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!

We talk a lot about improving our own body image and learning to love our bodies, but why not spread the wealth? Why not brighten someone else’s body image, too?

Today, I’m thrilled to present my interview with Golda Poretsky. If you remember, Golda owns and operates Body Love Wellness and she helps people love their bodies and ditch the diet mentality.

I think she’s a wonderful person who’s doing fantastic work. I’ve referred to her work countless times here on Weightless (umm, just this week!). And her free teleclasses are awesome.

Golda’s book, Stop Dieting Now: 25 Reasons To Stop, 25 Ways To Heal, was recently published (I actually talked about it here), and below we talked all about that, the myths about dieting and intuitive eating and letting go of the diet mentality. I think the book provides tons of great insight – reasons that I would’ve never even thought of – and very valuable tips.

I still have a hard time “justifying” a workout that isn’t grueling. Don’t get me wrong, I love challenging my body and getting a heart-pumping, strength-training workout. It’s an elixir for my anxiety. And many times, it’s fun.

But it’s not always what my body requests.

If I’m stretching or doing something else less rigorous, I wonder if I should be pushing myself more. I wonder if I’m making the best use of my time. Am I truly being efficient?

I can also hear women’s fitness magazines in my mind, scolding me.

I’ve addressed the topic of men, boys and body image before on Weightless (check out my interviews with eating disorder survivor and advocate Patrick Bergstrom and author of Making Weight: Healing Men’s Conflicts with Food, Weight and Shape Leigh Cohn, parts 1 and 2).

Recently, I had the pleasure of emailing with Roberto Olivardia, Ph.D., a clinical psychologist, instructor in the Department of Psychiatry at Harvard Medical School and co-author of The Adonis Complex: How to Identify, Treat and Prevent Body Obsession in Men and Boys.

According to Olivardia, “Many more men struggle with body image concerns than people think. Men represent 1 in 16 eating disorder individuals, 50 percent of people with body dysmorphic disorder, about 15 percent of cosmetic surgery patients, and almost all steroid users.”

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!

A few weeks ago, I had the pleasure of taking another free teleclass from Golda Poretsky, an amazing body image advocate and coach. Golda owns and operates Body Love Wellness where she helps clients create a positive relationship with their bodies.

This teleclass was all about learning how to feel good in our skin. I’ve written before about regularly feeling uncomfortable in my own skin. There were many times that I’d experience this heavy feeling of frustration envelope me. It consumed me. And my body didn’t feel like my own. And there were many days that I hated my body. And just couldn’t shake that shameful feeling of not being thin enough.

Today, I’m pleased to present my interview with Jeanne Courtney, MFT, a Health at Every Size SM practitioner, who helps women of all sizes learn to love their bodies.

Below, Jeanne talks about everything from the grief process of giving up weight-loss goals to her favorite body image tips to finding fun ways to move your body.

I’ve written before about the travesty that is airbrushed images. The Ralph Lauren debacle particularly sticks out in my mind.

And apparently “Photoshop” goes way back – about 25 centuries to be exact. Just the other day I read an article in Psychologies about how the ancient Greek artist Zeuxis created an image of Helen of Troy by combining the features of five different models.

The writer referred to this as a “primitive form of Photoshopping,” writing that “our culture has become fixated with an ideal of physical faultlessness so detached from reality that reality itself has begun to look peculiar.”

Yesterday, I read a post on The Cut that defended airbrushing images. The writer, Amanda Fortini, says that our concerns with Photoshopped images are less about self-esteem and the potential harm these images are doing to girls and more – lots more – about knowing that celebrities are just like us: imperfections, and all. And do any of us really believe that they’re real images in the first place?