Self love: Tips from our community to build a loving relationship with your body

Love yourself! Hate yourself! Be thin! But embrace your curves! No one likes a woman who doesn’t eat! But don’t be greedy! Call them tiger stripes! But don’t show them in public! Wear whatever you want! But don’t wear that!

Is it any wonder we have had trouble accepting and loving our bodies when we’re bombarded every day with imagery and news to do the opposite? In fact, 91% of women are unhappy with their bodies. It’s staggering.

So we put the question out to our community to see how you really try to build and maintain that positive body relationship.

Evie C (via email): I deleted any account on my instagram feed that made me feel bad about myself. I made an effort to follow different types of women to have a more “normal” feed. Ever since, I’ve not been exposing myself to unrealistic standards, and instead loving embracing and learning from different women.

Mary F (via email): I stopped doing exercise I hate. I hate running. I hate it. But I did it for years because I thought exercise should be about burning the most amount of calories possible. Now I do dance classes. I love moving my body in loose and freeing ways. I feel unrestrained and at my best when I’m in a dance class.

Sarah K (via email): I pick a new favourite body part every week. Sounds weird but hear me out: I choose a new body part to love and nourish that week. And then once I’ve done every part I start the whole process over again. This way I don’t hyper focus on bits I don’t like, instead I make the conscious effort to love everything.