Some days, no matter how positive our body image might be, we still feel unattractive, start nit-picking at a body part, think our clothes fit too tight or feel terribly uncomfortable in our own skin.

And as a result, we don’t want to get out of the house. In fact, we’d rather do nothing at all.

I mentioned on Friday that I caught myself saying, “I am ugly.” It just spewed out while I was in front of the mirror getting ready for dinner with my boyfriend. And that made me a bit concerned.

But there are days when no matter how hard you try, the mantras don’t help, thinking how amazing your body is can’t seem to pull you out of the rut and your inner critic just keeps getting louder and louder.

Every Monday features a tip, exercise, inspiring quote or other tidbit to help boost your body image. For many of us, Mondays are tough. We may feel anxious and stressed out, anticipating an arduous week, especially if we didn’t get much rest and relaxation during the weekend. These kinds of feelings don’t create the best environment for improving one’s body image. In fact, you might be harder on yourself and easily frustrated. You might even feel like you’re walking on egg shells – with yourself! With these posts, I hope you’ll have a healthier and happier body image day, that’ll last throughout the week.

Got a tip for improving body image? Email me at mtartakovsky@gmail.com, and I’ll be happy to feature it. It can be anything you do that’s healthy and helps boost your body image. I’d love to hear from you!

Elizabeth Gilbert opens her book, Eat, Pray, Love with the following quote from Sheryl Louise Moller (yes, I’m the last person on this planet who’s just starting to read the book, but I’ve seen the movie!):

Tell the truth, tell the truth, tell the truth.

It sounds simple enough but how often have you let truth telling and truth seeking guide your body image? What I mean is: How often have you opened up your body image to study its contents?

This week, I read a beautifully written post about writing courageously by Marisa from All Things New. She gave several really valuable tips about writing to discover yourself and being bold.

What does this have to do with body image?

It got me thinking about being courageous what it comes to body image and self-acceptance, and other ways in our lives.

How we talk about ourselves to others speaks volumes. It’s wearing self-loathing on your sleeves. It’s showing others that you don’t deserve to take up space. That your “flaws” deserve a spotlight, but your positive qualities don’t. That your physical appearance is the most important trait about you. That you’re a few parts – your hips, your belly, your legs –  and not truly whole.

Whether it’s a comment here and there about your thighs, weight or overall physical appearance or a constant conversation you keep having, fat talk can be damaging to our self-confidence, to our body image.

It becomes a cycle. The more we fat talk, the more negative our body image becomes. The more negative our body image becomes, the more we fat talk.

Even if you haven’t heard of the term Fat Talk, you’ve probably engaged in it – and likely many times. You’ve probably talked with your friends about the body parts that frustrate you the most or the ones you wish you could change.

You might’ve said that you’re too fat, too thin, too something undesirable. You might’ve lamented the looks of your legs or the softness of your belly.

All these words make up a common conversation that we just can’t seem to stop having.

Every Monday features a tip, exercise, inspiring quote or other tidbit to help boost your body image. For many of us, Mondays are tough. We may feel anxious and stressed out, anticipating an arduous week, especially if we didn’t get much rest and relaxation during the weekend. These kinds of feelings don’t create the best environment for improving one’s body image. In fact, you might be harder on yourself and easily frustrated. You might even feel like you’re walking on egg shells – with yourself! With these posts, I hope you’ll have a healthier and happier body image day, that’ll last throughout the week.

Got a tip for improving body image? Email me at mtartakovsky@gmail.com, and I’ll be happy to feature it. It can be anything you do that’s healthy and helps boost your body image. I’d love to hear from you!

I used to think that a healthy body image was all about being OK with how you look, or better yet, being happy with how you look.

And I wasn’t. So I thought that I had to somehow become happier with my hips, thighs, belly and essentially all of me. My initial idea for a path to a positive body image was losing weight.

Yesterday, I read a blog post that really resonated with me. Katie from Health for the Whole Self – one of my favorite blogs! – wrote about emotional eating, saying that sometimes the urge to eat (when we aren’t hungry) may come “from a place of desperately needing something else.”

Specifically, she writes:

I have had great success with the simple process of feeling the urge to go for the pint of ice cream, stopping myself in my tracks, and pondering, “What do I REALLY need right now?”

The answers have been wildly varied:

• a hug
• a nap
• a trashy romance novel
• a venting session with my journal
• a mini temper tantrum, often involving some pillow-punching
• some time away from any and all technology
• sweatpants
• a good, hard cry

Sound familiar? How often do you reach for food when you really need something else?

In May, I had the pleasure of interviewing Mary NurrieStearns, a licensed clinical social worker, yoga teacher and co-author of Yoga for Anxiety: Meditations and Practices for Calming Body and Mind, for an article on self-help strategies for anxiety on Psych Central. Today I wanted to share with you some of the tidbits that didn’t make it into the piece, which may be very helpful.

According to Mary, in addition to the health and anxiety-calming benefits, “Yoga connects us. When we connect, we feel more real. Yoga calms and quiets us. We feel good. And I think when we feel good in our body, it’s somehow a reflection of our basic goodness. We’re meant to connect to that.”

Whenever I daydream about an upcoming event, say a vacation or my high school reunion (which I probably won’t be going to anyway), I’m always thinner and very fit. I have sculpted arms, muscular legs and am a few pounds lighter.

I used to have these same dreams when my body image struggles were at an apex.

Some nights, I lie in bed listing off what I ate that day or that week (like I just did when my family was in town from NYC).

Some days, I tug at my clothes to check for tightness. And if they’re feeling tighter, I may sulk and sulk and sulk.

Every Monday features a tip, exercise, inspiring quote or other tidbit to help boost your body image. For many of us, Mondays are tough. We may feel anxious and stressed out, anticipating an arduous week, especially if we didn’t get much rest and relaxation during the weekend. These kinds of feelings don’t create the best environment for improving one’s body image. In fact, you might be harder on yourself and easily frustrated. You might even feel like you’re walking on egg shells – with yourself! With these posts, I hope you’ll have a healthier and happier body image day, that’ll last throughout the week.

Got a tip for improving body image? Email me at mtartakovsky@gmail.com, and I’ll be happy to feature it. It can be anything you do that’s healthy and helps boost your body image. I’d love to hear from you!

Recently I purchased the book Operation Beautiful: Transforming the Way You See Yourself One Post-it Note at a Time by Caitlin Boyle. If you remember I wrote a post in celebration of the book release. For those of you who don’t know, Operation Beautiful is a body-positive movement where people leave inspiring notes – such as “You are beautiful” and “You are amazing just the way you are” – in random places for others to find.

Today, I wanted to share with you a few excerpts from the book that I found especially uplifting – and I think you will, too!