30 Day Overhaul for our Brain and Negative Self-Talk

I turned on the TV at the gym one morning and the local news had a famous female blogger doing food demonstrations and touting the latest beauty and nutrition book.  It was another ridiculously slender, glammed up, pseudo-celebrity telling American women how to eat healthy and lose weight. The subtext-- that if you are not currently thin and pretty or at least working towards being thinner and prettier then you are less of a person.
[Insert Donald Trump sexist comment about fat, ugly women here.]


It's truly fascinating to consciously recognize and process every message I come across throughout the day that reinforces this unrealistic standard of female beauty- whether it is a morning news show touting healthy food hacks, or a playboy-centerfold-like cartoon my young son is watching as he
is forming beliefs about what women look like or that magazine cover I see at the checkout line with headlines like "Change your Body in No Time Flat" or "How to get a Tinier Waist." They are all around us, all the time... these subtle and sometimes not so subtle messages that make me feel like my body is not thin enough, fit enough, toned enough, muscular enough, attractive enough, good enough. That I, myself, am not enough.

To this I say, ENOUGH.

I have judged myself against these unrealistic standards my whole life. I bought into them. The constant barrage of messages about our OUTSIDES, mitigates the definitive importance of who we really are on the inside.

"It's your insides, not your outsides that count." I hear the cliche a lot but that's not where the conversation should end. Because we, as women are inundated with messages to the contrary, we need to recognize the messages when we see them-- acknowledge them and make a conscious choice not to let them effect us. We need to teach young girls developing their own body-images-- that these messages exist and they speak nothing of truth--of what is real in this world.

Instead of...
30 Day Clean Eating Overhaul - We need a 30 day overhaul of our brain and our negative-thinking about ourselves.

Instead of...
8 Week Body Makeover- We need an 8 eight week brain makeover, re-wiring ourselves to ignore the constant barrage of messages we receive about how our bodies should look.

Instead of...
Total Body Transformation Program- We need a total transformation of the way we look at ourselves and our bodies. We need to truly love ourselves regardless of our outsides.