Every Monday features a tip, activity, inspiring quote or some other tidbit to help boost your body image – and kick-start the week on a positive note!

Got a tip for improving body image? Email me at mtartakovsky at gmail dot com, and I’ll be happy to feature it. I’d love to hear from you!

How do you respond when your daughter says: “I have such huge thighs, I hate them!” Or what do you do when she’s clearly wearing something that just doesn’t work?

And better yet, how do you help her cultivate a healthy body image in an appearance- and thin-obsessed society?

While it might seem impossible, there are many things you can do.

Recently, I was re-reading Dara Chadwick’s You’d Be So Pretty If…Teaching Our Daughters to Love Their Bodies-Even When We Don’t Love Our Own, and found some fantastic advice for  the “tricky body moments that sometimes crop up.”

As Dara writes, “Mothers are powerful. What we say about our bodies-and those of our daughters-has a lasting effect on the way they see themselves.”

• Watch your words. For years, I was totally 100 percent guilty of this: saying disparaging remarks about my body (and anything about myself for that matter). But here’s the thing: Your daughter is listening and watching. As Dara says, “if your daughter is in the room, think of her, and bite your tongue.”
• Question your questions. What the heck do you say if your daughter says “Are my legs fat?” or “Do these pants make my butt look big?” Dara suggests turning it around and asking what your daughter thinks. “By probing a little, you may be able to find out what she needs to hear.”
• Try a little time-travel. “Before you unleash a criticism of what she’s wearing or even the slightest comment about her body, stop, close your eyes and remember what is was like to be an adolescent.”
• Spread it around. There’s nothing wrong with praising your daughter’s or someone else’s appearance. But “just remember to dole it our fairly and not make your praise about appearance all the time for …
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Self-compassion is not easy to come by for many of us. Instead, our default reaction is to blame ourselves, lash out (again at ourselves) and possibly keep asking, “what is wrong with me?”

But cultivating self-compassion is exactly what we need, especially when it comes to facing tough times – and my not-so favorite activity of feeling your feelings.

When we’re unable to cope healthfully with emotions, we stuff them down. We might stuff them down with food or excessive exercise or other unhealthy habits.

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There have been many moments when I’ve thought, why did I throw away so many years on yo-yo dieting and yo-yo exercise? On fat talk and the fallacy of thinness. On letting others’ opinions of me steer my self-esteem and my life.

Why did I let the shame of not being skinny, of deep insecurities affect how others treated me?

In other words, why did I let people treat me like crap? And, just as important, why did I let myself do the same?

Often I wonder, what the heck was I thinking?

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On Monday’s post about the myths we create, Katie, from the always eloquent and thought-provoking blog Health for the Whole Self, left the following comment:

“I think the biggest lie I told myself was that I would only be accepted if I were thinner. I was convinced that being skinny = acceptance, and that I would be negatively judged to no end if I weren’t a size whatever. It’s silly, really, and yet it all stemmed from a deep longing to feel worthy, to feel good enough. Fortunately now I know that all of that has NOTHING to do with what I weigh.”

I see myself clearly in her words.

What particularly sparked the strong connection was this sentence: “I was convinced that being skinny = acceptance, and that I would be negatively judged to no end if I weren’t a size whatever.”

That’s because to me, thinness, too, meant approval. It gave me the permission to be present. It meant that I didn’t have to apologize for not being skinny enough, because I would be skinny enough.

Mondays can be rough for many of us, and this doesn’t create the ideal environment for building a better body image. To help you turn that around, every Monday features a tip, activity, inspiring quote or some other tidbit to help boost your body image – and kick-start the week on a positive note.

Got a tip for improving body image? Email me at mtartakovsky at gmail dot com, and I’ll be happy to feature it. I’d love to hear from you!

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A negative body image is insidious, especially when it comes to the myths and misconceptions we create in our minds.

Especially when we start to accept the insults, the self-criticism and the warped standards as truths.

Today, I’m honored to present a guest post by Elizabeth P, an accomplished woman who’s recovered from anorexia. (See below for her bio.)

In this poignant post, Elizabeth discusses the difficulty of recovering in a weight- and appearance-centric society and the temptation she faces to get on the scale.

Thank you so much, Elizabeth, for your beautiful and honest post!

My Dilemma

Every time I go over to a friend’s apartment I am faced with a dilemma.

Inevitably, at some point in the evening, I have to excuse myself to use my friend’s restroom.  More often than not, upon opening the bathroom door, I find myself face to face with what for the recovering disordered eater constitutes nothing less than the barrel of a cocked gun: the bathroom scale.

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My stomach used to be the bane of my existence.

I constantly thought that it protruded out so much that I looked pregnant. It was flabby, bloated and too round.

I also used to compare myself to just about anyone – especially when it came to my stomach. I couldn’t help but pay attention to other girls’ flat, and in my mind, perfectly sculpted abs.

Somehow in my thinking process, flat abs became a fun and satisfying life.

In How to Train a Wild Elephant & Other Adventures in Mindfulness: Simple Daily Mindfulness Practices for Living Life More Fully & Joyfully*, Jan Chozen Bays, M.D., writes “Just as an untamed elephant can do damage, trampling crops and injuring people, so the untamed, capricious mind can cause harm to us and those around us.”

Boy, can I relate. When I was in a body image black hole, my mind would run with mean thoughts. I’d become one big, clenched ball of self-criticism, anxiety, tension and negativity.

Can you relate?