Hey guys! My name is Rini Frey and I am a 29-year old online educator and content creator from Calgary, Alberta (which is Canada, for those of you rubbish at Geography).
I started blogging when I was in recovery from a 12-year battle with eating disorders and disordered eating and started sharing my story on Instagram.
As my following grew, I started mentoring people from all around the world as they were healing their relationships with their bodies. Today, I host a podcast alongside my content on Instagram and my blog and I run an online program for people that need more guidance and support regarding their body image.
My job is basically to get everyone accepting their bodies, appreciating it for what it can do, and discover that life is about SO much more than counting calories and trying to shrink yourself.
Why you don’t have to change your body to love yourself
One of our brain’s main jobs is to find evidence as to why our thoughts are true. When you constantly think about needing to lose weight or how much you dislike your body, your brain will constantly look for evidence to justify these thoughts. You’ll basically start feeling like crap all the time. Changing the way we think is not easy, especially when we might have been thinking negatively about our bodies for years, but it is the most crucial part of learning to love ourselves.
So many of us think that if we lose x pounds in weight, we will be able to be happy, and do all kinds of stuff we think we can’t do when we weigh x much. This is what we need to change.
How you speak to yourself becomes your reality
Our minds are powerful. I have always been the owner of the same body, but the mindset has completely changed to bring me happiness around body image. We can make or break ourselves with the words we use, because they make up our self-perception. Constantly punishing ourselves over food will never result in a happy body image.
Recovery comes with bad body image days
People assume that once you are recovered from an eating disorder or a pattern of disordered eating, you are never going to be triggered ever again or go back to dieting and restriction, because you are better now. This of course is not true.
The truth is that the temptation is there, because diet talk is ALL AROUND US. Our co-workers, friends, and family might be on some diet or taking part in a new exercise regime that they are always talking about and it’s really easy to beat ourselves up for not participating.
On days like this, I like to take a piece of paper and really reframe my thoughts to gain perspective. I write down what the negative thought is that is pushing me to participate and then write something extremely positive underneath it.
How I reframe my thoughts to create a positive body image
When I am in a negative headspace and think to myself
“you are such a hypocrite, you are not recovered and you should try to lose weight”
I turn this thought around into
“you are compassionate, loving and worthy of taking up space”.
The more we train our mindset to be kind and positive, the easier it becomes to be an ally to our body, not an enemy.
Why we deserve to be our own best friend
Being mean to ourselves gets us nowhere, and beating ourselves up over how we look can quickly take over every aspect of our lives. Instead of this, try to think about and focus on how awesome of a person you are besides your body, how deserving you are of taking up the space you occupy on the planet and how much beauty and kindness there is in the world.
It might sound easier said than done, but by checking in on yourself and your thoughts more regularly, you might notice a pattern. This is when you can start reprogramming your thoughts around food using exercises like the one above, and kickstart your journey towards healing your body image. I am not saying you will feel comfortable in your skin overnight, but one day soon, you WILL start to feel happier both in your own skin and with your life in general.
All you need to do is start
Start being aware of how you think about yourself and start shifting your thoughts into something positive and joyful.
You deserve to take up space and be YOU, my friend.
You can check out Rini’s blog Own it Babe, here. If you feel like you are struggling with your body image or have anything else going on that you want to talk about, you can talk with someone anonymously in the Ditch the Label Community here.
