5 Psychological Reasons You Hate Your Body & Don’t Feel Confident

All you need to know…

I tried every program possible to get in shape in my 20s & 30s, & I still looked & felt like sh*t.

I constantly had ‘projects’. Big Plans.

Keto for 6 weeks. Crash diet for 3 months. Cold showers for… well I didn’t last long with that one, to be honest. Brrrr.

After 40 your mind & body start arguing with you a little. You realize 99% of people struggle to do things that can’t be found in their social media feeds, meal plans, cookie cutter bs fitness stuff, & Google searches.

The secrets come from within. Check out this video with Serena at Carnivore Revolution!

If you want to feel more confident, work to identify & eliminate these confidence-killing, progress smashing habits:

• Avoiding emotions & reassurance-seeking
• Second-guessing yourself
• Constantly catastrophizing & thinking negatively
• Dwelling on the past, mistakes, & failures
• Avoiding fear & feeling unsafe

Each week, I create blogs & content with simple, practical tips for building emotional & physical health & wellbeing. I truly hope these have helped you create a better human!

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I enjoy sharing my experiences & knowledge. Thank you to all who read, engage, & have become a part of my digital family!

oxox Coach K

Rules To Live Your Best Life including my daily routine to help you create your own!

It comes down to your habits

Here’s how most people think about their lack of confidence:

• I’d be more confident & successful if I lost 20 lbs…
• If only I had more money I’d be happier…
• If my parents had really loved me then I’d feel more confident & secure in my relationships…
• If I had more time I could focus on my fitness…

Fortunately, they’re wrong.

Of course, everything from genetics to childhood experience has some influence on how confident you feel (or don’t). But by far the biggest influence on confidence is the one everyone seems to miss…

It’s your habits in the present, not the events of your past, that determine your confidence.

In my work as a nutrition coach & taking care of patients for over 18 years in the healthcare industry, I’ve found that there are a handful of confidence-killing habits people fall into without knowing it. And it’s these habits that are the real causes of chronically low confidence, body hate, & unhappiness with life. If you can learn to identify & work through them, you’ll find that your natural levels of confidence & life satisfaction are much higher than you realize.

Why you over eat & self sabotage

1. You’re addicted to avoiding emotions & reassurance

Reassurance-seeking is like outsourcing emotional labor onto other people. And not only does it kill your confidence, it also tends to sabotage your relationships & lead to people becoming resentful of you.

Food & healthy emotional navigation are medicine. They can stabilize you & also throw you off. I’ve observed in over 18 years of working in healthcare & nutrition, overeating, body hate, & food addictions are common among those who avoid &/or numb emotions & are constantly seeking reassurance & outside validation.

Food addiction is a biggie. Frequently, the specific addiction is to sugar or carbohydrates, which is a huge reason I adopted the “carnivore” WOE (way of eating) for both my Crohn’s disease & disordered eating. I’ve lost 55lbs & put my Crohn’s & bulimia in med-free remission for over 4 years.

Avoiding painful feelings always makes them worse in the end. When you immediately run away from your emotional difficulties, you’re teaching your brain that you’re afraid of feeling bad & can’t handle it on your own. This means the next time you feel afraid you’re going to feel doubly afraid and not confident to deal with it, oftentimes seeking numbing through food, drugs, alcohol, spending, & using other people.

A helpful survival guide

Tips that have helped me to eat well, stay fit, & release negativity before self sabotaging & over eating:

• Breathe: When you feel stress, immediately focus on breathing slowly & deeply. This releases negative energy. Holding your breath out of fear traps toxicity in your body.

• Hydrate: Water purifies you. Drink filtered or spring water, especially when you’ve been exposed to negative energy & have the urge to overeat. Consume at least 1/2 your body weight in oz daily. Get in adequate electrolytes. Take a bath or shower. Water washes away impurities of all kinds.

• Minimize Sugar & Processed Food As Much As Possible: Although you may crave carbs & sugar (as well as alcohol), they will destabilize you mentally & physically. This makes you more susceptible to absorbing unwanted energy & self sabotaging. These kinds of hyperpalatable foods are like drugs, leaving you wanting more.

• Prioritize Protein: Protein stabilizes. It gives a sense of grounding & satiation. Get protein at every meal, at least 30-50g. Big reason many food addicts thrive, lose weight, & heal on carnivore.

• Rest: Sleep. Remove yourself from your busy routine. Regularly unplug. We stay stuck in the in-between, dissatisfied & seeking something to make us feel better. Solitude is your best friend. Go take a walk in nature. Eat alone & mindfully especially if you’re an empath.

• Restore & Release: Part of the human condition is that we come with soul wounds, past trauma, & conditioning. Our job is to heal & reintegrate the perceived “unlovable” parts of ourselves so we can live connected to Self, Source, & each other. The parts of yourself that you’re angry or ashamed of are the source of your suffering. Therapy does wonders!

• Move: Walk, go to the gym, get sunlight, connect with friends. We cope with stress, including loneliness, by using dopamine-triggering substances & behaviors as a means of avoiding painful emotions & self-awareness. But if we make a commitment to living a kick-ass life, then moving the body will get the dopamine flowing, reconnecting us to what we truly enjoy, like our friends & families. Oh, and that workout high & lookin good nekkid too!!

Second-guessing & perfectionism

2. You second-guess yourself constantly

Each time you second-guess yourself, it’s a tiny message to your brain that you don’t believe in yourself. If you’re in the habit of constantly second-guessing yourself, think about what you’re teaching your brain?

If every time a big decision arrives your immediate reaction is to tell your brain you’re not capable of making big decisions, how confident can you expect to feel the next time a big decision comes around?

Look, it’s obviously important to be thoughtful before making decisions — especially big ones with major consequences and lots of uncertainty.

But it’s also important to accept that you will never eliminate uncertainty entirely. This means there will always be a chance you make the wrong decision, but they’re just lessons that help make you a better, more well-equipped version of yourself.

The heart of second-guessing is the unwillingness to accept the fundamental uncertainty of life. Chronic second-guessing is a form of perfectionism where you feel like no matter how hard you work, the result is never good enough because it’s not perfect. If you want to feel more confident, you need to make your peace with uncertainty & accept the responsibility of making decisions & being unattached from the outcome.

Managing your inner narrative

3. You constantly catastrophize & think negatively

Catastrophizing is an extreme form of worry where you quickly start thinking about all the worst case scenarios…

• Oh my God, I’m gonna gain 10 lbs if I lift & eat more…
• Great, I’m gonna lose my job. How will I be able to make rent? What will other people think?
• I can’t wear that… they probably think I’m poor or ugly, etc…

The ability to imagine the worst case scenario can be a good thing in the appropriate time & place if you can emotionally navigate thru the therapeutic process to shift your mindset to one of safety, power, & security. But if you’re in the habit of always catastrophizing, not only will it chip away at your confidence in your ability to handle difficulties in the future — it’s also going to make you incredibly anxious & stressed to the titties all the time.

If you’re constantly telling yourself the world is ending, you’re going to constantly feel like the world is ending. And it’s awfully hard to feel confident when you’re always worried that disaster is right around the corner.

“Instead of worrying about what you cannot control, shift your energy to what you can create.” Roy T. Bennett

Embrace failures as lessons

4. You dwell on past mistakes

Just like it’s hard to feel confident if you’re always predicting that disaster is about to strike, it’s similarly hard to feel confident if you’re constantly reminding yourself of your mistakes & “failures.”

Healthy reflection is a good & normal thing. Which means some degree of thinking back on your mistakes in an attempt to learn from them is very useful — even confidence-boosting!

But if you’re habitually reminding yourself of past mistakes well past the point of new learning, it’s all side effect & no benefit. You’re keeping your shame & insecurity high & your confidence & self-worth low.

It’s hard to feel confident about the future when you won’t let go of the past.

The trick is that you have to be willing to live with the fact that the past is unchangeable, which means you are truly helpless to change it.

More often than not, incessant rumination about the past is a sign that you haven’t really confronted that helplessness & learned to embrace it o make better decisions. Your low confidence & life dissatisfaction are unfortunate casualties of that denial.

“To think too much is a disease.” Fyodor Dostoyevsky

Stop avoiding fear

5. You’re afraid of feeling unsafe & afraid

The American President Franklin Roosevelt famously said: The only thing we have to fear is fear itself. And while his political and economic policies aren’t something I’m qualified to comment on, as a statement of human psychology, that quote is pretty right on the mark.

Because here’s the thing: The fear that keeps your confidence low doesn’t come from the thing itself, but from the feelings about it.

Why do you think many people drink before giving speeches/toasts or going on dates? Alcohol doesn’t make you more articulate or attractive. Alcohol makes you feel confident because it gets rid of your fear & inhibitions & lets your natural confidence shine through (at the right dosage, anyway 🙂

In any situation where you lack confidence & feel afraid or unsafe, there’s a good chance the real obstacle is your relationship with fear & specific triggers. If you want to feel more confident, start to cultivate a healthier relationship with your fear. Start acknowledging it & validating it instead of trying to avoid it. Remember: Confident people don’t escape fear. They master it.

“The soul becomes dyed with the color of its thoughts.” Marcus Aurelius