Nature, An Infallible Remedy Against An Unattainable Ideal

Did you start the year with the beautiful intention of losing five kilos or regain size 40? Have you decided to go to the gym every day to sculpt your arms or your abdomen? Surely now that the end of January is approaching, the good resolutions have been fading or posing again in the depths of your hippocampus, we almost don’t even remember.

If for the umpteenth time you are trying to accept how difficult it is to battle against your own body and its habits, it will be good for you to know that the healthiest thing we can do is change our gaze towards the body. Surely what will make you feel infinitely better is not to lose those kilos but to transform what you say to yourself and, above all, to think of yourself with gratitude.

Stop criticizing your body! is the advice of Pamela Keel, a professor at the University of Florida. His research team has tried a simple program that encourages acceptance of the body and has obtained spectacular results.

Keel is an expert in dissatisfaction with body image, that ubiquitous problem in the West and especially among young women. As Naomi Wolf explained in her classic book The Myth of Beauty, in the last 35 years, the ideal body type, repeatedly shown in media images, has become practically unattainable for most people.

The average height of models and misses has decreased dramatically since the 1970s and does not appear to have recovered yet.

“There is a big gap between what appears to us as ideal to aspire to and where we really like people” , says Keel. “That makes people, especially women, feel bad about themselves and, unfortunately, feeling bad about one’s own body doesn’t really motivate healthy behavior.”

The Body Project, reprogram yourself to love yourself more

To help people feel better about themselves they have developed and adapted a cognitive restructuring and behavioral exposure program called “The Body Project” with other researchers from the Universities of Oregon and Texas.

It is about exposing yourself in front of the mirror with little or no clothes, something that can initially be very uncomfortable, and naming the positive aspects. Things like being grateful that your legs take you where you need them on a daily basis.

Would you say: “I really appreciate how my legs take me wherever I need to go. Every day, without exception, they get me out of bed, go up the stairs, take me to the subway and then enter the University. I don’t have to worry about walk”. Another person may appreciate the appearance of a body feature such as skin or the shape of the shoulders or neck.

The key is to be grateful for all that the body does well for itself, celebrate that it can dance, run, or caress.

This approach, by focusing on the positives rather than highlighting the negatives, helps transform people’s feelings about their bodies. Although it seems very forced, really the message you send to your body is a powerful tool for change.

The more you appreciate and accept it, the easier it will be to take care of yourself and feel good. It reminds me of the wise words of a dear friend: “never, never speak ill of yourself or your body.”

In the same project, they also encourage people with difficulties to do specific activities that they usually avoid, such as not going swimming in summer or not wearing shorts in hot weather. “Most people experience a sense of freedom when they realize that nothing bad happens if they wear a bathing suit or shorts in public: everyone agrees completely with this. This reinforces acceptance of the body through the experience”.

Keel said research has found the strategies work, and the benefits go beyond improving body image.

“Discarding those unattainable bodily ideals improves your mood, your self-esteem, reduces the alteration of eating behavior and the risk of self-destructive behaviors.”

Going a little further, another article just published in Body Image magazine has collected five different studies that show how being outdoors or walking in nature directly helps you feel better about your body image.

Being outdoors in natural settings has already been shown to improve mental and physical health, but this new research shows that exposure to those natural settings can also promote a positive body image and be more critical of the cultural ideal. Simply spending time in a natural environment resulted in a significantly higher body appreciation.

According to Viren Swami, Professor of Social Psychology at Anglia University: “An environment that does not require full attention can provide people with cognitive reassurance, which in turn can foster self-compassion, respect their body and appreciate it as part of an ecosystem. broader that requires protection and care. Exposure to natural environments with depth and complexity may restrain negative thoughts related to appearance. More specifically, natural environments hold your attention effortlessly, a process known as’ gentle fascination. This it is often accompanied by sensations of pleasure, such as when you are attracted to the vision of the sunset ”.

Being in the forest or in the field you stop worrying about your size or your kilos, your attention spontaneously goes to other places and finally the result is more pleasure and well-being and satisfaction with your own body.

I said: stop thinking about how to crush your body this year. Instead thank him for all the enjoyment he can give you and take the opportunity to go out to the field, forest or mountain whenever you can. The results are immediate!