Hello everyone and welcome to another Coffee Date with Luna!
I am keeping the theme consistent with the last one and the theme is insecurities. In the last Coffee Date with Luna I decided to open up a bit about my skin and hair insecurities because insecurities are something many of us struggle with.
One of the top insecurities people face with is linked to their body weight and body shape. We are terrorized by unrealistic beauty standards and it is in the human nature (unfortunately) to compare ourselves to those images, especially in the social media era.
I am not a doctor, psychologist or any type of expert in the field so I will not be touching the subject of anorexia, mental health issues and obesity since I do not think other than experts should comment on this because people spread a lot of false information and negativity when they talk about things they are not educated on.
I actually want to talk about my own insecurities about my body, weight, body shape. I struggled with it a lot. I was never overweight and, to be honest, I was underweight as a child because I had some eating issues which followed me up to puberty where I started gaining weight and my body got a certain shape.
The thing that helped me through these insecurities was – love. It became my answer to everything and in this story it has two sides.
With extra pounds, my insecurities started to pile on while I was in high school. I would often feel bad about not being thin, I would go on extreme diets and workout plans and developed a binge eating problem. I started to read a lot of books during high school, some of them were self help books, and without noticing the image I had about myself started to change when I got in touch with the concept of self-love. To be honest, I am still getting in touch with this concept every single day of my life. I am still struggling but I came to a point where I would never deprive my body of food or put myself on extreme workout plans I was too weak or unskilled to follow. Working out is great but going to an extreme can cause serious injuries, I should now.
Self-love isn’t something you wake up with or can keep without making an effort. Self-love is about creating a relationship with yourself and we all know that relationships can be hard. You will have to work on it every single day. Self-love, bodywise, means choosing a healthy lifestyle instead of an extreme diet. It means loving yourself enough to feed your body with good food while not depriving it of some sweet cravings every now and then. You can work out to get abs while loving the chubby stomach you have now. This is a process and it doesn’t happen overnight.
When you try to change your body while being fueled with hate or insecurities regarding your appearance, it will backfire on your mental health.
As I got older, I actually became conscious of my body image issues when I started getting into my first serious relationships. My body insecurities messed with my mind and it affected my relationships because I was not comfortable with the idea of someone’s hands on me. That insecurity was not only toxic to me, but to the person I was with as well. During that time, I had accepted my body shape and implemented self-love into my life but I was just starting to realize that it wasn’t the reflection in the mirror I only had a problem with. My insecure mind created this image of how a person, in this case a boyfriend, will see me and my body and it scared me because that image was not very nice in my head.
This is where the other side of love came to my rescue. A person I wrote many poems about, realized I would become very distant and would “wiggle” out of his hands very fast even when he wanted to only hug me. He actually realized my insecurities, and I will get really real with you now, when he noticed I would get anxious when my bra would be off. I was also insecure about being as flat as a board while everything else about me was chubby and round. I did not enjoy him putting his hand around me because I didn’t want him to feel I don’t have a flat stomach. He would sometimes lift me up while hugging me and I hated it because I thought I was too heavy for him to hold in the air. He felt those insecurities.
He actually taught me that love will not see that what I see in the mirror. It took some time but he showed to me that love doesn’t judge and doesn’t walk around ready to measure me. Being with the wrong person, a person who judges you and tries to aggressively change you, will only feed into your insecurities. This is a good way of knowing is your relationship toxic or not. I think it is good, actually necessary, for the person who loves you to warn you about unhealthy habits etc., but actually criticizing someone and making them feel bad about themselves is toxic.
To quote him: To my eyes you are perfect because I see more than your looks. I love every inch of you and that includes more than just skin and a body.
At the end of the day, love is the answer to everything including our insecurities. You need to learn to love yourself and let others love you as well. Don’t tell yourself that no one will love you the way you are because there’s someone better. To the right person you are the best and you have to be the best for yourself.
It’s all about love.
Sending love and positive vibes,
Luna
