The title of this article may make some of you roll your eyes or groan inwardly. This holiday, one that is all about food and not much else, I think it brings up mixed emotions for many of us. We are excited about the food. We worry about food. I want to eat it. we don’t want to eat We want to run the Turkey Trot. I hope we sit on the couch. Many of the difficult feelings we have about food are actually about how eating different foods and amounts of food affects our bodies.
Why not be thankful for your body this Thanksgiving?
Source: Shutterstock/Wanda Perrin Kanilla
For many of us, when we think about our bodies or look at our body image, the first thing we hear is our inner critic. We have been conditioned to identify our own shortcomings, whether we perceive the problem to be in our stomachs or in our noses. But we can focus less on these perceived shortcomings and practice more gratitude.
“Practicing gratitude” may sound like pop psychology. But there’s growing evidence that focusing on what you’re grateful for improves your quality of life. Specifically, research has shown that gratitude interventions increase positive emotions, happiness, and life satisfaction, and reduce negative emotions, stress, and symptoms of depression. Practicing gratitude appears to improve the quality of your sleep.
One of the most common gratitude interventions asks people to list the things they are grateful for. Reflecting on the positive aspects of your life is thought to bring about positive changes in your mood. I’ve found that listing just three things I’m grateful for about my body also improves my body satisfaction.
In a study published by one of my colleagues at Rutgers University, we asked participants to complete this gratitude list task. People were free to express their appreciation for their favorite physical attributes, their bodies’ ability to overcome disease and stay healthy, and their body’s functions. When compared to the control group, the gratitude group rated their appearance more favorably and felt better about their bodies. In other words, simply listing three things you like about your body improved your body image.
Another study asked participants to do a gratitude meditation. This 10-minute meditation exercise did not specifically focus on participants appreciating their bodies, per se, but it did improve body satisfaction. (A similar 10-minute mindfulness task in this study also improved body satisfaction.) Body image scientists believe that gratitude can help you feel more at ease with your body’s appearance and the approval of others. They theorize that gratitude may help improve body image because it can be less conscious. In other words, there are many aspects of our bodies to be grateful for, many of which have nothing to do with appearance. Focusing on how your body moves and how you exist in the world can help you become less obsessed with your appearance.
So, come up with a list of things you are grateful for your body. One of her neighbors said she was grateful that her body was able to carry three children and that she was healthy enough to enjoy them now that they were adults. Ta. A friend said she was grateful that she still looked this good in her 50s. When I asked my colleagues what they were grateful for, they told me that they were healthy and loved their hair. Some days I’m grateful that my body can (just barely) get through the day. Other days, I’m grateful that I can still go for long walks with friends because I still have some muscle tension in my muscular thighs, which I hated.
Gratitude allows us to focus on the positive things in the world. This is sometimes called the amplification model of gratitude. Because gratitude helps us not only notice the good things in our life, but also seriously focus on it and try to improve it even more.
By becoming aware of the positive qualities your body has, you will learn to appreciate it. We can be thankful this Thanksgiving, whether we’re sitting on the couch or crossing the Turkey Trot finish line first.
