Thank your body

It's so easy to get caught up in anxiety about body image, weight and dress size. So many messages come at us all the time to tell us what the perfect female form should look like. And already at age 8 (and sometimes younger), girls worry that they're too fat even when they don't have any fat on their bodies. Perhaps they see too many Barbie dolls in the store. No one looks like that, and young girls certainly should not aspire to such a model.

Because of all that, I loved the message in my May/June Weight Watchers magazine. It appeared in the editor's comments as she talked about positive body image and ways to give our confidence a boost. She said, "Start by celebrating your body for what it's capable of doing rather than worrying how it looks."

What a great idea! Think of all the things your body has done for you through the years. Perhaps it has given birth to babies, cradled them, walked them as they cried, raised them into adulthood, traveled to many states and perhaps countries, held down a career, walked or run miles and miles as you went about your activities through your lifetime, created nutritious meals, handed out hugs and so much more. Did you ever stop to say "Thank you" to your body and all its parts? Really, that might be a good thing to do. It's something we take for granted ... until things go wrong and we can't do what we always did before.

It's no small thing—what the body and all its parts do for us. It's also helpful to change the focus from our weight and dress size to all the ways our bodies perform.