[Intro] Hello, and welcome to my podcast, Empowered to Thrive. I'm so glad you joined me today. I'm your host, Corinne Powell.

I help people find happiness, embrace courage, and experience peace of mind. If you're desperate for change and not sure how to make it happen, I'm here to guide you along the way. In this space, you'll find motivation to live a life full of joy and resilience.

We will talk all things inner wellness, with spirituality interwoven at times. Being a mom to three, parenting will definitely be a topic of conversation as well. So happy to have you.

Enjoy today's episode. 

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Hello again, friends. It's good to be back with you.

Today I want to share a little bit of my journey and how I've come to love my body. Loving my body is interwoven with actually having learned to love myself. I'm guessing many of you can relate to holding thoughts and feelings towards yourself that are negative and just plain mean.

But when it means that those thoughts become your mindset, it totally shifts the way you live life. So I want to share my story with you to inspire hope and give you motivation, knowing if I could learn to actually like what I see when I look in the mirror, then you can too. So let me begin by telling you that there was one weekend I was away with my family.

We were staying at a hotel. I was wearing a pair of booty shorts and a tank top. I passed by a full-length mirror. And here's the thing. I thought to myself, looking good. The scale told me I weighed more than I'd like to.

I hadn't been working out the way I wanted and the outfit I was wearing. Yeah, you can be sure I saw it all. So I went to the bathroom mirror to take another look.

I thought it had to be the mirror. You know how that is when some mirrors make you look different or better than others. I had never experienced this before.

In my 30-something years of living, it was the strangest feeling to see my reflection in the mirror and have nothing negative to come back with. I had always been beating myself up for something. Yeah, my self-talk, it was cruel.

But to my excitement, the second mirror, it showed the same thing. I went back and forth between the mirrors a few times to see if I would eventually see a difference, since nothing changed. I decided to stop.

Might as well enjoy the satisfaction. I figured, honestly, that this feeling wouldn't last too long. But here we are, almost two years later, and it hasn't faded.

I'm shocked and I'm thrilled to see myself this way. Now, I want to make it clear. It's not because of anything I had done to change how I looked outwardly.

Instead, it was something that changed internally. Growing up, I can remember countless times I would have thoughts about myself and my body that were downright mean. I was slightly overweight, but never more than slightly.

But you know how that is when we see ourselves through a different set of lenses than the people around us? The reflection you see when you look at the mirror isn't always what other people see. I remember growing to admire my body a lot more while I was pregnant. I accepted it.

I was at my highest weight, but I liked the fact that I was growing a baby, and somehow I saw myself through a different lens during that period of time. But that mindset did not stay after I birthed the baby. I expected myself to lose the weight and the extra belly flab, and quickly.

Because I didn't, I was constantly negatively noticing that about myself. Now, fast forward to 8 months postpartum with my child number 3. So I've had all my babies, and I'm 8 months postpartum. I dropped more of the weight that I had wanted to lose, but then I plateaued.

A few months after that, I was still determined, so I began an exercise routine, implemented healthy eating again, and I started to drop the pounds quickly. That is truly how my body works. If I exercise or eat clean, I lose weight easily.

But once I stopped my healthy routines, I could see my muscle fade and my flab return. Even though I didn't like it, guys, I was honestly doing next to nothing about it. I was having a hard time living life. Life overwhelmed me. I didn't feel up for doing anything extra.

I'm sure some of you can relate. Sometimes you just have to do the minimum to get by. When anxiety or depression or the overwhelm of life starts to set in, do what you can to keep putting one foot in front of the other. You don't have to run a marathon.

I was just needing to take care of my children, manage myself as best I could. Thinking about clean eating, daily exercise, as much as it might have benefited me, I just wasn't there. I wasn't at a place that I could take all of that on.

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[Advertaisment] I'm taking a quick pause from today's episode to share a couple opportunities with you. Doors are now open for group coaching and there's an early bird special running until Sunday, December 20th. I create a safe place for you to come and experience compassion and growth all within a small group of people who also have real life struggles.

You and I aren't the only ones. You'll get to share and learn from the comfort of your home because we meet over Zoom. More information is in the show notes.

Also, I'm running another challenge group. It'll start January 2nd and go through the 9th. It's only $15 to join and you'll receive a wealth of information and support during those seven days. Be sure to check in the show notes to find out how you can register. Now back to the episode. 

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When I first had the thought and the accompanying feeling that I like my body, it wasn't when I was looking at my best.

And I think that has been clear up until this point, but I wanted to make sure you heard it right because I was quite possibly more amazed by that fact than even you are hearing it. And now almost two years later, I can testify it has been such an incredible way to live. Not constantly thinking negatively about myself and hating on my body.

No longer am I only being kind to the person next to me and seeing the beauty in them, but I'm just being as kind to myself and seeing the beauty in me. There were so many times in the past I would look at someone with a figure that was close to mine or actually their figure could have been very different than mine. But I would think of them as so beautiful.

All along, I wasn't even thinking about my own self that way. Friends, it shouldn't be that way. You should get to love yourself fully.

There is nothing off about that. This is a learning to embrace who you are, a learning to see yourself for the beautiful person you are. It's literally letting go of the voice of the critic that wants to tell you otherwise.

So what I'm saying is not an excuse to lay around all day eating chips and cookies. It's a mindset shift. It's an internal place I'm living from that holds love and compassion for myself.

It's making an effort to think kind thoughts towards yourself. It's intentionally choosing positive self-talk. Now, I also had to learn how to nurture parts of myself, my inner child that had been used to criticism and critique all lifelong.

It has been a deliberate cultivation and intentional change. For you, if you also want to make changes, you'll need to start changing your inner narrative. In a typical day, you may want to consider what your thoughts are about yourself and your body.

If they're not kind ones, then you can start there. You can change those thoughts. You can rephrase the way you think about yourself.

Something like, I'm becoming more and more beautiful every day can help you if you think you look ugly. It's not saying you have to believe you're beautiful today, but you can believe you're becoming more and more beautiful every day. And I guarantee because beauty is in the eye of the beholder, if you want, you can see yourself as beautiful one day.

It's important to remember that your body has carried you through so much. You've experienced traumas and hardships in your lifetime. And no matter how you size them up, because no one is exempt from them, it's your body that has carried you through it all.

If you're like me, the anxiety and stress, my stomach felt the brunt of that. I used to say I had a sensitive stomach. Now I've learned. I've learned ways to take care of my body better. 

I've learned ways to change my inner dialogue. And I've learned to be more compassionate to myself. And let me tell you, my stomach feels so much better on an everyday basis. I had tried many different things, things prescribed by a doctor and not. And none of them were helping my stomach.

Letting go of toxic energy from within my body has made tremendous differences. These are the things that I want to share with you because I want you to be able to experience the beauty and the enjoyment of life that I'm tasting of. 

Now, for sure, in the process of learning how to love your body, there is an element of treating it well. And what goes into your body for sure affects it. I eat foods that are healthy for me out of both enjoyment and responsibility. I do want to love my body well, and taking care of it is a part of that.

I've been learning to listen to what my body is saying it needs. Sometimes I can tell a salad is going to be the most satisfying choice. Whether I'm hungry, I'm tired, or I'm overwhelmed, I'm paying attention to the warning signals.

I'm learning how to intuitively eat, and no matter what I choose, I'm deliberate to not let guilt get in the way. These are very basic, simple practices. They're doable for any of us, and if you're in a very overwhelming season of life, you can latch on to one thing I've said and start implementing that one thing.

It will prove effective. You don't have to implement everything I've said. In fact, if you try, you might find you don't get where you want to go.

It's better to start small and gradually build up. Two years later, I've learned that I can change the way I'm eating. I can bring in exercise routines, and I can actually maintain them.

That's not where I was two years ago, and I'm okay with that. A big piece of this is embracing yourself in the process. So I want to close by sharing, and I want to solidify this truth that to get to a place that you love yourself and your body for what it is, you must give yourself permission to make mistakes and love yourself through it all.

[Ending] I want to close by reminding your body that it's good. It's carried you through so much, and it deserves your compassion and your acceptance. I want to release courage to you as you decide how to implement change.

And until next week, I'm wishing you the very best.