Updated March 20, 2023

Body confidence is a result of a loving body relationship. It has nothing to do with weight, size, shape, color, etc. This explains why even supermodels have insecurities. If you want to have body confidence, you must have this understanding first. Otherwise your effort will always be on the wrong things. Body confidence doesn't start in the mirror, it starts in your words. The beginning stages of body confidence include drawing a distinction between you and your physical body.

The best way for beginners to start building body confidence is practicing separating their identity from their body using language. Words are powerful. The way we finish the sentence, "I am" is incredibly powerful. Just ask Eckhartt Tolle who wrote a book called, Know That "I Am", which accentuates the power of stillness, but also the power of our words. The words you speak create the feelings you have, the feelings you have influence the actions you take. All this adds up to a different type of body relationship. So let's breakdown how beginners should get started with body confidence. 

Four Focus Areas to Separate Your Identity From Your Body

You can apply the same concept to any area of your life. There's a theme tying together these focus areas. They are not only things that change over time, but they are designed to change. There's no stopping this change. It's part of the design of your body for these attributes to fluctuate. Putting your identity in things that change is a recipe for insecurity, doubt, and self consciousness. That's why women with body confidence measure their value and identity in different things. For now, let's focus on these four areas. 

1. weight

Identifying as your weight will always leave you feeling insecure about your body. Weight changes every single day. You cannot confidently say you will weigh the same week over week, year over year, etc. Bodies are designed to change, especially their weight.

You are not 150 pounds, your body weighs 150 pounds. Do you see the difference?

2. size

Women's clothing sizes are different everywhere you go. They're confusing and it makes clothes shopping extremely frustrating no matter what size you typically wear. Again, this is something that changes. You will have a hard time feeling confident in anything that changes, the only thing you can trust is that you will never wear the same size your entire life, at every store, in every style. Shoe size, ring size, 

You are not a small, your body typically wears a size small. (right now)

3. hunger

The damage of diet culture has trained us to complicate something very simple. Hunger is a natural indicator that your body needs food, but because of the diet industry, we're taught to trick our body into thinking it's not hungry even if we haven't eaten. We buy appetite suppressants and try to drink a glass of water before meals to fill our stomachs with zero calorie liquid to trick our bodies. Hunger isn't something you are, it's something designed to help you take good care of your body.

While I'm aware no one walks around identifying as "hungry" the way they identify as "brunette" it is something we follow the "I am" statement with quite often. When you think to yourself, "I'm hungry" and believe hunger is something bad that needs to be suppressed, tricked, and avoided, that's going to do something to your relationship with yourself and your body. Hunger is a temporary thing that's designed to help you.

You are not hungry, your body needs sustenance. 

4. features

Even my eye color changed throughout my life. I used to have dark brown eyes. All my driver's licenses said "brown" under eye color. A few years ago I was trying to peel an eyelash out of my eyelid and realized my eyes were a lot lighter than I remembered. I stared at my retinas and saw flecks of green, light brown, and even yellow. I have hazel eyes, like my mom. That was a huge shift for me! My license says "hazel" under eye color now. It's crazy.

You are not blonde, your hair color is blonde.

Everything with your body is temporary, even its life. 

YIKES. Okay, yes let's talk about it. Everything is temporary when it comes to your body. The life we live is temporary, so don't hold too tightly to unreliable, unpredictable things. The definition of insecurity is something that is not secure, unsafe, uncertain, etc. How can you have confidence if you're relying on things that are not secure?

Body confidence comes from relying on dependable things. While not everything is dependable, there are some things designed to change. Be careful what you put your identity and confidence in. As you practice separating your identity from these four areas, you can add empowering language to your body relationship by taking the challenge, 16 Days to Beat Negative Self Talk.

Don't identify as temporary things. Identify as things that will not change without your permission. Things like your character, your taste in music, your religious beliefs, etc. they don't need to be existential things in order for you to loosely identify with them. They just need to be something that doesn't fluctuate.