Totally lovable at any weight! Are you letting those few extra pounds stand in the way of love? Well, stop!I didn't have my first real relationship until I was 23 years old, and now that I’m marrying that same man I've been thinking a lot about relationships, love and how I overcame my insecurities regarding weight and dating.
For years, I allowed myself to believe that no one would fall for a bigger girl. It held me back from opening up and letting others in. Now that I'm happily engaged and confident about my body and myself, I wanted to reflect back on my four most detrimental thought patterns — and how I changed my attitude. You may find you relate to my struggles, no matter what you weigh.
More from YourTango: How To Feel Amazing In Your Curvy Naked Body1. No one will want to date me if I look this way:
It's totally understandable to feel like weight is a huge factor to men finding you attractive. After all, when you look around, what passes for sex appeal in today's culture is rarely a plus-sized girl. I used to repeat the same prayer before bed every night: "God, when I wake up tomorrow please let me be thin so I get asked out." And that middle-school prayer lasted all throughout college! I desperately wanted to look differently so that guys would look my way. I failed to see the evidence stacked in my body-image favor: that we are surrounded by plus-size women are in loving, devoted and caring relationships. I chose not to see that because, in my mind, something was fundamentally wrong with how I looked. And if I thought that if I looked wrong, others must think so too.
2. When I lose weight, I’ll be ready to date:
Like many overweight women, dieting and weight loss are reasonable courses of action to fix what we believe to be broken. In college I lost 50 pounds in seven months. I looked amazing, and men started to treat me differently. They noticed. They asked me out. They got touchy. But I got scared. I got scared because I realized that my weight actually wasn’t the issue: I was terrified they might really like me and I would mess it up. Despite losing all that weight, I still felt alone in my own skin — like a foreigner in a strange land. Wasn't I supposed to be "cured" now? Wasn't losing 50 pounds enough to make me happier and feel more attractive? It was such a painful pill to swallow the moment I realized losing weight hadn't fixed my insecurities — it exaggerated them. And when I began to gain the weight back, I knew something deeper would finally need to come to the surface. It was time to put to rest the idea that I was incapable of loving at all. Keep Reading..
More self love advice from YourTango:
Life CoachRachel O'h-Uiginn
"The Curvy Girl Coach"
Certified Life Coach via the International Coaching Federation || Writer and speaker on plus-size body image and self-love.
Rachel's work is devoted to helping plus-size women develop stronger self-confidence and body apprecaition so they can feel happier, healthier and more loving at any size.
Her work has been featured in Huffington Post, The Boston Globe, Identity Magazine and other national online publications.
Join her growing body-positive community on Facebook and Twitter.
Other Articles/News by Rachel, The Curvy Girl Coach:By Rachel, The Curvy Girl CoachThis post might make some cringe and revolt and that’s fine because a special message needs to be heard more often today: Your body isn’t gross or vile; it’s simply different from someone else’s. And times that by close to seven billion. But that fact doesn’t matter if you don’t believe your body is worthy of staring at ... Read moreBy Rachel, The Curvy Girl CoachSix years ago, I couldn't get a real date to save my life. I blamed nearly all of that on my size and used weight as a shield to deflect getting rejected. When you're overweight, you come up with all kinds of reasons why dating sucks like, "Guys are such jerks! They won't even LOOK at you if you're not a size 2!" or my favorite, ... Read moreSee More
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