You only get one body, one body to carry you through every version of yourself. Every day/month/year, every intimate relationship, every adventure/heartbreak/belly laugh and every chapter still waiting for you. Yet somewhere along the way, many of us learned to think about our bodies primarily in terms of how they look. We stand in front of the mirror assessing, comparing and critiquing. We notice the stomach we'd like flatter, the arms we'd like more toned, the skin we'd like smoother. We treat our bodies almost like ongoing renovation projects and I fully admit that I’ve been 1000% guilty of this too. But your body was never meant to be something you simply looked at, it's the place you get to live your entire life from. And perhaps instead of spending so much energy trying to wrestle it into looking like we want it to, we aim to create a different kind of relationship with it instead.

We’ve all heard that we should "love and honour your body", but I think that can feel worlds away from where we are sometimes and potentially very guilt-inducing. A great, and possibly more relatable, place to start is by finding things you genuinely love about your bodies instead and yes this goes back to how it looks, but hear me out. Maybe you love your eyes, your smile, your strong legs, your freckles, your hair, your shoulders or the curve of your waist. I personally love the structure of my face, the muscle definition in my back and my hair. Perhaps there are parts of yourself you've quietly always liked but rarely acknowledge because your attention automatically gravitates towards the things you don't. The aim here is to try deliberately changing that automatic gravitation and to try looking in the mirror, allowing yourself to admire something without immediately following it with criticism. Rest assured, this isn't vanity, we’re simply allowing appreciation to take up some space because criticism has occupied it for it far too long.  

And this is where it starts, maybe for you it’s your eyes, your shoulders, your butt in that pair of jeans. But then we want to go one further because just as we are more than our appearances, so are our bodies. Your legs have carried you thousands and thousands of kilometres through your life, your arms have hugged people you love. Your hands have endlessly created, comforted and worked, your heart has quietly beaten tens of thousands of times today without you asking it to.  Your eyes have watched sunsets, seen beautiful places and looked into the faces of people who matter to you. Your body lets you taste incredible food, feel the sun shine on your skin, dance to your favourite song, laugh until your stomach hurts, sink into a warm bed and enjoy the extraordinary sensory ways in which we experience the world we live in.

When you begin seeing your body in this different light, you naturally begin relating to it differently too. Instead of thinking about getting your body to look the way you want it to look, the goal becomes taking care of it in a way that maintains balance between your physical health, your mental health and the time demands of your life. Instead of exercising because you want to shrink your thighs, it’s because you love how strong and energised you feel afterwards. Instead of eating well because you need to "be good", you begin choosing foods that support feeling well. And this can profoundly change our relationship with emotional eating. When we're disconnected from or constantly criticising our bodies, it's easy to swing between restriction, overeating, guilt and promises to start again tomorrow. But the more you learn to listen to your body, respect it and see it as something worth caring for, the less appealing that battle for control becomes. Even when you emotionally eat, the response shifts from ‘I've ruined everything’ to figuring out what it was that you truly needed in that moment. Now that's a completely different relationship.

So perhaps the goal isn't simply to "love your body". Maybe it's to get to know it. To notice it, listen to it and appreciate it. Discover the things you love about how it looks and become fascinated by everything it allows you to do. Wear the clothes you've been saving for "when you lose the weight", be in the photograph, swim in the ocean. Take the time to stretch your legs, rest when you're tired and feed yourself in ways that genuinely feel good. What if, instead of spending your life wishing your body were different, you got to know it better so you know it’s strengths and weaknesses, it’s assets and nuances? Let’s look in the mirror and find something beautiful instead of automatically searching for a flaw because one day, you may realise your body was never the enemy you needed to conquer.