Welcome to episode number 11 of the Balanced Vibes podcast!
Resources:
Inspiring success stories: https://kerstenkimura.com/testimonials/
FREE 5 day course on BURNOUT recovery spectrum (you need this!!) https://kerstenkimura.lpages.co/burnout-recovery-spectrum-later/
Work with me: https://kerstenkimura.com/work-with-me/
Simple Strength For Women: A Bodyweight Strength Training Program for Women After Hypothalamic Amenorrhea Recovery: https://kersten-kimura.teachable.com/p/simple-strength-for-women
Is Your Metabolism Slow? FREE guide to faster metabolism: https://kerstenkimura.lpages.co/slow-metabolism/
How to Eat to Get Your Period Back: https://kerstenkimura.lpages.co/how-to-eat-for-ha/
5 Tips to Reverse Overtraining Quickly: https://kerstenkimura.lpages.co/overtraining-recovery-new/
Your Fit Personality Quiz: https://kerstenkimura.lpages.co/fit-personality/
No one likes to gain weight. But sometimes you have to, and you have to deal with it mentally.
Most people think that weight gain is always unhealthy.
You probably know that this is not always the case, and that sometimes weight gain can be necessary if you've dieted too much in the past and as a result, your body has stopped working properly. You may have developed the symptoms of Dreadful Dozen.
6 Tips To Make Dealing With Weight Gain Easier
Tip #1: Know That You're Going To Feel Better
We have this automatic thought in our heads that gaining weight is a wrong thing. But we rarely consider that it can actually make us feel healthier. But if you are currently underweight for YOUR body (even if your BMI doesn't put you in the underweight category), then your body is struggling, and you're not feeling well.
Look at the Dreadful Dozen list again and see, how many of the se symptoms you have? And wouldn't it he great to have everything from the Delightful Dozen list? Knowing that you will feel better eventually can help you deal with body change better.
This is available for you. Stop choosing poor health and skinny body, if you could have much better health and a bit more weight on your body.
Recovering from burnout doesn't mean that you will never have the Dreadful Dozen symptoms anymore. We all have better days and worse days, but overall, your baseline should be high and for the most part, you shouldn't have the Dreadful Dozen symptoms.
Having an appropriate amount of weight on your body means that you're going to feel better.
Tip #2: Learn To Care Less About Other People's Opinions
This is one of the biggest fears that I see women have: What will so-and-so think if I gain weight?
There are several truth bombs I'd like you to be aware about…
First, people don't spend all that much time thinking why we gained weight. I'm not saying that they don't notice it — they might. But that doesn't mean they think something of it.
Secondly, we have to stop putting other, often random people's thoughts before our health. Do you know what are the results of long term overtraining and under eating, for example, especially if your periods are gone too? The results are infertility and osteoporosis, and can be heart disease and cognitive disease. So if we're now choosing to stay the same and not heal our bodies because we're too concerned what our friend's cousin's boyfriend John thinks, we're saying that John's opinion is more important than our health. And believe me, John is not sitting there with you helping you deal with osteoporosis later in life.
This point should really help you deal with body change better.
Lastly, it's outside of our control to change what other people think. We can't go into their heads and change it, and we shouldn't put our health on the line just so they can think differently. Opinions are like buttholes — everyone has one. Some people think you're too skinny, others that you're too fat. But none of this matters. Your health matters more than other people.
Tip #3: Remember That Your Life Won't Get Worse As A Result of Weight Gain
Many women have this idea that weight gain means automatically that their lives will be ruined as a result.
But why would that be? Do we really think that we will lose our jobs, our families will walk away from us, our partners will leave us?
Let me tell you, none of this was true for me, and also hasn't been true for my clients. Your relationships won't end because of weight gain. You will still have your job. Even I as a personal trainer had no problems at work — in fact I gained a few more clients because my message that I was sharing more and more (fitness isn't only about weight loss, and it should be available for everyone) resonated with them.
Tip 4: Treat Your Body Like It's Your Teammate, Not Your Enemy
You may be frustrated that you can't be as skinny as you thought you “should” be. But the thing is, your body wants you to be healthy, which is why it's been sending you the signals that something isn't okay. It wants attention!
Your body is on your team. It's not your enemy. Treat it well. If you starve it, you're not treating it well. If you overtrain and don't rest, you're not treating it well.
Imagine that you had a child and you'd tell him or her: Nope, I'm not giving you food or letting you rest. Keep going, no excuses!
You wouldn't do that. Yet, we do these things to ourselves. Why is that?
Just as food is your friend and not the enemy, your body is your friend, or a teammate, and not your enemy. You're both working towards the same goal — health.
Tip #5: Understand the Body Love Right
Body love is such a mysterious topic. Looks like that many people have this understanding that body love means admiring yourself the second you wake up, until the evening when you lay down. You also have to stand in front of the mirror and love your reflection hard.
I have hard time believing that anyone feels this way… But of course, if they do, amazing!
None of this extreme admiration has to happen in order to love yourself. Body love is simply body acceptance and living your life being in the same team with your body. You move it, feed it, rest it, accept it. That's it.
So if you don't feel this earth shattering love for your body every day, you're not doing anything wrong.
Tip #6: If You Ever Want to Lose Weight/Fat, You'll Have To Accept Your Body First
The last tip is for those of you who later may want to change their bodies a bit, after they've established a strong relationship with it and no longer have issues with food (under eating, “perfect” eating, good foods & bad foods etc) or exercise.
It's possible to want to accept and like your body and want to change it at the same time, but here's the deal: You have to really and truly like and accept yourself first, and not rely on fat loss or weight loss to find that self acceptance.
For example, about 10 weeks ago I started a nutrition and training program with the goal to lose some body fat. I've been recovered for 3 years and my relationship with food is great, I don't overtrain and I feel good overall. Now when I started this program, my goal wasn't to get shredded in 3 weeks. I actually didn't set myself a specific goal because I am not sure how much body fat is safe for me to lose without throwing off my metabolism again.
I was hoping to see some body composition change (and I have seen), but I didn't go into it hating my current look or hoping that losing fat will fix any problems for me.
Conclusion
I hope that these 6 tips help you with body acceptance. At the end of the day, there is no magic tool that would help you get rid of the body image issues in a second. There's no pill like that we could take. But follow these tips and also give yourself plenty of time and it will get better.
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