Body Love at Any Age

11 years ago these pictures wouldn’t exist. In fact, I would probably never have walked around in bathing suit in public or much in private either for that matter. Body love was missing from my life. I come from a very Victorian upbringing and showing too much of anything didn’t happen much. It was even more confusing was that I was a ballet dancer, where parading was encouraged but preferably if your body was perfect.

With ballet, your body not only gets paraded, but also scrutinized, analyzed, praised, tested, all in the name of the art. Body love seems really distant when you’re in that setting. For me, having body love, in combination with my conservative background seemed unattainable. It was never good enough for me even when it was good enough for my critics. It would be easy to blame the institution of ballet, but it’s not fair for me to do that. I think I would’ve struggled with body love even if I were a stay at home Nintendo kid vs a dancer.

Acceptance for Body Love

As I sit here on the eve of my 40th (40th!) birthday, I hardly recognize myself. I’m still not perfect! So annoying 🙂 I could use breast implants, maybe my first set of of Botox or a lip augmentation. That would get me on my path to happiness, right? I think that all of those procedures, should you get them, are wonderful if they get you closer to body love. For me, I know that they wouldn’t. I would question the accuracy of the procedure, obsess about the decision and inevitable miss my old form. All in all, I would waste time & energy with these procedures.

So I sit here and accept myself. It hasn’t been an easy road to get here. I am still my own worst critic but there’s a wisdom and beauty in getting older. Perhaps these things will help you think about things differently and save you time, the most precious luxury of all.

4 Tips for Body Love

EAT

You cannot feel love and acceptance for your body until you eat well. If you are constantly depriving yourself and lusting after foods, you just can’t love yourself. It’s such a lonely, haunted experience to sit there wanting to eat this or that and feeling that you absolutely can NOT. The darkest days of my life were feeling that I was the only person in the room that couldn’t enjoy the meal served. If you feel that way now, know that you’re not alone.

Now that I’ve lived on both sides of the coin, I can sometimes spot the person or people in the room that are where I used to be. I wish that I could shake them and say “eat it, you will look, feel and perform 1000 times better!”. But I don’t . Until the person is ready to change, you can’t do it for them. I wish I could take back all the time I spent counting calories, wondering how to manipulate my next meal or how to burn X, Y & Z. With all of this time, I probably could’ve written a book, learned a language or gotten another degree. But instead I was preoccupied with what I wasn’t eating.

Try it!

So if you are reading this and having a hard time eating enough or all types of food (other than for a medical reason), just do a month. You can always go back to your old ways. Take the extra bite, eat what you crave, listen to your internal hunger cues. Eat until you are satisfied. Eat with people you love and what you love to eat. Slowly you’ll see that your thoughts about food and how your body looks diminish. You will feel nourished and your body will adjust to it’s ideal weight. If it doesn’t work, you can go back to counting and obsessing, but just remember, you don’t get that time back.

MOVE

The eating and the moving go hand in hand for body love. When you move your body, you can better regulate your mood (intricately tied to appetite), manage your stress (also appetite trigger) and work the kinks out of your mind. Get away from thinking about exercise as how you’re gonna burn calories but instead how you’re gonna learn about your body. Put it in your calendar and go work out no matter what. There are so many different ways to work out, find your dance.

Find Your Wellness Tribe

For me, the biggest transformation occurred in spending my 30’s (all of them) building MaZi Dance Fitness with my sister. I was no longer exercising to be on stage or scrutinized. I was working out because I loved it and loved sharing it. In many ways, this experience made body love possible for me.

I saw how many of us, want and fear the same things. It was very cathartic to go in a room full of people and feel their trust and their willingness to change with the workout. This trust allowed me to dominate the biggest hurdle for me: look in the mirror for an hour as I performed my workout class. I felt so supported and I know that they too felt supported and no one was judging each other on how we looked that day or that year.

Be a Mentor, Help Someone Else

Finding my dance tribe allowed me to shift the focus of my intention from me to them. That provided the freedom I needed to stop judging myself. If you don’t want to go and become a fitness instructor yourself, I would recommend that you find a supportive community to ask questions and help you be accountable! Or encourage someone wanting to begin a workout program. Another thing is to volunteer in whatever pulls at your heart strings. That is usually an immediate way to get body love because it brings about gratitude, the core of body love.

Comparison

I don’t care how perfect your body is, there is probably someone with a better body. Even Gisele felt the need to get breast implants after nursing her child! If she felt a lack of body love, what hope do we have?! Another example is my sister, with whom I share identical DNA, BTW. Her body is perfect. Super hero abs (even post baby), Nadja Auermann legs, long neck, proportionate everything, list goes on and on.

I could have from Day 1, compared myself to her and still could. After all, we have the same genes and the same ballet training and I don’t quite look like her! Not fair, right?! Wrong. I think that being sisters with one of the most perfect bodies anyone has ever seen has always helped me not compare myself to other people.How could I? If I did one thing right in the body love game, it was probably that!

Envy is Toxic

So enter social media. Not only do we have the supermodel clan to compare ourselves to, now it’s the girl next door literally and an endless list of bloggers, influencers, editors, Instagram account owner…your nemesis from junior high? Do yourself a favor and just don’t do it. But how do I do that, you ask?

You don’t know the whole story. You also don’t know what filter, plastic surgeon, photo shop app or what they did or didn’t do to look like what you’re seeing. In some cases, it can be motivational but don’t judge yourself against anyone. You can only improve what you got. And never ever forget that there are some people that would do ANYTHING to have your body,. Yes, yours. That’s YOU!

I would be dishonest if I told you that I just accepted my body and magically love it now. That’s not how it is. I work really hard. I workout most days. My diet is varied but could improve by adding more fruits and vegetables. There are some days where I don’t eat enough and others where I eat too much! I’m not perfect. The one thing I’m trying to get right is not wasting time obsessing either way. One day, like me later this week, you’ll wake up and be 40 and want all those hours back. XO, Z