A Mindful Perspective
Welcome to my podcast! I'm Nick Levesque, and I'm on a mission to help you navigate life's challenges with a mindful perspective. Join me every week as I dive deep into the realms of mindset, spirituality, and personal growth. Drawing from my own experiences, I want to provide you with tools, strategies, insights, and inspiring stories that will help you go from where you are now, to where you want to be.
Follow me on Instagram: @nicklevesque_
Coaching: https://www.nickspiritualcoaching.com/
A Mindful Perspective
Struggling with Body Image? Watch This.
In this week's episode we dive deep into body image issues and I share my own struggle. We discuss the importance of self-awareness, inner child work, and the dangers of comparison in fostering a healthier relationship with our bodies.
• Examining the impact of body dysmorphia on mental health
• Reflecting on the role of exercise in identity and validation
• Understanding triggers from social media and family dynamics
• Discovering transformative life lessons during health crises
• Emphasizing the need for self-awareness and inner healing
• Exploring the significance of gratitude for the functionality of our bodies
• Strategies for avoiding comparison and celebrating uniqueness
• Encouragement to foster a compassionate inner dialogue
If you liked this episode, please feel free to leave a comment or review, share it.
Hello everyone and welcome to A Mindful Perspective. I'm your host, nick Levesque, certified Spiritual Life Coach, and I'm here to share insights into my journey of mindfulness and self-discovery. Each week, we'll explore mindset, spirituality and personal growth to help you navigate life's challenges with practical strategies and inspiring stories. Let's dive in.
Speaker 2:If you're someone who struggles with their body image, I want to have a heart-to-heart conversation with you today, because it's something that I have personally struggled with for many years. In today's video, my goal is to get you to appreciate your body, even if it's just a little more. Okay, I think that will be kind of mission accomplished for me. So I really want to talk about my own journey and kind of how I work through my own struggles with my body image. Okay, so to do this, I'm going to take you back a few years. So 12 years ago I started working out. Right, so I started working out 12 years ago. And the reason I started working out funny enough, is because my twin brother started working out. So I'm a fraternal twin and you know, people in high school at the time were like hey, nick, your brother started to work out, he's getting jacked, are you going to start working out? And he's like you know what I will? And my brother and I were always very competitive in a good way competitive in a good way, you know, very healthily so. And I started working out and what I didn't expect was falling in love with the gym. So much right, and the gym has been my anchor even to this day, 12, 13 years later. It's helped me fight many demons, many internal battles, and it's helped me a lot. Okay, and then fast forward a little bit. And you know, I had my high school sweetheart at the time. We were together for a few years and then we broke up and I thought life was over and I thought this is it, life is over, I'm never going to find anyone else, I'll, you know. You know how it is when you're breaking up with someone in high school. You think, kind of life is over. And, um, that's when I really got into the gym, right? So I started training a lot more and such and I really really in love with the gym, the process and such.
Speaker 2:But what I didn't anticipate as I was doing all these things was the body dysmorphia and body image issues that I would develop along the way through this. Right. And you know, long story short, if you will, I think for me personally, right, a lot of it was my own lack of self-worth and I thought that I kind of wrapped my entire identity around the gym and around fitness and basically it was a form of external validation, right. At a certain point I wasn't, I wasn't really only working out for myself. I was really working out because I was getting compliments and it made me feel whole, it made me feel accepted, you know, and I was really enjoying that external validation. And this is, you know, after you know you do the inner work and such. That's wounding from kind of like the teenage years, if you will. Right, but for me, you know, I wanted to continue that because of the external validation and all these different things that I was getting.
Speaker 2:But I was also really struggling with myself because I was constantly bashing myself right, like anytime that I was opening social media as an example, I would see people, I would compare myself to people, anytime that would walk in front of a mirror, I would always find something to criticize, right? Oh, I'm not big enough, I'm not lean enough, my abs aren't good enough, whatever, it was right. And I think we can get so self-critical and I think we start to criticize ourselves so much and talk so negatively to ourselves that it becomes an unconscious habit, right, we just start doing this as a habit. It starts to become unconscious every time. For me personally, anyway, speaking from my own experience, every time I walk in front of a mirror, I would just, you know, analyze myself. I would never look myself with actual, genuine self-love and acceptance, right, and that took me many years to do, but just even just to give you an example of how this got like, how bad this got for me.
Speaker 2:Ok, so, first and foremost, like I said, obviously, constantly obsessing over my body, constantly obsessing over my body, I needed to always be super lean, I needed to be big enough, which you know, quote unquote I never was, and a variety of other things there, variety of other things there. Also, one thing not only was I compare myself to other people, constantly checking in the mirror, but I would also be canceling a lot of stuff because my entire life would revolve around the gym, right? So you know, I would never miss a workout, never miss a workout. So if friends would invite me to do something and it was at the time of the gym because I used to gym, like at night, right, so kind of after work, nope, can't do it, right, can't miss my workouts.
Speaker 2:If, as an example, people wouldn't invite me out to a restaurant, oftentimes I would say no, right, I would say no because it's a cheat meal. It's going to impact how I look, my abs, all these different things. So I would cancel out on a lot of things. And even if I did go to that restaurant, oftentimes what I would do is I would go online, I would search the restaurant's website, I would go on their menu and actually check what they had on the website and such.
Speaker 2:Now some people do this and there's nothing technically wrong with that, but for me it wasn't from a good place, right, it wasn't just because I'm trying to eat better or whatever, right, for me, it was an obsessive compulsion, right. It was really like, okay, I can't do anything else, I cannot eat anything bad at all. So for me, I developed body image issues. I developed a poor relationship with how I was eating and my nutrition. Right, I was eating very well, but I limited everything. Right, I would never have any exceptions and you know, it got very, very bad at a certain point. So these are different things.
Speaker 2:Also, as an example, other things not only was I canceling plans and such, but even like, even though I had a good body, right, I would even not go to the beach sometimes. So like and you know that's where people like to show off, typically their bodies. But if I would have a cheat meal or something, I would look at myself and think I was too, too fat or not lean enough, right, so I wouldn't go to the beach because I'd be ashamed of putting or taking my shirt off. Ok, so this is what I'm saying, like it's. It's for a lot of people it can get to a point where it's just so detrimental to our lives, right, and you know, I'm sure some of you listening to this might resonate with what I'm saying or might see themselves in what I'm saying, right, and for me, it took me a long time for that turning point and, as some of you know, I've talked about this on the podcast before.
Speaker 2:But you know, my, my mother, who's been very sick for a long time 20 years I think at this point, um, the majority of my my life, honestly, you know. Uh, a few years after that I got the news that she got stage three breast cancer and such. And then when I got that news, that's really when I started kind of reflecting on everything, right, like my body image issues and everything. It kind of it forced me down kind of like this rabbit hole of self-development in a good way, because it really forced me to pause and reflect right and see like why, why do I have so much shame? Why am I constantly spiraling down into these rabbit holes of negativity? Why don't I love myself? Basically, right, what, like what, is causing me to have such a poor relationship with myself? Now, again, like I said, external validation, all these different things.
Speaker 2:I did a lot of work to kind of heal certain parts of myself, doing that inner work right, inner child work, all these different things. But honestly, when that happened as you know, as sad as that was, it really it was transformative, right. As painful as that was, it allowed me to transform in a way where I don't think I would have if that didn't happen. That was kind of like a catalyst for my own growth and my own transformation and it was like, okay, this is really the time that I need to start truly working on myself.
Speaker 2:And the other thing that it made me realize is, as I was watching my mother go through everything and chemo and cancer, right, one thing that I think we don't take into consideration enough is just what our take for granted on a daily basis, you start to reevaluate the relationship that you have with your body. It's not only about how you look, but how it functions. My mom, still in a wheelchair now, hasn't been able to walk properly for many years right, and it hasn't been able to walk at all. I should say for many years, right, and things like that really get to me in a term like walking. I'm so grateful that I get to get up and walk. I'm so grateful that I get to get up and even go to the gym and work out and move my body, right.
Speaker 2:So this was a really big turning point in my life and as I started diving deeper into my own inner healing journey and just self-development as a whole, I realized that a lot of this conditioning and a lot of how we think about, you know, our body image and such isn't even our own choosing, right? It's basically brainwashed into us, whether that's from childhood dynamics, whether that is societal standards, whether it's what we're seeing on social media, all these different things, right. Let's just take societal standards as an example. Let's talk about women for a second right. Women a lot of the times are made to believe that, hey, you should look like this. You should not look like this. You should be that specific weight. You can't be that specific way. You need to be slimmer, okay, oh, you don't look like the girl on the magazine cover. You should buy our beauty products so that you look like her right.
Speaker 2:Makeup, all these different things and again, I have nothing against women wearing makeup and such. That's not what I'm saying at all. And also, I want to kind of side tangent here for a second. For any women listening to this, I want you to know something you are beautiful with or without makeup. Okay, that's just something that I want to throw out there, because it's a conversation I've heard many times before and, you know, speaking with a lot of men as well. I think a lot of us agree and I'm not going to speak for all men here but we find you very beautiful when you're just in a ponytail and an oversized t-shirt, right, like I'm just, you know, a t-shirt of ours that you're wearing. That's, you know, that's too long for you type of thing. We love that stuff, right? So that's what I'm trying to say here, right, I think we are, we've been molded by so many different things and it's really not realistic, and I think a lot of us know that it's not realistic, but we keep seeing this data, we information on a daily basis, and sometimes that's been since childhood, and sometimes you know it's just as we're scrolling Instagram, right?
Speaker 2:Social media is a great one nowadays. Okay, I have nothing against fitness influencers, but there's many in fitness influencers nowadays, right? So it's easy for us to get caught up in that comparison trap and it's easy for us to see someone be like, oh, I wish I had that body here. And then you, shaming yourself, You're like, oh no, I don't look like that. I need to start. You know, I need, I need, I need to start working out and you start doing these things and whatever, right, and it's just, it's not healthy, right? Everyone knows that comparison is the thief of joy, so that's absolutely not healthy, right? Also, another big one as well could dynamics, right?
Speaker 2:So, as an example, if you grew up in a family where maybe your parents said things like you'd look great if you lost a little weight or no, you can't eat that because you need to lose weight, or any comment about your weight that you know wasn't beneficial at all and was actually shameful and that made you feel like you weren't good enough just the way you were, that you needed to change, and then, obviously, maybe you actually tried to change to make them happy and mold to their standards or societal standards or all these different things, right? So that's what I'm saying. There's so much conditioning here. Right, there's so much conditioning for men as well. Right, for men as well.
Speaker 2:Sometimes, if you're too skinny, that isn't good, right? So if you're too skinny, you're not, you're less masculine, as an example. Okay, there's so many different varieties here. Now I want to also kind of just a quick side tangent here as well. Okay, there's nothing wrong with wanting to make a change to your body as well. So if, as an example, you're a guy and you're very skinny and you want to add a bit more muscle, okay, you want bigger arms, you want bigger legs. There's nothing wrong with that. Right, there's absolutely nothing wrong with you, know, going to the gym, building that confidence, building that self-esteem, building your body.
Speaker 2:I think building your body is a great thing. But also, what I want you to just understand here, and I think what's very important is, before you do so, please have a radically honest conversation with yourself. Are you doing it for yourself, or was it like I was doing for a long time, where it was for the external validation? Because I think it would complete me because I think it would make me whole, just because at the end of it, I just didn't love myself, right? So this is what I'm trying to say.
Speaker 2:Like there's again, I encourage anyone to move physically and exercise and such, but I think we also need to change the dynamic on what healthy is right. Having a six pack doesn't make you healthy, and I can promise you one thing it won't make you healthy. And I can promise you one thing it won't make you happier permanently in the long run. I've been there, trust me. Okay, and oftentimes, even when we get that perfect physique on paper, we will still find something to criticize about. I've been there, trust me when I say that, right, I had good abs, all these different things, I still wasn't happy. I was still criticizing myself all the time, right?
Speaker 2:So, again, I know people that don't have six packs, but they're. They run marathons right, they're in great shape, they're physically fit, right, and that, to me, is what is so important, right, it's what can you do to move your body right, to make you, you know, physically healthier? Cause I think exercise is the key to everything in life. Truly, I generally think it is. I think everyone should be moving their bodies right. But how you want to write for you, maybe that Zumba classes for you, maybe that's swimming for you, that, whatever, it doesn't necessarily mean that you need to go to the gym and build a body that you're seeing from Instagram, type of thing, right, so you need to find something that you enjoy, okay. And if, as an example, you're a guy I'm just going to say I'm going to talk about men here, because a lot of men, you know, struggle with male pattern baldness, right. So a guy being bald or losing their hair, as an example, if you want to have a hair transplant because you know it's going to help you build that confidence and it's something you generally want to do for yourself, then go do that. Right, please go do that. There's like there's nothing wrong with wanting to make changes for your, to your body and for yourself, as long as it's genuinely for yourself. That's really what I'm trying to get at Now.
Speaker 2:I wanted to share a few things that have really helped me develop a better relationship with myself and my body, okay. So number one being that we have to build that awareness. Okay, we need to be aware of what's triggering us and actually how we're talking to ourselves. Because, in my case personally, I was toxically shaming myself for so many years that it became habitual. I didn't even realize I was doing it right and where and how I was doing it. So for me personally, my triggers were every time I opened social media and when I was looking into a mirror. Okay, and unfortunately those two things are extremely easily accessible, right, and oftentimes we look into a mirror, we're not even aware of it. We open our phones, we're not even aware of it. So for me personally, that was just that repetitive cycle of shame, right, every time I would open the app or I would look into a mirror.
Speaker 2:And what I've learned from my own journey specifically, is, until we heal that toxic shame, it. What I've learned from my own journey specifically is, until we heal that toxic shame, it's very hard to build that genuine relationship with ourselves. Right, it's very hard to genuinely love ourselves. Okay, and I think the moment you can start catching yourself, when you're like, when you're triggered, that is when the game changes, because then you have a choice, okay, so, as an example, you're opening a social media, you're scrolling, and then all of a sudden, you, you, you go down this spiral. Right, I wish I looked like that.
Speaker 2:Whatever it is that you're telling yourself, or whatever story it is that you're telling yourself, and then you catch yourself oh, wait a minute, wait a minute. Why am I talking to myself that way? I don't need to be talking to myself that way. That's not even true. Most of these people don't even look like this in real life. A lot of it is edited, photoshopped. Sometimes lighting is a specific angle. Maybe they're taking a photo in a specific angle under a specific lighting after a good gym workout pump, right? So most of the people that are posting these things aren't even they don't even look like that in real life. So who am I comparing myself to here? Right, so you can start changing that dialogue. Okay, but also, you can keep track of how you're talking to yourself if you want to keep that in a journal and such to really understand the repetitive things that you're telling yourself. Right For me, what I noticed after I did this work and realized my triggers again being social media and mirrors okay was basically I wasn't good enough.
Speaker 2:That's really what it was. Right, I am not good enough For me. That's been a belief that has stemmed a lot in my life and it was just a sense of I am not good enough, right, and that's why, for me, it was that external validation. I thought if I had the perfect body, then I would be good enough, right. And I quickly learned you know after doing this work that that was not it at all. Okay. So, again, you need to understand really what's triggering you and how you're talking to yourself, and then you have a choice. You have a choice of how you want to respond, you have a choice of what you want to do, and also then you can start digging into why it is that you're talking to yourself that way. Okay, what is it that's causing you to talk to yourself that way and have so much toxic shame that's been building up over many years?
Speaker 2:Okay, so, just hypothetical scenario, let's talk about the example that we gave earlier, where the parent, as an example in the family dynamic, would say you'd look great if you lost a little weight. Okay, so if you're someone, for example, who's grown up in a family dynamic where your parents were always criticizing your weight or making fun of your weight or saying something about your nutrition or whatever anything related to your body image, then you internalize that, right, you internalize that and typically that becomes the voice that you hear in your head. So oftentimes, the voice that you hear in your head may not even be your own, okay, it could be something like bullies from childhood. It could be many, many different things, okay. But in this hypothetical scenario that we're talking about here, this person has now internalized that, right? So what becomes?
Speaker 2:What starts with you need to stop eating, so you lose weight, or you need to lose more weight, or, in this example, you'd look great if you lost a little weight. That becomes internalized as I, right, so I need to lose weight, or I'm not good enough, or I don't look good, right, so I need to lose weight, or I'm not good enough, or I don't look good, right. So, again, their voice becomes your own, and then that voice is the voice that you carry into your adulthood and a variety of different things, right. So once you start understanding that it's not necessarily your story that you're holding onto, and you start understanding where this inner dialogue is coming from and also that it's not grounded, in fact, and it's not true, okay, that's when the game starts to change and you can really start, you know, doing that inner work and then replacing those thoughts with actually supporting ones Right and being like hey, that's not true, like I look good, I'm happy with how I look, all these different things Right, because you have an under. You have a genuine understanding of where these thoughts are right, you have a genuine understanding of where that story lies and you have a genuine understanding of why you're talking to yourself a certain way. So then it becomes easier to talk to yourself more kindly and more compassionately when you have an understanding that maybe the voice inside of your head that you've been holding onto for many years wasn't actually your own.
Speaker 2:Another thing that can be very beneficial in your healing journey and healing that toxic shame and developing a relationship with your body is to do some inner child work. Okay, and the thing with inner child work is that you don't typically only have one inner child, right, you've got inner children and basically you've got an inner child at each developmental stage of life. So that could be, as an example, the inner infant, the inner toddler, the inner adolescent or inner teenager. Okay. For me personally, my belief of I'm not good enough really stemmed more around my teenage years, so a lot of the inner child work that I did was with my inner teenager. Okay, to really heal that wounding and heal that toxic chain that I was carrying for a long time. Now, again, this will be very different for each individual in their own experiences. Okay, and as an example, if you're someone like we talked about earlier, where you've been brought up from in a family dynamic where your parents were criticizing your weight all the time or the way that you were eating all the time, well, it could be a really good thing to do that inner child work and really have these discussions with your inner child, making sure that they understand that they are loved, that they are good the way that they are in meeting the needs that were unmet at the time and really just being kind of like that parent for them. So these are different ways of also working with that and, of course, inner child work can be difficult. It can be a bit overwhelming. So obviously I do encourage you to seek someone who's qualified to help you go through that as well.
Speaker 2:The second thing that I want to share is to please stop comparing yourself to other people. Now, I know this is much easier said than done. I do understand that, but again, it's so important because comparison really is the thief of joy, right. So for me personally, I was constantly comparing myself to social media, to people on social media. So one thing that I did personally is I just started following a lot of people that were triggering me. So, again coming back to the triggers that we were talking about earlier, when I was getting triggered, when I was scrolling and I would see people that were like, oh, I was comparing myself to, I would just unfollow them, right, for the meantime it was just clear my conscience and I wasn't constantly scrolling on people that I was comparing myself to and eventually I didn't really have anyone to compare myself to, which really just kind of cleared my conscious, right. But even then, for me personally, I was comparing myself to people people not only on their body image, but also just on their lifestyle and what they were doing.
Speaker 2:So I took a break from social media. Right, I took a break from social media for six months. It was the best decision I've ever made in my life, because when I came back and what I realized through taking a break from social media for that for six months, was that all the time that I was wasting evaluating other people's life, watching what they were doing, all these different things. I could have just put that time back into myself, right? So by deleting social media and not following anyone and not using any social media at all, I had no one to compare myself to. So all that time and energy wasted on other people was now reciprocated back onto myself, right, and that was the most life-changing thing for me, which allowed me to give myself space and time to actually heal my inner wounding and address the underlying issues. Right, and when I got back to social media, I wasn't comparing myself to other people, because I realized how much of a waste of energy it was.
Speaker 2:Right, I'm doing my own thing, people are doing their own thing, and also, truly, what you see on social media obviously we all know this, but most of it isn't even real. And the people that you're comparing yourself to, right, the fitness influencers that we're comparing ourselves to, that look jacked, that look shredded, all these different things Most of them don't even look like that in real life. Most of them, when they're taking these pictures, right, it's under perfect lighting after a good workout. Sometimes there's Photoshop editing all these different things, right, we talked about that a bit later, but I just really want to emphasize that. So, please, the second thing I want to share is to really stop comparing yourself to other people, because it's not going to do anything for you at all.
Speaker 2:The last thing that I want to share is to shift your focus, okay, and what I mean by that is a lot of us spend so much time criticizing ourselves, but I believe that if we spend so much time criticizing ourselves, we can also spend that time really reminding ourselves of the things that we do enjoy. Maybe it's our legs, maybe it's our shoulders, as an example. Maybe it's the smile that we have that when we walk into a room. It lights up the room, as an example. There are features about yourself that you do enjoy and that you do like, okay. So, instead of constantly shaming yourself, also, please take a moment to remind yourself of the things that you do enjoy about your body, the things that you do like about your body, because I can guarantee you that there are right.
Speaker 2:And the other thing as well that I wanted to just re-emphasize here is please appreciate what your body does for you, right, appreciate what your body does for you.
Speaker 2:I think this is so important and it really ties back to what I was saying earlier with my mother, right, and this is something I learned just watching my mother go through her sickness and her cancer and all these things but so many people aren't able to do what we do and take for granted on a regular basis, right? So many people can't walk, so many people can't go to the gym, so many people can't exercise, a lot of people have illnesses and all these different things right? So if you're in that boat where you can do all these great things and you're able to live your life fully, please take time to appreciate all the little things that your body does for you and allows you to do on a daily basis, right? So, again, these are just a few things that I really wanted to share today that have truly helped me develop a better relationship with myself and my body, and I genuinely hope that these things can help you as well.
Speaker 1:So, that being said, that's all I've got for you guys on today's episode. If you did like the episode.
Speaker 2:Please feel free to leave a comment or review, share it. It really helps bring awareness to what I'm trying to do, which is really kind of, you know, spread this podcast on a broader scale to really help people just navigate everyday life challenges. So, again, with that being said, I hope you have a good week and I will catch you guys next week. Thank you.
