“To uncover your true potential you must first find your own limits and then you have to have the courage to blow past them”

Picabo Street

The real cost of being overweight or obese revealed.

Has this ever happened to you?

It’s late Friday afternoon and Jamie is getting ready to go out with her friends to the hottest new spot in town. Girl time as she calls it is her favorite time of the week. That’s a time when I get to be me. I can just let go and be myself with my friends, she says as she looks for something to put on.

As excited as Jamie is about her girl time, she cannot seem to find anything to wear. Although her friends are nonjudgmental, she explains, looking good does matter; even amongst friends – actually, especially amongst friends.

She tries on her favorite pair of jeans but her muffin top bulges out of them. Her butt doesn’t look right in the silk pair of pants and her shorts reveals her cellulite. She goes back to the bathroom and put on some more make up to cover up her facial blemishes.

Finally in frustration, she defers to her fallback outfit. Jamie puts on her girdle, her favorite, light and breezy fabric long dress and dainty sandals. She looks cute and most importantly, she does not reveal any of her flaws.

Every day this scenario plays out in thousands of bedroom closets around the world, people trying to use their clothes to hide their imperfections. This started centuries ago when Adam and Eve used leaves to make makeshift clothes to hide their shame. Since mankind became conscious of his body, he has been fascinated and obsessed with it.

The top three questions most people ask when they call my aesthetic practice are:

Price is the biggest concern for most people when thinking about improving their bodies. The better question, or the question they should be asking is what is my current size or shape costing me?”

The most important factor to your success

Research shows the number one most important factor to a person’s success is self-esteem or self-image. To succeed and reach her full potential, a person must see herself through kind eyes. The thing most people see, their most constant companion is themselves, to be exact, they see their bodies.

Your body image controls your self-image and self-esteem

It’s no wonder body image makes up the bulk of our self-image. How we see ourselves, what we see in the mirror goes a long towards our self-esteem and ultimately our success in life. Simply put, our body image is directly responsible for how we feel about ourselves and whether or not we succeed in life.

I was born to an unwed mother who wasn’t expecting me. The early events of my life led me to believe I was an unwanted child. What made my parents not want me? Lacking answers, I became focused on my appearance. Maybe I was too dark or too short; or was it the nappy hair? Those concerns lingered into adulthood as I continued trying to find a way to get others to like me by fixing the way I looked.

No matter how much we fix our outer appearance, ultimately we will have to deal with what really matters; the psychological and the spiritual. We focus on our bodies because it gives us an outlet. The body is easily under our control, we can change it at will; or so we think.

Renowned plastic surgeon Maxwell Maltz, MD explained in his book Psycho Cybernetics how our body image goes beyond what our body looks like. He performed cosmetic surgery on patients to improve their looks. Despite looking aesthetically more pleasing, some of his patients still saw imperfection when they looked in the mirror. Their body image had not change.

I have seen the same in my own practice. People who after losing weight, improving their skin, contouring and reshaping their bodies were not happy with how they looked. That begs the question; what is your body image really costing you?

The real cost of being overweight or obese

The real cost of being overweight, obese or simply unhappy with your body image is measured not just in dollars and cents, but in lifestyle and happiness. Your body image affects your:

-Health; prone to sickness and chronic diseases, including cancer.
-Finances; less income, fewer raises, getting overlooked for promotion etc.
-Relationships; insecurity in relationships, prone to settle in relationships.
-Spirituality; not feeling good about self and others, feeling constantly victimized.

As you can see, your entire life is affected by your looks and how you feel about them. If you are willing to admit it, you can see small ways your image is affecting your life that makes a huge impact. Having to buy different sizes of clothes, excess makeup, needing clothes with special fabrics, using these things as a means of hiding instead of displaying your beauty, being self-conscious, having sex with clothes on in the dark, not being able to go where you want when you want; spending hours trying to find something to wear, spending hours in the morning putting on makeup, and the list goes on.

These are just a few of the social consequences of being overweight. Consider how it affects your health, your energy level, and your relationships. What are you missing because of your image?

Beauty inside out?

It is not enough to look good on the outside, you must like who you are on the inside. The flaws most people see on the outside reflects what is going on the inside.

Although most people seek the perfect body, true beauty comes from within. Having a great body or flawless skin can sometimes be a catalyst for inner reflection, but it remains impossible to achieve real beauty without first getting in touch with yourself.

The 40-day beauty challenge

Over the next 40 days, every time you catch a glimpse of yourself in the mirror, smile, look yourself in the eyes and say I love you. Within a few days, as your subconscious begin to believe what you are feeding it, your habits will change, you will unconsciously make better decisions, take better care of yourself and become the person you have always wanted to be. I guarantee you will become flawless figuratively and literally. There is a catch though; you can never stop.

Do it now, go