiness we are desperate for… when, in truth, we need to go inside and love ourselves until our true love, health and joy radiate outward for all to see and feel. Thank you Janina.
Thank you Janina for what you have shared and I like the way you have described this Jo. I too had a struggle with weight – I was always trying some new diet with results that would last a month or two at most. But once I started connecting with how my body felt on the inside when I ate different foods and how I was when I was eating them, my weight naturally began to change. I would also like to thank Universal Medicine for the opportunity they have provided me with in learning to live and heal in this way.
I like this point Jo, about having it the wrong way round thinking that looking good on the outside will somehow make us happier – perfectly promoted so that we don’t connect to how much beauty we have inside.
Janina. What a lovely blog. We would all like the pefect body and physique but I am happy just being me, eating sensibly, and the right foods to keep me healthy. We can become disconnected at times from our bodies, but when we re-connect again, we feel great.
I love how you have described the contentment you feel of your body here Mike, our bodies are a miracle, whatever size or shape they are, and with some true care and connection we naturally feel great about them.
“our bodies are a miracle, whatever size or shape they are”. So very true Meg. Beautifully put.
Lovely Meg, it is the acceptance of the miracle and wonder and with that, the love, connection and appreciation for our bodies and all they do for/with us.
This is a really powerful blog expressed with a deep claim to knowing who you are. It is so true about seeing your own depth and beauty and from there seeing it in others. There is a great feeling of joy in this.
And yes, I also agree that you do have beautiful eyes!
Thank you Michelle, what I found out is when I get caught in disconnecting with myself what helps me to come back, is to look into the mirror, into my eyes. There I can see myself-that I am there even when I have chosen unloving behavior and through connecting with my eyes and giving myself the permission to “come out again”, “to be there again” my eyes start shining more and I can reconnect to myself.
I agree also, beautiful eyes and face. Lovely blog breaking it down about weight and food. Thank you.
Great blog Janina and one that I can definitely relate to. Having been overweight for most of my life and trying all sorts of diets the one thing I didn’t look at was, what was true for me. What I needed to do was to start to love and appreciate myself for who I am instead of trying to reach a goal of what society expects and playing by their rules. As long as I live and express the real me everyday the weight loss will continue until my body reaches its natural weight.
Thank you for sharing this, Janina.
It is so fascinating to see how we, as women, can let this ‘ideal’ figure have such control over us and let that become more important than anything else. But what’s inspiring here is to read how you let yourself put nurturing first, and as a result, it wasn’t about how you looked in the mirror, that came as a natural reflection from what you felt inside!
It’s true that I have been very caught up in the image thing too. And it sucks you in very deep – and like you – what I really felt change, as I changed, was how I was with other people.
As I let go of that criticism for myself, I also let it go towards other people; another reflection that how we are and what we do is never just for ourselves, but for everyone.
Thanks for highlighting the point about putting nurturing first. This makes it very simple to see when we’re caught in doing things for other reasons e.g attention, perfection etc. All we need to do is ask, is this choice really nurturing me?
Well said Hannah, we are encouraged from a very young age to become conscious about our figure and body image and I too was certainly caught up in that. And its very true, the more I addressed my inner world, the more I changed my behaviour with other people and slowly and firmly the criticism is falling away, and as it does so it reveals so much true beauty that lay hidden below.
It is interesting how we perceive body image. I was recently at the doctors for something totally unrelated to weight, and my doctor asked me if I had a body image problem because I had lost weight. I was a bit taken aback and said no but since then I have been thinking about body image and what does it really mean; so it has been lovely to read your article as it is very much about something that is happening in my life.
As you say we all have our own natural weight but I can feel that within that there is something more. I have never needed to diet but what I have found is that how I feel about myself reflects how I look and feel. It was great to read your confirming words, “I started appreciating myself more and embracing the beauty that I bring; I found that my body naturally began to gain weight again.” The doctor was right I had lost weight but by labelling it as being as a body image problem was not getting underneath to the real cause. I don’t allow myself to appreciate me and not only me but life itself, and this is draining on the body. Reading your blog I can see clearly this is contributing to why I have been losing weight. Appreciation has been something that I keep dismissing but my body is telling me loud and clear it is time for appreciation. Thank you Janina for writing this blog, there are many myths around body image that need to be exposed.
Thank you for sharing Alison. Even though your Doctor wasn’t able to say what he was really feeling/seeing, what he shared was enough for you to feel what your body really needed – a diet of appreciation and acceptance of your true beauty. You are right, this is about so much more than just the food we eat.
Thank you Janina, great to read. I never liked the way I looked as this did not fit the ideal “man” the strong and toned gym body. Instead of going to the gym I found it easier to ignore that part. What your article inspires in me is that by ignoring what I don’t like about myself I am therefore not appreciating and accepting myself. I found many other areas to channel that drive but none of which allowed me to enjoy being me.
I love this article Janina, so lovely to read ‘What I have realised is that what is important is not looks or a certain weight, but the quality and way we live every day – and how loving and tender we are with ourselves and others.’ I can relate to so much of what you have written and feel that I have found my natural body weight and this hasn’t been by fad diets or trying to look a certain way, it has been through self-love and self-care and allowing myself to be the beautiful woman that I am.
So beautifully expressed Janina. Thank you. I am choosing to appreciate myself more and more and am learning it is indeed the key to self-love and acceptance. This sentence beautifully sums up the effect of letting love in ‘As I began, I started appreciating myself more and embracing the beauty that I bring; I found that my body naturally began to gain weight again’.
A great article Janina. You have reminded me of all the fad diets I did in an attempt to feel better about myself and from photographs I notice that at the time I was dieting, I had a great shape anyway. I now realise that the dissatisfaction with my appearance was really nothing to do with my weight or what I looked like but more to do with how I was feeling on the inside. As you say – “What I have realised is that what is important is not looks or a certain weight, but the quality and way we live every day – and how loving and tender we are with ourselves and others.”
This is a huge revelation and one that I align to more now as the appreciation and love for myself continues to unfold. Thank you for sharing.
The shift from looking in the mirror with judgemental, critical eyes and the weight of the media’s expectations upon you, to looking with tender, appreciating eyes, that respect and honour our true beauty, is huge and life changing. Thank you for sharing your story, Janina.
That’s lovely Matilda… when we look at ourselves, to shift from judgmental, critical eyes to ones of tender, appreciating eyes….
Yes this is a gorgeous reminder that we have a choice when we look in the mirror of how we choose to see ourselves and by way of doing this, how we see others.
Great comment Matilda. You express the shift I am beginning to feel when I look in the mirror. Accepting myself for who I am is very life changing and freeing.
Matilda.. thank you for sharing. It would have been lovely to hear those words growing up as a teenager instead of all the thoughts that went through my head. They feel so supportive as I read them.
So true and beautifully said, Matilda, appreciation is the key to how we really look and feel.
An inspirational comment Matilda Thank you for bringing this aspect to the topic. I agree it is so beautiful to drop the criticism as we look in the mirror and look at ourselves tenderly and with appreciation.
What a beautiful reminder this is Matilda – to deeply appreciate ourselves in this way is indeed life changing.
” Looking with tender, appreciating eyes, that respect and honour our true beauty”,
It’s crazy the sorts of twisted beliefs we have in our heads about our bodies. I recently got fitted for some bras and the first thing the lady said to me was “your back is a lot smaller than you think it is”.
It’s crazy to know that there are whole industries out there built on people’s lacks of self esteem/appreciation/worth (diets, cosmetic surgery, non-medical TV series on weight loss, make-up, push-up bras, advertising all of the above and the list goes on). Thanks for sharing, Janina.
The beliefs are around even when it is relatively easy to change your weight up and down, as it is for many who work with Universal Medicine and Serge Benhayon. The belief that slimmer is better can be pushed too far and we still need to feel our body. It is a great feeling when our shape feels right.
Hi Janina, how interesting that you lost too much weight and your body became too thin. I’ve lost 42 kilos and know that there is still some excess fat hanging around, but I am not getting anxious about it as in years before, because my body knows what weight it needs to be, and it can tell me what to eat in order to nurture it. If I listen, then I’ll eat what I need, if I override it, then my weight will not be so natural. Loving our bodies as they are is a great way to live.
Wow that’s amazing Carmel, and I love your attitude towards your body and food – it makes loving sense. Your glowing vitatlity is surely a testament to this.
Thank you Janina. I can so relate to this as it was only when I started to really appreciate and value myself and fall in love with me, that my body shape changed and I put weight on. The support from Esoteric Healing Practitioners was pivotal as with each session I was able to feel myself and connect more deeply to my body. With a deep connection to our bodies, we are more able to feel and hear what our body needs.
A great article Janina – it resonates deeply with me. From my mid teens dieting became the normal way to live – lack of self worth and ingrained beliefs and how I thought I should look – as you say “My struggling with my weight and striving to be slim was because of how little I really loved and appreciated myself for just being me”.
Since attending Universal Medicine presentations and learning to be more aware of my body and beginning to appreciate myself, all my excess, self-protective weight has just ‘melted ‘ away – with no dieting, just listening to my body and what works for it.
Thank you for sharing you.
Great point that it is not just the amount of food or type of food that could affect our body weight but also how we feel about ourselves could affect it too? That is something I had not really considered in this way before. That how much I can appreciate and honour myself or truly connect with myself could actually be a factor in my body shape and size? Thanks Janina for this realisation and thanks for blowing the dieting myth completely away!
Its a great point Andrew, that our thoughts and feelings affect our bodies deeply, more than we truly appreciate at present and in due time science will prove it.
Great point Andrew Something I had also not considered. Interesting to ponder that by not appreciating ourselves we take on more and more of the world around us. Filling ourselves from the outside and not just with food.
Thanks, Andrew. How we feel about ourselves is a important contributing factor to the body shape that we have. It has been amazing to observe how many people around me have physically changed as their commitment to loving themselves has deepened. They feel much more content and comfortable in their own skin, and no diet can achieve this.
Great point to consider Andrew, I also had not looked at it like that but as James and others have said earlier in the comments for me I did always want to be “bigger” and “bulkier” as a man to fit the image I thought I needed to be. For me however I never could put on weight from eating so it makes sense there is much more to it.
Well said Andrew. Of course how we feel about ourselves affects our body! What a great ah-hah moment. If I am saying horrid things to myself about myself or anyone else why wouldn’t I assume there is a follow on effect of these thoughts affecting my body, my day and having a ripple effect all around me. When we realise this it is a genuine light bulb moment for us all.
I love your words, to love and appreciate ourselves and our bodies in whatever shape we naturally have. I was always very naturally petite and slim but always disliked that my bust was small. Being naturally slender did not equate to living in joy with high self-esteem and yet for those that struggle with their weight there is a false belief that once the weight is lost their life will be better. Being slim did not make my life better or happier than those that carried more weight on their bodies!
It’s crazy isn’t it, that we are so bombarded by how we should look as women that we will never measure up to the false ideal that we have created…. and yet the key is to deeply appreciate ourselves for WHO WE ARE and what we bring to ourselves and others. Then it will naturally follow that we will deeply appreciate how we are. The physical body will reflect the unique, precious and divine expression we carry. It’s beautiful to be with another whose eyes twinkle with an inner glow and to also be the one who sparkles back!
I agree Rachel where you say “the key is to deeply appreciate ourselves for WHO WE ARE and what we bring to ourselves and others.” This is something that is taken away from us as children when we are told not to be ‘full of ourselves’ so we learn to believe we are never enough.
So true Rachel, that deep appreciation, of who we are is so beautiful
Love it Rachel, what a great comment. Could it be that anything we strive for outside of ourselves will always leave us feeling empty? Your comment “The key is to deeply appreciate ourselves for WHO WE ARE and what we bring to ourselves and others” (RM) is so supportive, I feel myself surrender to this every time I read it. What are our qualities? What beauty are we so naturally expressing? It is crazy that when we begin to self-sabotage with demeaning thoughts, we actually are not ‘full’ of ourselves nor expressing our qualities. Then this cycle can continue when we look in the mirror and don’t see ‘Us’. The expression of our beauty is far greater than the physical, which simply becomes another form of our beauty personified, but never greater.
Thank you Janina for sharing, I can relate as I was a yo yo dieter and was very critical of my body image especially where my weight was concerned. Not only did I have a lot of self judgement about myself being overweight, I also judged others.
This is a huge subject and as teenagers we often take on the belief that in order to have the perfect life we need to be slim and rich and these days famous – comparing ourselves with other people. In effect what that does is, it makes the not so perfect invisible; they don’t matter because they do not look a certain way and are dismissed as not being important.
What an inspiring blog Janina, I love how you said: ‘My struggling with my weight and striving to be slim was because of how little I really loved and appreciated myself for just being me’. It’s funny how, as a man, I was almost the opposite wanting to be bigger with more muscles! The more I have accepted and appreciated myself the more my weight or body size etc. is now no longer an issue.
It was only the other day I had considered that there was pressure for men to be the opposite, bigger with more muscles… what a crazy world we have set up, so that men and women are never satisfied with themselves and are constantly seeking and looking on the outside for recognition, rather than looking within and appreciating the true beauty found there.
Well said Rachel, a crazy world indeed. I was speaking with a man yesterday who is now realising that all the weight/muscle building exercises he has been pushing himself through, to look and feel better about himself (small in height), have brought the opposite effect – his body looking totally disproportionate to his height and the size of his head resting upon the huge big muscle bound shoulders.
Great comment Rachel. It is so true we are co-oerced by society to be slim women or big muscley men, this sets us up to be constantly in comparison and therefore dis-satisfied. What a crazy merry go round! It truly is time we got off and as you say appreciate the true beauty we all are within.
Exactly Rachel, it is crazy that men are lifting super heavy weights trying to get bigger and women are starving themselves to get smaller. How little love and honouring of ourselves do we have, that society has become like this?
It would be laughable, if it wasn’t so sad Janet. Its like we as a society have promoted self punishment as a form of ‘betterment’.
Thank you James and Rachel – amazingly I always thought body insecurity was something that only effected women – how wrong! Men feel the same equal pressure as us to conform to a body size and shape, just in a slightly different colour.
Spot on Rachel. And, how harming to try and live in a body that is the wrong size for us (because we have forced it to be either bigger or smaller than it would naturally be). Striving for an ideal body is damaging on so many levels, and the ideal body is certainly not a love-filled one.
It’s true what you say James, I’ve known men who are so unhappy with their bodies because they want to be more muscular… A great reminder that body image issues aren’t just in women!
So true, with appreciation comes acceptance. We can then drop all of the ‘shoulds’ and ‘should nots’ and allow ourselves to be – whatever weight or shape that may be.
And this is an issue I am sure for so many men so thanks for bringing it up James. We as much as women are made to feel dissatisfied with the way we look, exacerbated by us men goading each other about being weaklings and are constantly being asked to compare ourselves to the muscly ideal. What an impossible model to have to try to live up to.
Very true, James. Men are hit with the exact same thing, but in reverse. The outcome is the same, though: constant dissatisfaction with ourselves. And that dissatisfaction is either bought into (trying to get as big and ripped as possible), ignored and reacted to (over eating, self-abusive indulgent foods, etc), or accepted as the illusion that it is and let go of.
Naren, great that you have highlighted that our responses may be different, we may give up on reaching the ideal that we have been sold, and hence abuse ourselves by overeating etc, or we may abuse ourselves by trying to live up to the ideal, but it is all the same; abuse based on an absence of self love, and driven by an ideal we have accepted as real. In fact people may swing between the two forms of abuse, at times think that they are getting somewhere because they seem to be getting closer to the ideal, and at other times suffering because they have given up, but in truth at all times never getting anywhere at all.
Awesome blog Janina. Knowing that we all have our own natural weight and size it seems ridiculous that we compare ourselves to others. The media feeds us pictures of the ‘perfect’ image which so many of us have tried to attain. How awesome would it be if we were all to celebrate our differences instead of aspiring to a particular body shape and size?
Yes agreed Rebecca, it would be really refreshing if the media and marketing celebrated the different bodies we all had and we weren’t forced, this one size fits all, image of what a body should look like, which creates such angst and misery.
Yes Rebecca beautifully said…”How awesome would it be to celebrate our differences instead of aspiring to a particular body shape and size?” To focus our attention on appreciation and loving ourselves and others (and not to compare) – awesome! Thats the way.
Well said Rebecca, Stephen and Janina – comparison is the killer. Celebration our differences with appreciation for ourselves and others is the way to make true choices and changes
Yes and the problem with the ‘perfect image’ is that it’s constantly changing, one minute we are to be curvaceous the next tall and skinny, the next tall heroin chic which in itself is the most ridiculous message saying that if you totally disregard yourself and your body then you will reach the pinnacle of beauty. None of which is remotely loving.
What a lovely journey back to your true self Janina, what ever shape it is, and ‘what is important is… the quality and way we live every day – and how loving and tender we are with ourselves and others’ that speaks volumes.
Well said Steve
Great point Steve.
Beautifully said Steve, it’s easy to loose track of what’s really important when it’s really so simple.
Beautifully said Steve.
It sure does speak volumes Steve, well said.
Well said Janina. I too held the belief that if I had a slim body then I would feel better about myself and everyone would admire me for it. The struggle to be slim took a lot of pleasure out of life. When I started to feel the effect that different foods had on how I felt, I gradually changed, and am still changing the foods I choose. I now have fun and pleasure in making meals and my weight is steady. My body feels vibrant and I have so much more energy.
I think a lot of women can say that if something were better about themselves, then they would have a better life, be liked more, be happier ect. Now I really do appreciate that there is no point comparing, because i am my own body, and as soon as I compare, I close the door to loving myself, and loving others. There is a much bigger purpose than just looking good to please myself or others, and when I focus on that – it puts everything in perspective for me.
I love the way you write Janina. More than ever people need to realise that everybody has their own natural body weight which can be easily achieved without eating less but eating foods your body can cope with.
I love the part about you looking into the mirror and seeing the depth and beauty in your eyes this is inspiring and I will try it myself next time I look in a mirror.
I like this, Kevin. It is not about eating less, but listening to our bodies and eating the things that feel right. This is something to keep refining for ourselves, and it will be different for everyone. Thank you, Janina, for this beautiful reminder of how our relationship with food is very much linked to our relationship with ourselves.
I too have noticed that when I have targeted an ideal, such as losing weight or achieving something to make me feel better, the inner satisfaction never quite arrives. This is why many of us try hard, get exhausted, stop and in no time are back where we started. This is also why when we do manage to force ourself to continue we keep getting more and more thin, muscly, clever, rich (or whatever else we have hoped will bring satisfaction) – but still the inner satisfaction never ever comes and we keep chasing. Thank you for sharing that you turned this around. I enjoyed reading how you started to pay attention to what you felt, taking greater care of yourself and building a foundation that allowed you to deeply appreciate yourself. And not only have you easily returned to your natural weight, but you are feeling more and more amazing every day. Truly inspiring.
Yes, I enjoyed reading this bit too, ‘I have started to love and accept myself more and more. This foundation makes it possible for me to deeply appreciate myself. This is ever expanding’. I personally find this life changing.
I so agree Lorraine, what a difference this makes when we are stepping more and more into the true awesome beings that we are. This is life changing and we can not practice it enough.
What a beautiful overview of your journey from disconnection from yourself and body, to loving who you are. I can relate to so much of what you have shared, wanting attention/love from outside of myself so always never feeling enough as a result; finding that love from within and living from that. Thank you for sharing your story, as I am sure it will resonate with many.
Yes, we need to start loving and appreciating ourselves first than we are also able to receive love form others, it doesn’t work the other way around.
That’s so true Janina, that realisation has come to me too! So enlightening.
The world is upside down in as much as we look to find love from others and then feel less if we don’t get it, instead of re-connecting to the love and wisdom inside us and being in love with ourselves first.
Yes Janina couldn’t agree more. I struggled with my weight for a long time and it really wasn’t until I truly accepted and appreciated myself for who I was, that true change was made.
Beautifully said Janina!
Janina, I can so relate to your blog and what you have shared about your experience with weight loss and dieting etc. For many decades, I too struggled with my weight – focussing on diets and exercise as the means to lose weight, and as the ulimate goal. While at different times, I had some successful results, these were only ever short lived and temporary, and there was always a pressure and a restriction that came with them (i.e. I felt like I was depriving myself or missing out if I wanted to achieve a certain weight).
The interesting thing was that even during those periods when I did lose weight and ‘looked’ slimmer on the outside and closer to what I felt at the time was an ‘ideal body image’, I was still left feeling the same inside. In other words the same feelings of low self-worth, not feeling good enough, not having successful relationships etc. did not go away and remained the same – something that I realised in retrospect, I thought would be ‘fixed’ when I lost weight, and if I am totally honest, is most likely the reason I wanted to lose weight in the first place!
Great point made Angela, I can agree very much and just realized that I did feel much better when I was slim but only in comparison “better” to the misery I went through dieting for weeks and the struggle to loose weight. So the way I felt about myself (the low self esteem and lack of self worth) did not change with loosing weight.
It swings the other way as well though ladies – I have had times where I’ve been a slim size 8 and negated all my feelings of sadness as I felt almost rude that I could feel bad when I had the figure people were envious of. You know when you’re bigger than your ideal, like you say, you imagine that when you are thin, you will be happy, so then when you are still sad, with apparently no reason, because your exterior looks good, well I guess that was a big trigger for me to start to look inside…
Great point Rachel, I’ve been slim all my life but for me, it was only through understanding the teachings from Universal Medicine that I began to reconnect to the love that I am, did I slowly let go of the deep sadness I felt.
It’s so true Rachael, you can have all the trappings women aspire to and yet feel very empty inside. I like Janina’s comment “what is important is not looks or a certain weight, but the quality and way we live every day – and how loving and tender we are with ourselves and others”. Thank you for your blog
Your words touched me deeply Patricia, so true, it IS the quality we live in everyday, and the presentations of Universal Medicine have shown me that the only way to NOT feel the emptiness and live our lives without the ideals, beliefs and expectations that keep us trapped in certain behaviours, is to re-connect to the love and wisdom inside of us, and then we will love ourselves whatever we look like on the outside.
Great point Rachael. I have never struggles with my weight but throughout my life felt a sadness that I could never quite explain. I know now that it was the sadness of not connecting to the true divine precious me. Letting go of the many masks I have worn and still at times wear has been an amazing healing. The teachings of Universal Medicine are profoundly healing.
Spot on Anne- Marie O Donnell there are many who carry the mask of happiness and the perfectly shaped body but the levels of sadness are still evident when the exterior no longer is enough to support our self worth and self love. When we connect to how truly divine we are there is no need to falter with how we may look as what we have on offer is there to see without all the ideals and beliefs we tend to mask ad blind ourselves with. Definitely a work in progress for me and a great support offered by the endless support of Teachings of Universal Medicine.
Likewise Rachael. I’ve never been overweight, but I have always felt pressure about my body – and been completely controlling of it. No matter where i was at, I would always seek the next goal or ideal that I had to get too in order to feel good – but the fact is this was a movable goalpost that would change as soon as I felt I needed to be something else for others. It is exhausting to live this way, and this certainly was a reason for me to start looking within rather than trying to always be something.
Wow, this is extremely powerful Janina – “the way I felt about myself (the low self esteem and lack of self worth) did not change with losing weight”
Agree Jessica, this is very powerful especially in a world where young girls are starving themselves to death because of the perceived idea that losing weight will somehow change something for them. It won’t.
Absolutely and there lies the true evil that we live in a society that is promoting this behavior and nobody is accountable for anything. The media, advertising, film and music industry just exploits the harming gender stereotypes for their profit, wrecking one generation after another by selling the idea of outer beauty and a happy life. When will we start to see true role models, women with true self worth claiming their inner beauty in the media?
I agree Elizabeth. I have always had issues with my size. Going into self-loathing if I was ‘overweight’ and being euphoric when I was ‘slim’. But still feeling the underlying emptiness inside. It is strange how our size seems to dictate how much we love ourselves, or not. Puzzling.
I agree Elizabeth Dolan. I have had issues with my weight all my life, going into self-loathing when I was ‘overweight’, and euphoria when I was ‘slim’, but either way, the feeling of emptiness was still there.
Strange how our size should dictate how much we love ourselves, or not.
Since giving up gluten, dairy, caffeine and alcohol, which you could say is a self loving choice, my weight has remained constant and there is no need for diets anymore. But I still have to work on re-connecting to the Love inside of me, that doesn’t come automatically with me being my ‘ideal’ weight.
100% in agreement with your comment here Rachel – lack of accountability and irresponsibility through the media and what society now perceive as ‘normal’ is causing deep harm to everyone, especially in developing comparison issues in girls, starting sometimes as young as 5 years old. This behaviour can continue to escalate, ruling us through our lives. Thank God for Universal Medicine’s teachings that offer the opportunity to know there us is another way to live, accept ourselves and begin to honour and enjoy the true inner beauty intrinsic in everyone.
Elizabeth I have played that game that my life would change if I lost weight. Strangely enough dieting or starving do bring the quick fixes but what doesn’t change is how you feel inside.
This is powerful and so true as I have feel this from my own experience. The true weight loss that causes the most transformation is when we start to deal with the buried hurts .
Well said nb – my weight has yo-ed-yo-ed over the years and it was only when I started to deal with the buried hurts that the weight dropped off and stayed off and feels like its found its natural status quo. 20 kilos lost no problems, no diets – just a commitment to lovingly look at my hurts.
So true nb and Sara Flenley – “The true weight loss that causes the most transformation is when we start to deal with the buried hurts”.
It was only when I began to address well buried hurts and let myself feel the deep sadness that there was there that the extreme and vicious cycle of weight loss, weight gain was truly changed. Over the years it has been very noticeable when I have let go of issues, my body would release its accumulated padding and re-configure its shape.
This is the key isn’t it…. Coming back to the self care, love and appreciation of ourselves… When we work from the inside out, the outside naturally takes care of itself.
Sure does and the impact of other peoples comments matters no more!
Janina, I have always been slim, so when I first read your blog I didn’t feel it applied to me. How wrong I was! I was too long in the arms and waist, with small breasts, not much I could do about that (apart from stuffing socks in my bra), so instead I grew a hard shell that said if you don’t like this- tough, and dressed in bright colours. It has taken a long while for me to start accepting myself as a beautiful woman, whatever shape I am and I still have a way to go, but boy, am I enjoying the journey!
I relate to what you have written Catherine. I too looked at various parts of my body and judged them as not okay and a sign of me not being lovable. And since I could not change them, I gave up on the possibility of being lovable and put up a hard shell instead. Very freeing to have realised that the loveliness that I am is inside me (as is the case for everyone else), and I can feel how the external makes little difference to how I truly experience people.
This is one of my favorite blogs Janina as It reminds me that all the negative talk that I have in my head has nothing on me when compared to my beauty and grandness.
What you have written here Madeline has been one of those “aha” moments for me, in fact a very big moment that brought me to a stop, that then allowed me the space to feel the incredible truth of your very wise words. Thank you.
You make some great points Angela. In my life I have been very skinny and very overweight. Having experienced both ends of the spectrum I can say that it didn’t matter what size I was, the issue was that I was not content within myself. Since attending the presentations of Universal Medicine and Serge Benhayon I have come to realise that I am enough and that nothing outside of me can change that.
Well said Tim, I fully agree with you – ‘I am enough and nothing outside of me can change that’.
I can relate to that too Tim. We think the answer is out there. Being this size or having the latest designer clothes or what ever it may be. As a student of Universal Medicine I have become aware of how important the relationship with myself is and that the more loving and caring I am with myself, the less outside factors like my size or what things I own matter.
Spot on Tim, thats the take home message we all need to hear. We can try everything to look a certain way but if we don’t accept ourselves first, we aren’t going to be feeling at ease regardless of how we look.
So true Stephen, without self acceptance it does not matter whether we are heavy or skinny.
That’s great to have the point of view of a man on this subject, thank you Tim for sharing your experience.
Tim, its so true its when we are not content with ourselves inside that weight becomes and issue. Most of my life I was skinny and then I put on weight when I was unhappy with my job and after I got married, I was unable to loose it for many years. I tried diets and detoxes all of the time, would loose the weight and put it back on. It was when I also attended Universal Medicine presentations that I realised I am enough, and nothing outside of me can change that. I lost my weight within a year.
It’s great to hear you speak so powerfully from your life experience Tim. What a gem you write:
‘I am enough and nothing outside me can change that.’ Simply beautiful.
i have spent most of my life very thin with a constant self-judgment that I am skinny, generally reflected back to me by those around me. What I eat or don’t eat his had very little effect upon my weight. I am now beginning to accept my body and it’s build. Thanks for your comment, Tim, it resonates with what I am also learning.
This is spot on Tim.We always look outside of ourselves for answers to our problems, but the answers lie within us all through our commitment and love that we all hold within. Its just about removing our layers of self doubt, and letting our inner heart expand.
Well said Tim, our lack of contentment with ourselves no matter what size is connected to the fact that we are not living who we are and we live instead in emptiness. Once re-connected to truth we can begin to feel for ourselves the truth and live our lives according to that feeling.
This is a great outing of the ideal that if you are slim you will feel better about yourself. It simply is not true as attested by the yo yoing that people who diet experience I think a staggering 90% of people who lose weight put it back on within a year. Dieting does not work. But building a relationship with yourself and connecting to your essence builds a quality inside you that cannot be influenced by the size of your pants!
I agree Vanessa ‘it is a great outing of the ideal that if you are slim you will feel better about yourself’. I’ve been slim all my life but only since beginning to re-connect to me and becoming more loving with myself as well as others has the empty feeling subsided.
Wonderfully expressed Tim – we are already complete before we start to eat. Food can’t give us anything or food can’t fix anything. It is all about our connection to ourselves.
I agree with all you share Tim as I know this experience as well. I never felt content with in my self no matter what weight I was. And my weight continued to yo, yo up until I learnt to deeply appreciate myself for simply being me and not for how I look, nor for what I do.
You nailed it on the head Tim- “I am enough and that nothing outside of me can change that.”
I have found that since having more self appreciation and self acceptance of who I am, and by taking more care of my body, my body size has normalised- not too skinny, not overweight.
This is great to hear Tim, and makes me see more and more how no matter what shape we are, it is how we are in ourselves that is important. I spent a long long time always scrutinising my body – never just allowing it to be how it naturally was. I put a lot of pressure on myself to look a certain way. Now, in my pregnancy, I’ve let so much of that go and accepted the beauty of my body and the amazing support it offers me. Through this I have come to appreciate and trust that my body is there to support me as long as I support it.
That is so true Angela I can really relate with what you are saying, and can now see that instead of being completely honest with myself and willing to look at my self loathing, I was in, I would just diet instead… which didn’t change a thing because I didn’t address my self loathing.
You raise a very salient issue Vicky, without addressing our self-worth and self-loathing issues, strategies such as dieting and even surgery will even give us lasting contentment.
Angela this is so true – having been a ‘serial dieter’ for many years, I can totally confirm, appearing slimmer on the outside never changed the inner roller coster existence of lack of self worth and not good enough. It was only a ‘slimmer facade’ to remain locked in behind.
Weight dissolved away of its own accord once I began addressing the hurts within. Thank God for the day I chose to attend a presentation by Serge Benhayon – this inspired me so deeply and changed everything about my relationship with food and weight.
Angela I can totally relate to your dieting experience as mine was very similar. One thing I did clock after an episode of dieting rigorously for six months was how vulnerable I felt being slimmer, suddenly I felt exposed and worried that people would look at me – I had become comfortable hiding behind my overweight body.