How to Accept Your Body and Show it Gratitude

The Emotional Eating (and Everything Else) Podcast

It's Thanksgiving week here in the US, and that always brings up the topic of gratitude. Last season at this time, I did an episode called "Giving Thanks for Two Things We Love to Hate" (the two things being our body and our emotional eating behaviors), and this season I'm doing something similar. But this time, I'm just focusing on giving thanks to your body.

Since most of us tend to be at least mildly critical of our bodies, I think there's always a need for talking about showing them gratitude. My guess is, even if you listened to last year's podcast and dozens of others just like it, you didn't do a complete 180 on how you feel about your body (but if you did, woo-hoo!).

The feelings and beliefs our parts carry about our bodies run deep. And since we've all grown-up with a barrage of messages teaching us to hate our bodies, I think we need a barrage of messages teaching us how to accept them.

And part of acceptance is gratitude.

Since I like to try to sound intelligent, I googled the word gratitude so that I could quote the exact meaning. Here it is: "the quality of being thankful; readiness to show appreciation for and to return kindness."

I have to say, I didn't think that the Oxford dictionary would include the word kindness when it defined gratitude, but I love that it did. So in addition to showing your body acceptance and gratitude, let's add kindness in there too.

It sounds so simple doesn't it? Maybe it can be.

On this week's podcast, we're talking about how to show your body gratitude. And that doesn't mean standing in front of the mirror and saying things that you know you're supposed to say to yourself but that you don't mean. There's nothing about that that's helpful.

Instead, we're talking about how to truly show your body some gratitude. And we're checking in with our parts while we're doing it.

All bodies deserve respect, gratitude, acceptance, and kindness. And if those are something that you struggle with, this is the episode for you. Take a listen!

Where to find me:

Therapy website: drkimdaniels.com

Coaching website: yourweightisnotyourworth.com

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