This week we are talking about body image and the scale. This is an important aspect of Peace with Food because what we eat impacts our appearance and the number on the scale. So how to we get peace in these areas?

For starters, we need to end the Insane Cycle. You know–that crazy cycle we get on when we obsess about an area of our body or a number on the scale. We get so fixated on these things we don’t think clearly anymore! We experience extreme highs (such as finally hitting a goal weight) and then extreme lows (such as gaining all the weight back after reaching our goal weight), and then we make ourselves go on another extreme diet in hopes we’ll have a better outcome next time.

Or how about every time we look in the mirror and have feelings of disgust as we stare at areas of our bodies that we hate? This extreme focus on our physique causes us to pass up opportunities to go swimming with our kids or a double date with our friends from work. It causes us to miss out on life.

There are things about a person’s body that they can control, and others that they can’t. They can lose the weight–and we’ll help them do that–but part of having peace means accepting areas of their body that may be unrealistic to change. For example, if they are always envying girls that are tall with long legs, having peace will mean letting go of the fact that they are only 5’3″.

We have always been goal-oriented people but when we finally realized–by accepting imperfections about our bodies–we could actually eliminate the daily pain of always wishing for something different.  Once we did this, we began to have more peace in our lives.

We are not saying  you need to give up on yourself or use what we say as an excuse to eat crummy. What we are saying is often times we can get so focused on something that we don’t zoom out and realize that some of the things we are chasing are either unrealistic or too big of a step for now. You will have to get rid of the All-or-Nothing mindset and be willing to tackle small, achievable, goals in order to have long-term, realistic success.

So this week, we encourage you to “zoom out”and figure out what is a realistic, bite-sized goal you can make to achieve your weight-loss success.

Posse Discussion:

1: What is one area of your body that you wish you could change?
2: What is your current level #peace in regards to your body image?  (Record date and # in your notebook)

Click Here for Day 13!