My 20-year journey of accepting my body. How I learned to love myself?

Happy February! This month of blogging I am dedicating to self-love, self-care, and self-acceptance. This is why I decided to start with the blog post about my journey of accepting my body, what I overcame in the last two decades, and lessons I learned about self-love and body positivity.

My journey to self-love and self-acceptance

I wasn’t sure if I wanted to write about it but since I moved to the US, I gained 20 pounds (10kg). Last year, I started working out and I did it religiously 2 times a week on top of the hard physical work and walking daily to and from work. At that time I lost 10 pounds and felt great, I had to lose 10 more to feel better.

I didn’t do it to look sexy or to be skinny, although I did look better than before. I wanted to be healthier and more active because I am getting older and my health is extremely important to me.

However, when I got my visa in July, my routine just vanished and it was hard to get back on track when I finally moved to the US in August 2021. It was extremely devastating. I started the 365 days to glow up challenge thinking it would help me to get unstuck physically but I was still not active enough. I knew I gained weight but didn’t know how much.

A few weeks ago, I decided to finally face the truth and was shocked when I saw the number. I gained 20 pounds! Are you serious? But something else has happened, I didn’t hate myself for it. As I said, I knew I gained weight, some of my clothes didn’t fit anymore but I was not angry at myself, I still wanted to take care of my body, take care of myself and treat myself nicely.

As someone who has been bullied for my body by my relatives and people outside of my family, every time I felt uncomfortable in my body or I felt that I didn’t fit into the current beauty standards (both occurred extremely often), I used to hate myself more, I would start eating more and then I would hate myself even more.

It’s a mental cycle that is hard to break. And I am not going to explain why I didn’t start exercising or didn’t stop listening to anyone. When I started getting hate from the relatives I was 12 years old, 12! This is insane how early we are put under pressure. To make things worse, I was also bullied by my schoolmates and later in my second college in Belgium too.

I am in no way a psychologist, a therapist, or a professional. The self-love and self-acceptance journey is extremely hard and painful. We have to remember that on the other side of self-love is self-hate and it is a very deep ditch. Not everyone can get out.

These are the things that keep helping me on the journey to loving my body, this is my experience. Please, go to a therapist if it’s needed. In the emergency case, please, call 911 or a National Suicide Prevention Line 800-273-8255. If you are being bullied, visit Stop Bullying now.

Accept yourself as you are. Good and bad

The first thing I consciously did was that I accepted myself for who I am as well as my body and my face. I cannot be anyone else but myself. And while, yes, I can change my personality, become better, I can also lose weight but I cannot wake up a completely different-looking person with the opposite features to mine. This is the truth.

Of course, we can do plastic surgery and “adjust” the way we look but I don’t want to go under the knife just to satisfy someone’s preferences. I did have a lip injection but it gave me absolutely nothing except the fact that my lips looked fuller for a few months. It did not make me happy.

Something else I realized was that I am everyone else before me. All the women and men in our family – I am them and I am so proud to be me.

I know not everyone wants to be associated with their family or not everyone even knows their family. I have a few people in my family who I just want to forget about but I also want to remember people I love and those who are no longer here. When I see myself in the mirror I am their reflection.

Write down things you love about yourself

Another thing I still keep doing when I feel down is writing things that I love about myself. It can be anything but I usually start with physical traits and then write down the characteristics I love.

I also write daily intentions in the morning and usually I finish with the following line “I love and respect myself“.

Write down things you want to change

Something else that helps me on my self-love journey is to have a healthy perspective on myself and my body is analyzing my current situation and learning about the ways I can change it if I want to.

For example, I gained weight and I know I need to lose it:

• Can I change it? Yes
• How will I change it? By switching to healtier foods and moving and exercising more
• Do I want to change it? Yes

Have a plan

Firstly, I want to say that if you want to change something in yourself have a plan of when you’re going to do it. Let’s go to my example of me willing to lose weight:

• How can I lose weight? By exercising twice a week 20-30 minutes a day, by moving and eating healthier foods
• When will I do? I will exercise on Tuesdays and Thursdays, I will move more daily and I will be eating healthier foods every day.

This is how you make your plan – precise, realistic and you just stick to it. If you fail, do it all over again. Consistency and small steps are the keys to success.

When it actually comes to going into the space of self-acceptance, still have a plan. It’s daily work, primarily mental. Ask yourself the following questions:

• Do I need to set boundries with certain people? What will I tell them? Will I have a conversation or will exclude them from my life?
• What will make me happy and comfortable on my self-love and self-acceptance journey? Being outside more? Spending time with my family or friends? Going to therapy?
• Are there any hobies that will distract me from self-hate?
• Are there any books, movies or songs that will teach me how to love myself?
• Do I need to do daily or weekly self-reflection and shadow work to identiify what tirggers me, my traumas?
• If so, when and how will I do it? Will I be safe doing it?

Make sure you feel prepared and are in a safe place when doing self-reflection and going to the root of the issues. Shadow work is a hard process that involves a lot of tears and realizations. Again, if you’re not ready, seek professional help.

Start working on your beliefs and inner traumas

I mentioned it briefly in the last paragraph, but self-reflection and shadow work really helped me to understand what caused my self-hate. I kept asking myself questions like:

• Do I really want to be that skinny?
• Why don’t Iike the following features in myself?
• Why do I want to change this or that?
• Why am I unhappy?

Therapy and healing

I strongly believe that if I knew what was happening to me was wrong, and I’d go to a therapist, I would be way happier faster. If you have a chance, extra money, and a desire to have therapy, I strongly recommend doing so.

My journey of accepting my body and myself included the following healing practices:

• Journaling
• Self-reflection and shadow work
• Self-care like simply giving myelf space to do nothing, taking care of my body and my face
• Self-portraits aka selfies
• Having a bunch of hobbies that made me happy like art journaling and jewelry making
• Exploring and being in nature
• Dressing up
• Self-love and self-acceptance affirmations
• Reminding myself I am more than my body and my face

Surround yourself with the right people

One of my biggest pet peeves is when some people try to bring others down or themselves by criticizing the way they look. I personally still struggle with it. Sometimes I can call myself ugly. Usually, it’s somewhere on the edge of being a joke but we know that every joke has some truth to it. So I am working on it.

But my point is that no one in my group is allowed to say anything humiliating about the way I look or about the way others look. I have a few friends but I know that they will support me no matter what and I will do the same for them.

And to be frank, I am yet to meet an ugly person. Don’t allow current standards to dictate how you feel about yourself. Even on social media try to avoid anyone who can be triggering and impact you in a negative way.

Surround yourself with people who truly love and support you and avoid anyone who shows their love and respect for you based on how you look.

Learn more about yourself and what you like

Something else that helped me a lot on a journey to loving my body was learning more about myself and what I truly love to do. I discovered that I am quite creative, I love art, I am organized and opinionated, I am good at noticing mistakes and not afraid to let someone know if something is wrong and I can be the first to speak up.

I did it through spending a lot of time on my own, journaling, reflecting, spending time in nature, watching a lot of movies, reading, and listening to nice music.

I also learned about myself through astrology, personality tests such as 16 personalities, and SWOT analysis. The latter two thanks to my college, actually!

The more you learn about yourself, the more amazing things you will find out about your personality. For me personally, knowing that I love who I am as a person also translates to loving my body, my face, and my physical features.

On top of that, I highly recommend learning more about your body, what it is capable of, and its limits. Learn what your body likes in terms of self-care, food, nutrition, and other pleasures.

• Maybe certain scrabs and oils?
• What about food? How do you feel after eating particular foods?
• And drinks? Do you feel great after drinking water and maybe bad after drinking coffee or alcohol?
• Do you need vitamins? If so, go check your blood and get needed vitamins.

Let go of everything that doesn’t have a good impact on you and keep listening to your body and its needs.

Remember this

In conclusion, I want to say that no matter how much you weigh, how you look, what skin color you have, what nationality you are – you are beautiful! I know it might sound pathetic, but it is true. And while society is trying to tell us that beauty can be only one way or another, I am here to tell you that beauty comes from inside first.

I always said it and will continue saying it – someone can be the most beautiful person from outside but with the wrong intentions and a hateful heart, they’re only that – a beautiful package and nothing more.

People can always lose weight, clear their skin, fix their teeth but fixing an ugly heart is the hardest thing ever. But on top of that, the world is so big and we are lucky to live on the planet with different people and witness so much beauty around us. Beauty comes in different shapes, colors, sizes, and don’t let anyone ever fool you that it is not true!

My journey to loving my body is not complete yet but I keep reminding myself of an amazing line from Janelle Monae’s iconic song “even if it makes others uncomfortable I will love who I am” and you should too 🤍