The Thing About Self-Confidence in Weight Loss

I felt that in the beginning of my weight loss journey, my self-confidence and self-esteem were very low. When I looked in the mirror, I saw a chubby young adult who didn’t like herself at all. It was so easy for me to pick on myself and mention all the parts of my body that I hated. At times, I felt so bad about my looks, that I didn’t want anybody to take pictures of me at parties and I would rather stay at home on the couch than attend a party were other people might make fun of me.

Just before I started to lose weight, I tried this exercise where you look at yourself in the mirror every day and only say positive things about yourself and your body. As the days passed, I started to like myself more and more. I felt more comfortable in my own skin. Even though I hadn’t lost any weight yet, I started dressing differently – more colorful and bright. While in the first half of my weight loss journey, I didn’t actually feel much different, mostly because I simply couldn’t see the weight loss on my body. The scale showed that I’d lost weight, but I felt like my body didn’t show it. That actually made me lose confidence in my training and I thought about quitting. My mom and the rest of my family kept telling me, that they could see that I had lost weight, but I didn’t believe them because I couldn’t see it myself.

It was only when I got my fiancée to take some new pictures of me and I compared them to some old ones, that I realized how much weight I’d actually lost. Omg. My legs, thighs, arms, stomach and head! When I saw those before and after pictures, I also realized how chubby I was before. It made me a bit sad, but so happy that I actually managed to lose half of my goal. After that day, I suddenly became much more confident in myself. I guess I had such a hard time believing it, that I had to see ‘proof’ first. If I had just taken pictures every second week, I would have seen it earlier and spared myself the self-hating. So please, remember to take pictures of yourself, so you can document your process. You don’t have to show the pictures to anybody, just keep them for yourself – as a reminder.

Therefore, the point of this post, is that, self-confidence and self-esteem is tightly connected to our weight or what we think about ourselves. Confidence is greatly about feeling comfortable in your own skin. It doesn’t matter how you look, just what you feel about how you look. Sometimes I see people that ooze confidence and they give out this ultra-positive energy. These people have realized at some point in their lives that, when they are happy and love themselves, so will other people. I want to be one of those happy people that makes other people happy! What can we do to become one of those people?

• Be thankful for what you have
  • First you have to be thankful for what you already have and accept it. When you are thankful, you are giving out positive energy that other people will notice.

• Speak positively
  • This is important! You have to stop using negative words are speaking in that manner. Surround yourself with positive things, speak, and think about all the positive things you have. Try doing a challenge, where you do positive self-talk for seven days. You will see that it gets easier after this. You have to speak positive about yourself, your body and the rest of your life too.

• Love yourself
  • Loving yourself can be hard, especially if you have low self-esteem and you just don’t see any good or positive qualities about yourself. But you are wrong. Everybody had something, that is unique to them. Try to focus on something that you like about yourself instead of the negative, like the fact that you might have beautiful eyes. When you start looking at all the things you like about yourself, you will see that loving the rest is easier.

• Brace yourself with inspiration stuff like happy songs, quotes, art or movies
  • We are humans. Sometimes we fall and sometimes we are negative. We can’t always stay happy and laugh. You can to accept that, but we can still do our best to surround ourselves with positive things, feelings and people. Therefore, it can be a great help to listen to inspirational songs, find wallpapers or inspirational art you can hang on your walls. All this will help remind you to stay positive and strive for your goal.

• Smile more
  • Smiling can actually make you happy, even when you’re not. If you are feeling down or sad and actively want to be happy, just smile, goof around, and you’ll find yourself happy again. When you smile, it can make other people happy too. Smiling is infectious and you could make somebody’s day better just by smiling. Another benefit is that smiling makes you more attractive – so smile more and feel confident! Smiling can also lead to laughter, which is funny. Smiling just feels good, so do it 🙂