How to love your midlife body

Weight gain. Tummies. Random hairs. 

The relationship with your midlife body can be complex.

In this episode Sara and Kate delve into the important topic of loving and appreciating your midlife  body. 
Loving your body is not about appearance; it's about making a conscious decision to treat your body with care and respect. 
Your body is unique, amazing, and worthy of care and appreciation, irrespective of societal standards. By making a deliberate choice to love and nurture your body, you can embark on a transformative journey toward greater self-acceptance, well-being, and happiness. 
And remember, you’re in a lifetime relationship with your body - so why not make it a good one?

• Talk about coaching with Kate
• Visit Kate Campion Coaching

Disclaimer: This podcast, along with associated websites and social media materials, are not intended to be a substitute for professional medical advice, diagnosis, or treatment. The views expressed are that of Sara Garska and Kate Campion, and that of our guests, respectively. It is for informational purposes only. Please consult your healthcare professional for medical questions.

Transcript

Kate: Welcome to the Midlife Spotlight podcast. I’m Kate Campion -
Sara: and I’m Sara Garska -
Kate: and we’re certified life coaches obsessed with helping you find joy in this next act of your life. Whether it’s reviving your midlife marriage, losing weight, or scratching that “what next” itch, we’re here to share our experience and expertise with you.
This podcast is a weekly dose of YOU time, where you get the tools and tricks to improve your health and happiness. Talking to you is so much fun, so thanks for tuning in. Let’s get started.
Kate: Hello and welcome to midlife spotlight, the show that helps you enjoy your next act. I'm Kate Campion. 
Sara: And I'm Sara Garska.
Kate: And in today's episode, we're going to talk about how you can love your body.
Sara: All right. Hi, Kate.
Kate: Hey.
Sara: I'm really excited to talk about this today because it's been coming up a lot. So I coach women. Not exclusively on weight loss, but enough of it that this really does come up a lot.
So today's topic is, how do you love your body?
And women are, they genuinely want to, but they just can't even imagine how they can do it. So this topic has come up so many times recently in conversations that I decided we're going to have the conversation here.
And so the question is, how can I love my body? And I know a lot of you wonder how you can possibly love your body.
You know, it sounds like a great idea, but it also sounds kind of impossible. So I've got you today.
So I'm going to give you a clear pathway to creating love for your body. And this is so worth your time.
When you truly love your body, you take better care of it. And the better you take care of your body, the better you will look and feel.
So Kate, is this something you experience or you? Or you see your clients experience it?
So what comes up for you around this subject? 
Kate: Yeah, when I was thinking about it, I was thinking about it, particularly in the context of midlife women, such as ourselves.
Because a lot of the feelings that we have about our body are connected with aging. And some of the things I thought about was, first of all, it's kind of like that feeling of lack of control over your body.
You know, some of the things like, it's just changing in ways that you can't actually have any sort of control over.
A classic example would be weight. And I've come to realize with my own weight, I used to think, oh, I'll eat anything and I just put on heaps of weight.
You know, now that I've hit this midlife stage. But actually, what I've realized for me is, I always used to just eat anything and I might put on weight, but I could lose it.
I’d would be like I'd make a decision. And then I'd lose weight and then boom, it would go. Now it just comes on as another passenger on the bus that never gets off.
So you know, there can be that sort of feeling a lack of control because you can't actually do it.
Feeling like your body's a stranger, like particularly women that may have been used to like having a flat tummy.
And then all of a sudden, like you've got this bigger tummy and you've got hairs growing out of places that never used to have hairs growing out of them before chin waxing , like saying, you know, becomes a thing that you have to do.
And it's like, this is not my body. You know, this is is not the me that I've always had.
And kind of connected with that can be a little bit of a feeling like it may have betrayed you in some way, like it's kind of like actively working against your happiness by the things that it's doing with its hormones and other stuff like that.
Sara: That's so true.
Kate: Yep. And the last one that I see is also, and it's actually in a bigger context as well as I think with a lot of midlife struggles that we have is that the fact that your body is doing these things.
You know that it's changing in a way that you can't control and so on. Actually, it just makes you really feel that you're aware of your own mortality.
You know, you're not going to be a youthful 25-year-old forever. Those days are past and that can be quite confronting as well and can make it more difficult to love because you're thinking, this is actually showing me my decline for want of to a better word.
Sara: Yeah, I think about that because I've always felt pretty invincible and like that I'm going to live forever. And as you're going through the list and I think about the little things that are happening with my body that I can't control, soo these changes, yeah, can also leave us feeling less confident about our body because like you were saying, you could control certain things when you were younger.
And now things are happening and they feel less in control. So today's episode is not about controlling things you can't control.
I'm going to approach this from a totally different way than what we typically think about when we think about loving our body.
So here's where we get it wrong. We think that loving our body means looking in the mirror and loving what we see.
And that's pretty much what we all thought. But it's not necessarily loving. And the best way I can think about loving, the best way I can explain it is if you're thinking about looking at somebody, I always think, and I know I don't want to be unfair to men, but I'm thinking about men looking at like say a Playboy magazine or something, and they're looking at these perfect bodies, everything.
There's no fat, no wiggly arms, no bellies, but that's not love. That's more lust. And so looking at a perfect body and admiring it is not love.
And so that's not what we're going for when we look in the mirror. We're not going to hold our love off till we have a perfect body because unfortunately, we're not going to have a perfect body.
Nobody does. It just isn't going to happen. And when you think about it, like when you think about making friends, you don't pick, and I'm asking you this, Kate, like you don't pick your friend because of how they look.
Kate: No.
Sara: Right. Do your friends all have to have a six pack?
Kate:  You know, all my friends at the same age and we're all going through the same things.It's hilarious. 
Sara: That's right. Like we don't care about other people. We don't love people because of their body size or their hip size or, you know, any of that. And so it's so clear when we think about it with other people. But why do we do it to ourself?
Kate: Mmm.
Sara: Yeah. And I don't know about you guys. But I didn't love my body and my teens. I mean, I, you know, I was, I don't know. I just never did. was never comfortable in my body. Not my teens, twenties, thirties, forties. It really wasn't until my fifties that I started appreciating my body.
And that's why I think I can speak on this because I did not suddenly get a perfect body like in my fifties.
Kate: Yeah.
Sara: I did lose some weight and I felt about that. But it's still, I still had a 50 year old body, now a 60 year old body. Yeah. And so most of my clients are in their 50s and 60s. And so when someone is looking at losing weight or something like that as a way that they'll finally be able to love their body, I have to remind them like, even when you lose the weight, you're still going to have your 50 year old body or 60 year old body, you're going to have the things, you know, you're going to have, I don't know, I'm holding out my arm, you can't see that. But you know, you're going to have, you might still have a belly, you might have loose skin, there's just going to be stuff.
Kate: So, and I just want to say something on that because actually when I was like thinking about this episode in your show notes and I was having a read through that, when you mention that, I was like, oh my goodness, yes, that's so true.
Like, I might lose these 20 pounds that I've gained in the last five years, but that's not going to be, like you said, a ticket to perfection, like you actually come to love and accept yourself the way that you are. And I think also the word you used that I really liked was appreciate.
Because there's always going to be something to focus on and we're never going to have those toned bellies and boobs and all other things that we had back in the day.
Sara: Yeah, and we might have some of it, but then we're going to find something else. You know, it's not like, you know, for women, you know, you might get thin, but then you're like, all of a sudden it's going to be your neck or your jawline, your hair is gray.
You know, there's just always stuff. And so that's why, like, if we have to have a perfect image in the mirror, we're never going to love our bodies.
So if loving your body isn't about what you see in the mirror, what is it about? And so what came to me is something my mom always told us about love.
She said, love is a decision. And then it really clicked with me. We have to decide, make the decision first to love our body.
And when you make a decision to love your body, you start treating your body better. That's how you love your body.
That's the formula. And this is the only way to truly create the results you want. You cannot hate your body into looking the way you want.
Hating is a destructive force, it will literally cause you to ruin your body. And so I'm going put it very simply.
Loving your body is a decision. It doesn't just happen. And here's where we go wrong. We think, like as I've said, we need to change our body before we can love it.
When we look in the mirror and we can't see any way of loving the body that we're currently living in, we just don't take care of it as well.
So we say no, thank you. I'm not loving this body. Well, maybe I would if I lost 5, 10, 25, 50 pounds or more, then I might consider loving it.
But since we're midlife women, you know that even if you lose the weight you're not going to have, you might have a thinner body, but you're still going to have a midlife body.
And we've talked about that. So I'm not going to go over all that again. But I also want to point out because I've had women say this to me like, oh, I envy thin women because they don't have any of this body hate.
You're nodding your head. It's like, and we both know that's not true either. It's like, yeah, just in case you think that thin women love their bodies, they don't.
They don't love them any more than we do. Even thin women hate their bodies. Sometimes they hate their bodies even more.
There is no abuse, quite like the abuse that some thin women can put their body through to remain thin.
And that's not love. So I really want to just clarify, being thin does not mean you love your body more.
It's just they're two separate things. All right.
Kate: Yeah well a couple of things that I'm thinking of that you're talking about is just first of all this idea that you can't hate, you said something about you can't hate yourself
Sara:. Yeah, you can't hate your body into making changes. Like if you're trying to eat healthier exercise. All that stuff. You might get a little bit of traction with hate at the beginning, but it is not going to sustain you.
It just is not going to get you where you want to go. 
Kate: Yeah, that's right. can't hate your body into looking the way you want either.
I'm thinking about, for example, our children and our partners and things like that. Imagine if we took that same approach. I'm just going to hate on that thing that you do until you don't do it anymore. So you'd be what I want.
Now, I mean, people did used to parent that way. And I'm sure there are relationships where that does come across.
But we also know that…
Sara: It’s probably why I’m divorced. Not hate, but your example
Kate: Like the nagging
Sara: Like  that negative stuff. I'll just be negative until you change.
Kate: Yes. Yeah. It doesn't It doesn't work. doesn't work in our relationships. And it doesn't work in our bodies. And I think that's such a powerful thing to think about because we have been so socialized into looking the mirror and see what's wrong that we need to fix. You know, hate this part, got to fix that part.But yeah, that was kind of mind-blowing for me, actually.
Sara: Yeah, because we're never, ever going to look perfect. And even if we, and who, and perfect was made up, by the way, they're really, like, there might be things that are kind of popular in looks, but there is no perfect look.
And, you know, I think we just, maybe there was a time when we saw other people, real people, naked and stuff. But I think part of problem is we don't actually know what people look like under their clothes too much.
And there's just nothing, you know, bodies are meant to be all different shapes and sizes and looks. It would be so boring if we all had the same, you know, so-called perfect body and whatever that is.
And so, anyway, but I want to tell you is how you can love your body because we've talked about what doesn't work and why it's never going to work.
So I'm going to tell you how to make that decision and what you can do to start generating some love for your body.
All right, like I said, it's a decision. And I believe that this is one of the most important decisions you're going to make.
I know a little bit ago in this conversation, you talked about our mortality being closer than it was in previous time.
But we really don't know how long we have. We might have 30, 40, 50 more years depending. I mean, we might not, but it is possible that we'll have decades left.
And so it's really well worth our time to take care of our body. And the best way to take care of our body is to make that decision to love it.
Because we take care of the things we love and we don't take care of the things that we hate.
And your body needs love more than it needs anything. Even more than losing weight. Ok, because we're talking about the actions you take about your body.
So losing weight is something separate, but eating food that nourishes you, moving your body, those are ways that you love your body.
So loving your body does not have to have you looking in the mirror and being like, oh yeah, love the way I look.
But you can decide to treat your body with love first. All right? So I don't want you to give up on your body.
I want you to love it and I want you to enjoy it for as long as you have it.
All right. So you aren't going to magically fall in love with your body, as I said. It's a decision and a commitment and deciding in advance leaves nothing to chance.
Kate: Nice.
Sara: No, I... No, it's so funny because this was... We recorded... have an episode before this where we talk about my decision making.
And actually, until I had done that conversation with you, I hadn't seen it in here. I'm like, yep, there it is. That deciding in advance. So if you haven't caught the episode for this, go back and listen to it. Super helpful.
All right. So you're going to decide in advance to love your body. And you might not know exactly how that's going to work out, but when you make a decision and you stick to it, you're going to get there.
You don't have to wait for your body to look a certain way or even be perfectly healthy. You can simply decide to love your body no matter what.
And I promise you, this is one decision that you will never regret. 
So step one, I like to do this.
Sometimes I'll do it like as I'm falling asleep. Sometimes I'll do it in the morning, but I like to spend time thinking about all the amazing things that my body does.
And I also recommend doing this in writing. So you have a list. You can build up your list and then you can refer to it whenever you want.
So when you think of many as many reasons that your body is amazing, I know that not everyone listening will have everything on this list.
I know that, you know, we have different bodies. These different situations, but I make a broad list. anyway, I want you to concentrate on what you have.
But to get you started, I'm going to tell you some of the things that I've been thinking about. And I actually did a tiny bit of research.
You may be amazed, Kate. I  did actually look something up.
OK, let's start with our heart. Your heart beats 100,000 times a day. And with the blood system does all kinds of things.
You take 22,000 breaths every day. And your body is able to take things from your breath and do what it needs to do from that.
Obviously, my research is very superficial. But those big numbers, you get the point. 
The food you eat, when you really think about that, even how food you eat, is transformed into energy that you can use right now and that your body also has a way to save some for times you need. So don't be hating on your fat all the time.That's your survival. 
You have balance, you know? You know, if you can stand and walk, you've got this balance and you can move in a variety of ways without even thinking about it.
Your body allows you to have pleasure holding and touching someone you love, seeing all the beautiful colors in nature and art, moving, feeling your muscles do their thing, having, sex, listening to music, reading, seeing, understanding words, writing a bike.
There's just so many things our bodies allow us to do. And if you had something interesting add to my list.
Kate: Yeah, well, I was not this point, but one I was thinking about just before as well was something that I read about, I'd have to do some more research and get my facts right.
But it was talking about certain people that had an antibody for diseases that, It might have been in the context of coronavirus, but it was talking about having antibodies or the ability to create antibodies for a particular disease that had never actually ever been caught by anyone on earth.
So I don't know if it was making a lot of medical sense, but essentially what it was saying is that, you know, our body was already ready for things that don't even exist, which is kind of mind blowing like it's already got the tools to kind of like fight and defend us against, you know, these diseases. That just blows me away. I just want to go look that up. 
Sara: Yeah, I need to try and find it.
Kate: If I could find it, I'll put it in the show notes, but I probably won't. But the other thing is, well, you know, my belief to is that, quote, you know, about how we're spiritual beings having a human experience, you know, that's one of my core beliefs.
And one of the main reasons we have that, the human ways we do have that human experience is through our bodies and like the senses, you know,
That you were saying, like our ability to smell, our ability to taste things, you know, hear the sounds of things.
It's all just so, it's so incredible really when you think about it.
How could do not love it.
Sara: I know. And then as you were saying that, you know, some people think our body, the whole use of our body besides looking, thin and amazing is to cart around our brain in our head.
But our body is just so much more than that. There's so much wisdom in our body. Even, you know, some people say that we have parts of our brain in our gut, you know, in different parts of our body.
And I was listening to a podcast and this is a real thing. It sounds made up. But it has to do with our hearing that they've made a hearing aid that is strapped onto your wrist.
Hearing isn't, our ears, we take for granted, it's our... You can hear with other parts of your body. That one just so surprised me.
And we carry our emotions in our body. You know, often we think like our emotions in our head because we'll say, oh, I'm sad. I'm mad. 
But when you really tune in, your emotions are in your body. You can feel them. You can feel them in your chest when you're upset or your gut.
And so our bodies are just so much more than just how they look.
Kate: Mm. and now that's just made me think about something else too, because you and I both grew up in sort of the 70s, 80s and back then, medically as well, there was very much this division between the mental and the physical, you know, this idea that whatever went on in your head and that’s why we were all eating twinkies and revolting processed food because it seemed we totally lacked, you know we totally lacked as a group an understanding of what that might do to our mental state.
Whereas like you were saying now, there's a lot more evidence to support, you know, that what is in our gut can actually have a huge impact on our moods.
And changing your moods, yeah, changing your moods can be related to changing your diet. 
Sara: It's very cool. I’ll write that one down. Very cool.
All right. So after you like spent, it doesn't have to, you don't have to do this in a certain order., there's just some ideas. But another idea is to come up with some positive ways to talk to yourself. I, you know, you can call it a positive affirmation.
But really what we're talking about is the words you're thinking about your body or saying to yourself. And so here's what I do know.
Most of you are so well versed in negative affirmations about your body. And what I mean by that is you will look in the mirror and you'll tell yourself the most horrible things ever.
You will say you're such a loser. You're so ugly. You're so fat. No one would ever, and these are actual things I've heard out of people's mouths. I'm not making these up.
So know you know how to say mean things to yourself. So I'd like you to, at the very least, stop doing that.
Like, start noticing these things that you say to yourself. They just are not, there's no upside. There is zero upside to saying mean things to yourself.
And so that would be the first step is to just really just make the decision to not say mean things to yourself.
And then if you want to like really take it little further, you start saying nice things to yourself.
And you can just pick a phrase or two to just remind yourself that you do love your body. 
You know, so for me, like, I'll just look in the mirror and I'll be like, I love Sara Garska.
That's my favorite one. So simple.
But I have a friend that used to say that to me and it just stuck with me. yeah, I love you Sara Garska.
And I have a client, this one she used and I like this one too. It's like, I will always take care of myself no matter what.
And what she meant  by that was like, no matter how she was just feeling about her body. Like, she just made the decision she was always going to take care of herself.
And so I have a little list of some, but do you have any that come to mind for you?
Kate: I'm enjoying what you're saying. 
Sara: All right. All right. So here's a few more. I am worth it. This is so good for me. I only have good words for myself.
This body of mine is worth taking care of. My body is freaking amazing and I love treating it with love.
Loving my body is the best way to take care of it. That might be my favorite.
Kate: Mmm.
Sara:Yeah.  And so when you're doing these, I know they're not going to come naturally to you at the get go.
For some of you, you may not have even considered loving your body in this way. You may have been waiting for your body to look a certain way so that you could love it.
So it's going to take practice. And that means doing it over and over because it takes the time for, to change our thoughts.
So if you've been telling yourself over and over how much you hate your body, it's going to take a little bit of time to rewire your brain to start appreciating your body.
But you can get there. It just takes practice. And so I just want you with these suggestions and you may come up with your own.Feel free to write us if you come up with some great ones. We'd love to hear them.
So the way you build your belief about loving your body is you practice. You just keep, keep at it.
And just, you know, and I think this is going be so helpful because now we're taking, you know, your looks, how you think about your looks out of it.
And you're going to just treat your body as this like really precious resource you have. Like we take better care of our vacuum cleaner.
I was trying, I didn't want to think of something not car, but we do. take care of other stuff that are important to us.
So yeah, like a car. Like, you know, we put gas in it, we wash it, we vacuum it out, we do those things, we take a lot of care.
But we want to do that for ourselves because going back to something you had said at the very beginning, you know, as we're getting older and these things are happening in our body, sometimes when your body goes to a new level of unhealth, it's hard to get it back, you know. Does that make sense?
Kate: 100%.
Sara: I didn't say it super well, but if we can take care of things and maybe, you know, we're not going to be able to fight off death or aging forever, but we can make these years more, just better, more pleasurable by taking care of what we already have.
So that's why I think it’s really worth it to do this. And so loving your body is not once I'm done. At first, it's going to take consistent effort to keep reminding yourself how amazing your body actually is. You know, we're confronting decades of negative thinking here.It's just not going to disappear overnight. 
But the more you practice loving thoughts, the more you’ll feel the love.
And here's the secret. When you feel love for something, you take better care of it. The more you truly love your body, the more you want to take care of it.
And then, just one more step. Take your actions based on loving your body. Not on hating it. Because I hope by the time you've done some of those other things, you're beginning to love your body.
And this is the key to taking actions that are going to have great results. And so, like an example, I'm going give, is exercise.
So we've been kind of conditioned to think exercise needs to hurt, it needs to be painful, like it's punishment for overeating.
But moving your body, I think is one of the most loving things you can do for it. It's a wonderful way to show some love.
So even though, and it doesn't have to hurt, that's the funny thing. It's like, I don't know where we came up/// Maybe if you're an elite athlete or something, but for most of us, we just need to move our bodies.
And when you find ways that you love to move it, it's just such an act of love. It shouldn't be punishment.
So if it feels like punishment, don't do it. Find something that you love to do, you know? 
You know, go to your appointments.Take care of your eyes and teeth in your body. And here's one of my favorites. Take time for rest and to relax.
That's essential for loving your body. Stress and overworking are hard on the body. And, you know, a lot of women tell me that they don't rest until they're exhausted and can't do any more.
This is not optimum for your body. I just, I don't know if you see that or have aspects of that.
Kate: Definitely. You know that whole mindset of I’ll just keep working until I’m exhausted. We’ve both talked about that before, I think in Episode 1.
Sara: When you love your body, I like to think you're going to take time to give it rest, not because you're exhausted, but resting ahead of time so that you feel good.
Let's see. The bottom line is that loving your body cannot just be based on how it looks or what it weighs.
That's not healthy nor good for you. Your body is complex and amazing and is definitely worth caring for. And so when you only care for it with the idea that it has to look a certain way, you're probably not going to take great care of it.
And so if you care for your body now, no matter what it looks like, it really is going to help you.
Have a better life overall. And so. Anyway. When you don't love your body and you don't treat it with love now, you sacrifice your long term well being.
Loving your body is about appreciating all the ways you do enjoy your body and appreciating all it does for you.
And I just want you to remember this is a lifelong relationship. Okay. It's a relationship. I'm just throwing that in at the end, but that theme I think has been there this whole episode to really I want you to think about it as a relationship.
You're in a relationship with your body. And this is one it is till death do you part and until death do you part.
And so take care of that body. But love it first. Okay, any last thoughts, Kate?
Kate: No, but you've certainly given me a lot of things to think about. And even when we discussed the idea of this episode, I wanted to tell you that I'd been making more of an effort when I looked in the mirror instead of focusing on all the jiggly bits to even just look at the jiggly bits, but say, hey, it's great they’re here. It's great to be here in this wonderful body. 
Sara: Great. Well, thank you. That was a good way to wrap up. And so, we will see you next week.
Kate: Thanks so much for listening to today's episode. If you loved what you heard, you can leave a review so we know to keep more of it coming. You can also visit our website at midlifespotlight.com and learn a little bit more about us. We love connecting with you and can't wait to see you next week.