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How to distract from dissatisfaction with your appearance and switch to more pleasant and important activities? Five steps to life without diets.
“Lose weight for the summer!” – fitness clubs do not get tired of calling us. From numerous advertising posters, women and men with perfect bodies smile at us. And the lighter clothes become, the more excitement we experience when looking at our reflection in the mirror. How to get rid of dissatisfaction with yourself, says clinical psychologist Sophie Cheval (Sophie Cheval).
Reframe your thoughts
Task: change your thoughts about your own appearance.
How to do it? Instead of repeating “I’m fat” over and over again, reformulate the statement this way: “I often have the thought that I’m too fat.” It’s much more accurate, right? However, it doesn’t sound so hopeless.
Put thoughts into context
Problem: change your thoughts about your appearance.
How to do it? We are always fatter than anyone. And older than someone. And we are always younger and slimmer than someone else. “Thick” is a relative concept, but we tend to formulate it as an absolute one. To break this destructive habit, put the phrase “I’m too fat” into context. For example, “I’m too fat next to a friend who has 42 clothes”; “I’m too fat when I put on this too tight (or short or white) skirt. I don’t feel comfortable in it.”
Read more:
- Is Detox Another Diet?
Focus on pleasure
Problem: Remind yourself why we need revealing clothes. Especially true for those who are embarrassed to wear a swimsuit.
How to do it? Standing in the fitting room, choosing shorts / sundress / bikini, remember what brought you to the store. You don’t need this thing to look like the skinny mannequin it’s wearing. In it you are going to relax, have fun and enjoy the summer. Give clothes their proper place and focus on what really matters. Really, the most important thing in your life, do you fit into the 42nd size? And the inscription on the tombstone: “She always remained a size 42, she had a flat stomach and no cellulite” will give you the feeling that you lived a life full of meaning?
Return the body to its primary functions
Problem: stop perceiving your body only as an aesthetic object.
How to do it? Go in for sports, have sex or book a massage… It turns out that the body can give us a lot of pleasure, no matter how it looks at that time. The more often you perceive your body as something other than an aesthetic object, the easier it will be for you to think of it as sensual and very important, and not just beautiful or not.
Live with joy
Problem: consciously choose whether to lose weight or not.
How to do it? The call to lose weight by the summer is relevant every year. It turns out that we do this only because there is a special time of the year, or because it is customary? In this case, each of us has every right to decide differently and … not become the one who loses weight by the summer. And that means getting more pleasure from life: during diets and active training, we meet friends less often, almost do not cook our favorite dishes, in general, make our life more boring and sadder.
1. Sophie Cheval – clinical psychologist, author of Belle autrement! En finir avec la tyrannie de l’apparence” (“There is another way to become beautiful: end the tyranny of diets”, Armand Colin, 2013).