If you’re anything like me, you’re probably your own worst critic. Somewhere along the way in your life, your confidence was shattered into a million pieces. Maybe it all happened at once or maybe it happened piece by piece from a series of events or comments. When you struggle with body image, negative comments about your body stick with you. Be real. I bet you can recall all of the negative things people have said about you. What about the positive things? Human nature focuses on the negative. These comments about our body manifest into our own inner dialogue. It’s a form of protection. If we can tell ourselves how disgusting our body looks before a stranger does somehow we think we have protected ourselves just in case that happens.
When I realized how much of this emotional weight I was carrying with me, I knew that something had to change. I knew that I had to get to the heart of WHY I used food like a drug. Through my personal development journey, I discovered journaling. Yes, journaling! Something as simple as jotting down the thoughts inside of my head became revolutionary to my body image and self-confidence.
As I prepare to launch The Irresistible You Journal on Amazon, I’ve had several questions about journaling. Many of you ask me, “How can journaling boost my body image and confidence?” In this post and podcast episode, I’m going to share 5 ways daily journaling boosts your confidence.
1. Clears the Mental Clutter
Poor body image isn’t a vanity issue. It’s an issue that infiltrates all areas of your life. When your “inner fat girl” constantly tells you how worthless you are, your mind doesn’t have space for much else. This effects your ability to be successful at work, in your relationships, and it really puts a damper on the fun you should be having in life. When you feel miserable in your own skin, these thoughts dominate your entire life. It feels like you’ll never get out from under them.
You can get out but it requires getting all of that mental clutter out of your mind
These thoughts of self-doubt dominate everything else that you have going on in your life. You need to clear out the mental clutter in order to gain clarity and peace with yourself. Journaling allows you to have a safe place, free of judgment to write down all of your inner thoughts. It’s a safe place to brain dump, and clear the mental clutter so that you can make space for who you are really meant to be.
2. Silences the Inner Fat Girl
I call all of this inner talk the “inner fat girl.” The inner fat girl can live inside of us no matter how much we weigh or what size we are. You can lose 150 lbs and still have the inner fat girl inside of you. This is the voice that will always remind you how fat you look, how much weight you still have to lose, how you’ll never have the perfect body, and how you will never be good enough no matter how many pounds you lose.
This is exactly why when I lost a ton of weight, I couldn’t 100% accept the compliments from other people. People would say, “Wow! You look amazing!” I would always say “Thank you…BUT I still have XX pounds to lose.” I also didn’t truly believe them. How could they think I look amazing when I was still fat? What if they could see what was actually under my clothes…what if they saw all the fat that came bouncing out when I took off my Spanx? Ohh, they are just being nice.
You have to silence the inner fat girl because she won’t go away just because you get to goal weight. Getting rid of that mental clutter has silenced the inner fat girl because we are making space for positivity and self-love.
3. Identifies Emotional Eating Triggers
Journaling our thoughts and emotions helps to identify the emotional eating triggers. Emotional eating is a symptom of something else going on in your life…or something you don’t want to deal with. You can look back at your journal and identify patterns that trigger emotional eating.
4. Increases Self-Awareness
Journaling increases mindfulness and self-awareness. I always start my morning by journaling. The act of writing things down allows me to be more mindful and self-aware. Increasing the self-awareness of your emotions leads to more confidence. Why? Because now you have a choice. You get to be in control of your actions instead of going through the motions without thinking about it.
5. Creates Gratitude for Your Body
Gratitude is the key to loving your body and your life. When you feel fat and miserable, you have no space for gratitude. How are you going to be grateful for your body at goal weight if you don’t feel that way now? You have to set the foundation now at any size! You might feel like there’s nothing to be grateful for because you feel so awful about your body. Start with the things that most of us take for granted. “I’m grateful that I have two working hands that allow me to type on the computer and get paid.”
Get The Irresistible You Journal now available on amazon!
The Irresistible You Journal is now available on Amazon. You can order it right now with two day free shipping with Amazon Prime. You can get a 30 day free trial of Amazon Prime here.
The Irresistible You journal will help you gain the confidence to look and feel irresistible at any weight or size. This journal is your personal self-help BFF packed with action plans, self-reflection activities, inspiring quotes, and 90 days of journaling prompts and question.
Listen To The Podcast Episode!
Tune in and listen to the Irresistible You podcast for this episode and more just like it. You can subscribe with iTunes, Stitcher, Google Music, or by using your fav podcast player and searching for Irresistible You. When you subscribe with a podcast app, you’ll get notified each time I publish a new episode.
You can also stream the episode and listen right here:
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Join the #IrresistibleYou Movement
Use the hashtag #IrresistibleYou on Instagram and across social media to show how you are creating and living an irresistible life. Use the hashtag to search for others who are going through the same journey with us! Plus, I’ll be re-posting and sharing some of my fav photos and stories.
Let’s Stay Connected!
The best place to connect and chat with me is on Instagram and my Irresistible You Facebook Group. You can also follow along on Facebook, Twitter, and Pinterest.
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Hi! I’m Aimee with 2 E’s. I'm a confidence coach that empowers women to love themselves by breaking down body image issues, so that they can lose the emotional weight and gain the confidence to look and feel irresistible...at any size.