Body ♥ Love Challenge Day 10: Appreciate the Evolution

One body will not fit you for your entire life.  We age, we scar, we widen, we wrinkle, we become.  It's a visual diary of where we've been, what we've survived, what we've enjoyed, what we've created.

Don't wish to erase your own evolution.  

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In the last ten years my waist has widened, while my bust has wasted.  My bottom is still dominant, but it's lost much of it's former bounce.  And I can tell you from personal experience, different body shapes offer different opportunities.  Broader bodies can carry bolder accessories.  Blouses drape better on flat chests.  Fluffy, full thighs look prettier in trouser jeans.

And I'll happily trade younger and smaller for wiser and stronger.

Age is inevitable, you are left with the choice to fight or embrace.

 Day 10 Challenge: Appreciate your Figure's Evolution, enjoy a change that time has presented.

Post your evolving embrace in the comments,  feel free to link to blogs, instagram, pinterest, flicker, or other sources

And that concludes the challenge, thanks for the body camaraderie! 

Body ♥ Love Challenge Day 9: Write Your Body A Valentine

Day 9 Challenge: Write Your Body A Valentine  

Post your anatomical ovations in the comments,  feel free to link to blogs, instagram, pinterest, flicker, or other sources


Feel free to inspire your ardor with Nike's series of body based poetry:

Happy Valentines Day!!

Body ♥ Love Challenge Day 8: Flatter Your Coloring

In our journey to love the skin we're in, it's important to understand it.  Hence, a color analysis, or as the british say, a colour analysis:

You can direct yourself to the primary categories here:

Cool & Delicate

Cool & Brilliant

Warm & Fresh

Warm & Rich

Take an even deeper dive, by determining a seasonal subcategory.  Complexion based hybrids abound and perhaps you bloom in a border.  Might I suggest a quiz with plenty of supportive source materials?

Day 8 Challenge: Determine your color category and wear a sparkle inducing color.  

Post your complexion confession in the comments,  feel free to link to blogs, instagram, pinterest, flicker, or other sources

Body ♥ Love Challenge Day 7: Embrace Your Body Type

Body adoration begins with body education.  Below is a 4 step primer.

Step 1: Measure
directions here.

Step 2: The Math
I even made you this nerdy spreadsheet to assist. (Click the edit button in the upper right then enter your measurements in the "YOU" column.

Step 3: Declare

Step 4: Embrace

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Day 7 Challenge: Determine your body type and dress to flaunt it this weekend.  

Post your body type declaration and/or fashion embracing results in the comments,  feel free to link to blogs, instagram, pinterest, flicker, or other sources

Body ♥ Love Challenge Day 6: Accept a Compliment

The glitter of intelligence and kosher curiosity can not be ignored in your eyes today.  Someone presents you with a honey of a compliment, how do you respond?

1. Seriously? Did you not notice the cozy cushion of wrinkles they're resting in?
2. Who me, you must not have noticed Daisy Sue's viridian peepers?  And really, aren't everyone's eyes pretty in their own way?
3. Shut up :)  I love your nose, it's so perfectly centered on your face.
4. THANK YOU, what a lovely thing to say.

If you angle toward A, you are a rejector, at best a minimizer.  Not only are you degrading yourself, you are also discrediting your praising patron.  Compliments are a way of expessing opinion and blatantly disagreeing shows a lack of appreciation for their judgement.

If you bend toward B, you are a deflector. This cloak of altruism hides your own insecurity.  While it's noble to share praise, especially where warranted, it's also important to realize that compliments can not be eaten by the absent and leave nothing for anyone to savor when spread between too many people.  You need to eat your own deserving dessert and enjoy it.

Swerving toward C may indicate compulsive reciprocation.  Every hint of hurrah is immediately volleyed and matched.  If you flatter out of debt, you cheapen your sincerity.  If you mean it, say it, if not, smile and accept.

If you answered D you can take a compliment.  And I commend you on your open gratitude.

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The fact is you deserve the compliments you receive.  What you presented inspired someone, made the world prettier, or brightened what was dull.  It's not arrogant to be grateful.

Day 6 Challenge: Accept a compliment without apology, deflection, or reciprocal return.  

Post your favorite compliments or favorite responses to a compliment in the comments,  feel free to link to blogs, instagram, pinterest, flicker, or other sources

Body ♥ Love Challenge Day 5: Complete Your Whole

Spending years in fitting rooms has taught me one very bitter fact: women see their bodies through peep holes. Their vision is distorted seeing not full humans in their reflections, but disembodied thighs, bottoms, underarms, and stomachs. 

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You are not a jiggle of flesh, you are not a patch of cellulite, you are not a wrinkle.  You are a soul: a body, a spirit, a living thing.  Embrace yourself as a whole rather than a random assembly of raw materials.  Don't leave the entire sedan in the garage because of a scratch in the door panel.  Get out and enjoy the ride.

Day 5 Challenge: Look at your full reflection, inside and out.  Admire the curation that is you.

Post your holistic epiphanies in the comments, 
feel free to link to blogs, instagram, pinterest, flicker, or other sources

Body ♥ Love Challenge Day 4: Talk Back to Negative Thoughts

Your brain is a synaptic subway where information glides along the rails of thought.  Whatever thoughts passage the most attention, most frequently, subsequently become express trains.   If you are consistently disembarking at a dismal destination, its time to lay new rails in your organic abacus. 


Some of us have a rather pernicious psychological pilot barking connections between ourselves and less than fetching adjectives.  And while I am a gentle pacifist at heart, there are times for a quick, quieting Boo, Whore, which this inner mean girl needs to ear.  Following is the modus operandi for talking back to your negative thoughts.

1.  Prerequisite to talking back to your thoughts is listening to your internal dialogue. Set a timer for every 15 minutes and quickly assess what you've been thinking.  Or choose an activity you do frequently as a thought check stimulus.  For me, every time I change a diaper, I inventory my mental refuse.  

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2.  Once you've added conscious to the unconscious side of the conversation, prepare your comebacks.  Positive affirmations are reform school for your snotty self talk.  Proper mental repartee begins with a personal pronoun, Me, I, My; is clear and brief; describes the present tense.  Examples could include: I adore my soft, rosy cheeks.  I own strong bones.  My fluffy bottom is deliciously soft to sit on.  My thighs fill out pencil skirts delightfully well. I am grateful for my cuddly, inviting lap.

print, push a pen across it, then post upon your mirror

3.  Once your paths are mapped, it is time to derail negative thought trains onto positive mind travels.  Pronounce your affirmations now and often. Declare them aloud to your reflection, retort negative thoughts as they arise.  Affirmations are most effective when repeated, repeatedly.  Persevere and soon enough you'll be alighting at station body adoration.

Day 4 Challenge: Make a list of at least 5 positive statements about yourself.  Post them on your mirror, repeat aloud daily,  then refer to them every time you have a negative thought about yourself.

Post your positive affirmations in the comments, 
feel free to link to blogs, instagram, pinterest, flicker, or other sources

Body ♥ Love Challenge Day 3: Reconnect Your Mind & Body

For day three of our challenge, I have recruited the charming wit, ridiculous talent, and adorable fertile belly of Britt from A Day in the Life Too.  Her beauty-full message about initiating awareness in our minds to infuse the beauty of our bodies, expressed what I had struggled to share. Our bodies can not live in isolation of our minds.  Really and truly, if you separate them, you'll die.  So many times our internal voices are at war with our external bodies, sending the sting of berating arrows and wielding swords of degradation.  When we can positively connect our minds and bodies in a peace promoting activity, we can begin to love the total package. Hey guys. I’m Brittney. I’m a wife, a mom of 3.67 kids, and a lover of steak. Medium rare. And anyone knowing those three things about me pretty much qualifies as my best friend. Including you, now. Sleepover, my house, Friday night. We’ll stay up allllll night, like ‘til 11 p.m. Just kidding. I never make it past 9:30 these days… …which is actually an accidental a kind-of-if-you-stretch-it-out-enough segue into my current thoughts on beauty-full-ness. I’m 6-1/2 months pregnant, and, at 23 pounds (and growing! geesh) heavier than normal, “beauty” is an interesting beast for me these days. Beastly: I fit into about four articles of clothing, two of which are getting tight. Beauty-full: My husband smiled and even kissed me when he saw I had raided his closet to fit into something. Anything. Beastly: Physical discomfort = sleeplessness = staring back at myself in the mirror every.single.morning. are two of the tiredest eyes ever. Sometimes I stare and stare and stare at them and realize 10 minutes later that I’ve fallen asleep, standing up, with my eyes open, toothpaste running down my chin. Again. Beauty-full: My 7-year-old son thinks my corny jokes are hilarious and that I, therefore, am awesome. (I kind of pad the vote, though, with homemade cookies. Shhh…) Beastly: Zits. Many. And frequent. Beauty-full: My adorable 3- and 5-year-old daughters sing lullabyes into my protruding belly button for their unborn sister’s “naptime.” Basically, I’m not going to win any awards for physical beauty. Ever, if I’m being honest with you, but especially not as a lumbering, belly-heavy, puffy-faced pregnant woman. But, strangely, this fact neither defines me nor makes me feel UNbeautiful. My husband and family love me, which is a huge blessing and major perk in life. For me, though, beauty-full-ocity (yep) comes largely from living within my own head and being comfortable with the somewhat intelligent, fun, kind, and creative girl who resides there. (And even though she may vacation from those traits from time to time, she always comes back. And asks for her mail, oddly enough.) Some days I feel pretty. Some days I don’t. And some days who cares because I’ve got an important play-doh date with my toddler and a friend with REAL problems. My take on beauty: do the best with what you’ve been given and leave it at that. It’s interesting, isn’t it (to the one person still reading this rambling monologue…hey mom!), that as individuals we see and respond to the world through the same pair of eyes, whether mascara is alluringly spackled on dense footlong lashes or blearily smeared into under-eye cesspools of inky smudge. And, really? A woman who loves and is loveable is beauty-full either way. (Although I do recommend washing the cesspools-o-smudge or they get itchy. I may or may not know this from experience.)

Day 3 Challenge: Engage in an activity that kindly connects your mind to your body, eat a pretty plate of healthy food that pleases both stomach and spirit, stretch your breath and meditate on your calves within downward dog, kiss your dearest one directly on the mouth. 

Post your reconnecting experiences in the comments, 
feel free to link to blogs, instagram, pinterest, flicker, or other sources

Body ♥ Love Challenge Day 2: Stop Making Comparisons

Stop comparing: to your darling starlet, to the cover of your pet magazine, to yourself five years ago.  Cease staring at your coworker's stomach to discern any trace of a stomach roll beneath her blouse.  Desist browsing weekly magazines with fresh pictures of celebrity cellulite.


External body validation is excessively volatile.  Build a buttress of impervious, internal confidence. Love your body exactly as it is, at this very instant. Cherish the strength of your legs, the curve of your neck, the grace of your fingers, the soft skin on your upper arms. No one else can tamper with your own admiration.


There is no universal ideal.  One set of proportions does not fit all.  One set of proportions will not even fit a single individual for an entire life.

And I owe yet another bouquet of Thank You's to Miss Kayla for this treasure:

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Day 2 Challenge: avoid comparisons in features and figures, instead appreciate yours and others' unique individuality.  

Post your incomparable experience  find in the comments, 
feel free to link to blogs, instagram, pinterest, flicker, or other sources

Body ♥ Love Challenge Day 1: Expand Your Definition of Beauty

My Husband returned with a noisy sack of ceramic shards, which I  proceeded to wet with pity sogged tears.  What had been my long coveted candlesticks had returned from Thanksgiving dinner as an anthropological remnant.

Bereavement soon gave way to resolve and superglue.  And I painstakingly mended each and every recovered piece properly into place.  Reborn, my candlesticks are more beautiful to me now.  I love their broken lines, the tiny cracks, the uneven outline.  Part of me and my determination is in them.

They aren't perfect, they are beautiful.  

Finding beauty more often does not make it any less valuable.  By applying the label of beauty more liberally our lives only become richer.

Search beauty out and you will appreciate it more.  Don't settle for the obvious or ostentatious, curate a collection of unconventional beauty: the wood grain of a dumpster grate, the gentle curve of a wilted rose, the repetition of color at the ninety-nine cent store.

Children are much better at this than adults.  Adults have been trained in a strict definition of beauty and fail to see the sparkle in concrete, the wonder in soap wrappers.

By expanding our construct of beauty, we are able to fit ourselves inside of it.  

Day 1 Challenge: find pleasure in imperfections, seek out hidden elegance, apply the label beauty more liberally today.  

Post your unconventional beauty find in the comments,
feel free to link to blogs, instagram, pinterest, flicker, or other sources

Introducing the Love Your Body Challenge

Remember my Kayla, and I use the possessing pronoun correctly, she is mine, for I adore her, and the image of her sunny countenance is perched upon my heart.  One petal on the blossom of my devotion, has to be my admiration for her fashion challenges.

And in the truest form of admiring flattery, I intend to mimic her, with an empire slant.

The 10 Day Love Your Body Challenge
 

As the amorous month of February rises to its pinnacle on Valentine's day, kind thoughts for our figures can propagate and multiply as well.   By February 14th, my goal is to make at least one woman a little more cozy in her own skin.  Every Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, and Saturday between Feb 3rd and 14th, I will present a prompt which you may perform. 

It initiates this Friday and ends on Valentine's Day. 

May I have the pleasure of your company in this Love Your Body 10 Day Challenge?