Having body confidence is something that a lot of people struggle with. Body Confidence is having a good relationship with your body. It’s thinking positivity and accepting your body for what it is.
What can affect your body confidence?
- Peers; family and friends
- Media and influencers
- Stereotypes and stigma
How can body confidence affect your well-being?
Having low body confidence can lead to having low self-esteem as you feel you’re not good enough. This may come from feeling pressured, constantly comparing yourself to others and feeling guilty for eating certain foods. Also, feeling like you have to live up to certain standards of what we think is beautiful.
This can lead to stress levels rising, can develop eating disorders, losing track of who you really are as a person, can develop anxiety, depression and so on. As well as this, becoming lonely as you may end up not wanting to leave the house.
Tips and Tricks
- Practice giving yourself and others compliments
- Follow positive accounts rather than the dream body account
- Do something nice for yourself
- Wear clothes that feel comfortable and fit
- Recognize comparison
Find out why these help you with your body confidence here;
Tips To Improve Your Body Confidence
Stereotypes
- Dieting is the best way to gain body confidence
Dieting isn’t a negative thing, however, it can turn out like this if you aren’t doing it for the right reasons. Going on a diet for health reasons, if you need to gain or lose weight etc is fine but doing it because you don’t feel comfortable in your own body won’t satisfy what you’re trying to achieve.
- Toxic masculinity and femininity
We live in a society where we have improved massively in terms of moving away from the stereotypically female and male activities. For example, it’s ok for females to take part in rugby and football and males to play hockey and netball. However, there is still a long way to go and there is still toxic masculinity and femininity.
Don’t listen to what society thinks we should wear, how we should act, what sports we should play etc. If you are male and want to wear makeup then that’s fine and if you are female and don’t want to wear makeup, that’s fine as well.
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Overall, it is important to have body confidence to improve your well-being. There are a lot of ways to become more body confident and listening to your body is one of them. Overtime, if you follow the tips and tricks and find out what works for you best, you’ll be able to become more body confident. Don’t rush as it takes time.