Nothing drives me more crazy than listening to women complain about their bodies. Like seriously, I have a visceral reaction whenever I hear phrases like “My thighs are too fat.” “I’m only eating celery this week because I have a big date.” Not only do you sound ridiculous when you speak like this, but what exactly are you expecting from your friends when you speak like this?
I was always that pudgy wannabe athletic kid. Although I played outside frequently and, in middle/high school played two seasons of sports, I was always a little pudgy because I loved food.
Later on during my first job, with the help of sales reps who wanted me to buy stuff off of them, I developed a penchant for wine, fine dining, and drinking into the wee hours several times a week. Before I knew it my 5’6 frame was carrying close to 200 pounds. In the years that followed, like many women, I developed a hatred for my body: punishing it with extreme diets, juice fasts, over training, over eating, and self-loathing whenever I looked at myself in the mirror.
Over the last ten years I’ve been down to my lowest of 145 pounds because of the Master Cleanse: living off of lemon water and giving myself reverse enemas with salt water twice daily, to tipping the scale at nearly 200 because of foie gras at lunch, beer during happy hour, and the comfort of General Tso after a hard day of drinking, when my activity level was that of a sloth.
And in each of those times of extreme thinness or fatness I always found something wrong with my body.
I no longer live like that. In my 30+ years on the planet, I’ve found ways that make me love my body. Here they are:
1. I don’t diet/ exercise to lose weight. I work out and eat right to feel good about myself. By feeling good about myself, I don’t mean in order to keep myself in my skinny jeans. Actually fitting into your skinny jeans is a byproduct when you eat and live a healthy lifestyle. I’m prone to depression and I find that the better I eat, i.e. lots of fresh fruits, vegetables & lean proteins and less refined foods and the more I exercise, the better I feel.
I sleep better, my skin looks better, and I have greater mental clarity. I’m actually a whole lot nicer of a person when I’m eating well and exercising often. This isn’t to say that there aren’t weeks when work is crazy, I’m entertaining clients and I’m living off of take out for days at a time, those days still happen too. But I keep track of how living like that affects my mood. And you will not believe what makes me more excited to go back to incorporating lots of fresh veggies and finding time for exercise: feeling better vs. the idea of putting myself on a restrictive diet.
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2. I found two body parts that I am in LOVE with. I have such a high opinion of these parts that I believe with all of my heart that Gisele Bundchen doesn’t hold a candle to my tits and ass. On days when I’m feeling kinda sluggish and not at the epitome of hotness (because we all feel like that sometimes), I’ll actually stare at myself naked in the mirror and concentrate on those two areas so this is all I see. This is especially important for those times when we’re not feeling super hot.
Why should you care when your tummy is looking a bit more rounded right now when you are instead noticing that hot ass. I’ll even take this a step further and make porn poses in the mirror to make sure my parts are properly accentuated. Every women has at least one part that she loves. Find yours.
3. I own a ridiculously expensive piece of lingerie (try $160 for a pair of panties) and lot of other not so ridiculously expensive pieces. I bought it all myself. Beautiful lingerie, especially pieces that you bought yourself and aren’t associated with ex boyfriends, does wonders for a woman’s self-esteem.
Great lingerie accentuates your best features, while minimizing your not-so-great features and can make a woman feel incredibly beautiful and sexy. You would not believe how the right bra and panties that hug your booty just so can make you look 15 pounds thinner. For an added bonus? Wear it on a date! Even if you’re not at the stage where you’re getting naked, knowing that you’re wearing something beautiful underneath your clothes will make you actualize the goddess that you are.
4. Invest in a proper bra fitting. The right bra will make you look and feel like you lost 15 pounds. A byproduct is that is makes you feel incredibly sexy. It fixes your posture instantaneously, makes you lose back fat, and your monoboob will become two separate beautiful breasts. I go bra shopping at specialty places where their jobs is to help you find the right bra.
5. Take sexy selfies to both keep yourself and to send them to (trusted) lovers/ friends. After I went on a lingerie spree, I took a couple of artful selfies with my iPhone and sent them to former lovers whom I sometimes still flirt with. If you have a boyfriend, even better—send it to him at work! A beautiful selfie, artfully taken, can make any of us look like models, especially when the light is soft. Keep these images on hand to remind yourself that you are hot!
6. Never complain to a lover about your weight or body image, even if you aren’t feeling it when you’re naked, act like the sexiest woman in the world. Men will follow suit. I’ve dated and slept with men who were thinner than I am and larger than I. Actually, as I’m writing this I’m waiting for my FWB to come over whose waist line is nearly half of mine. Do I care? Honestly, a little before we get down to business it is a bit intimidating. But then I tell myself that he thinks of me as the sexiest woman in the world when we’re together. And it works.
He’s actually told me that I am his most fun lover because he can tell I’m comfortable about my body and it comes through when we have sex. I actually spoke with a few male friends and lovers about this phenomenon, and countless men told me that they would rather have a girl with a few extra pounds who was fun and confident in bed than a thin girl who was self-conscious and couldn’t enjoy herself. Sex is fun and when we realize how beautiful we are, it becomes even more so.
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– SHANNYN MARIE
