When did you feel really good about your body?

[neepsntatties]

I have spent most of my life feeling awful about my body. I can only think of a couple of occasions where I haven't felt bad about it. When I was a child and played all sorts of active games and didn't give my body a second thought until the teenage years hit and that went out the window and then when I was pregnant had also when I had just given birth to my baby girl and my body felt strong in a kind of primal way but I couldn't hold onto that feeling.

So I am interested in the moments when other women felt really good in their own skin and how (if) those moments could maybe be harnesed and extended into something sustainable.

I feel a kind of shame over my post pregnancy body which really annoys me at the same time as my body has produced life so the signs of that should be something to be really proud of, something that should be seen as beautiful but I just don't feel that way about it at the moment. I am trying to think of ways I could positively counter that feeling.

I hope this makes some sense!

i loved my body when I was pregnant (though not for the first sixteen weeks as I was so sick both times). I felt beautiful then. And I remember times of confidence when I was young, sunbathing in the nude, .....feeling slim and tight. Now my belly is so flat and floppy and revolting. It's a really wierd thing that I love so many kinds of beauty in other people, especially as I love photography, and the people I always wish I could photograph are people who look interesting, unusual and fascinatingly attractive to the eye in non conformist ways, faces and bodies that are more like a poem than an advert... e.g. a very old local lady with no teeth who is incredibly tiny and MESMERISINGLY beautiful, like a magical woodland animal (and on the bus I notice everybody admiring her). I would paint her if I could. I would prefer to photograph her than any model.
And yet.
And yet.
Why can't I love myself so freely? Is it the desire to be sexually attractive??? And yet I don't have such limitingly conformist views on men's attractiveness. I don't need a man to have a model's body to turn me on. But I'm ashamed for people who knew me when i was younger and slimmer to see me now. The fucked upness gets inside you when your sense of self is growing I suppose.
And by the way, you all look beautiful to me.
And, I've just thought, in the same way that anybody you love is beautiful to you, seen with love, then it must be lack of love for ourselves that makes us unable to see our own beauty.

Not at all keen on my post pregnancy tummy - wrinkly and floppy but I felt fantastic whilst giving birth and felt good when I exercised and felt strong. Heavily pregnant now and like having a good reason for a sticking out tum. But think really I feel at my best when I am feeling strong and fit - regardless of looks. Still, a bit of mascara and a gin and tonic helps too.

Have been reading far too many threads tonight and came across this thread.

This from Blindcavesalamander really pulled me up short:

"And, I've just thought, in the same way that anybody you love is beautiful to you, seen with love, then it must be lack of love for ourselves that makes us unable to see our own beauty."

It makes so much sense when you think about people who would not be called 'classically beautiful', but who are beautiful to you because you love them and they are lovely. Thank you Blindcaves, that has really given me food for thought

Sorry, just to clarify - it has given me food for thought about the possible reasons behind why I run myself down and find myself falling short.

I feel great about my body! but then, I still play all sorts of active games lol.

I only started to like my body this year, whilst on holiday in Spain! I'd been dreading it, putting a bikini on my wobbly pale body and braving the beach was giving me nightmares. But then, I looked around and saw so many woman in bikinis, each one a different body type and I realised that I wasn't judging how they looked, I was just looking IYSWIM? So I realised that the only person judging MY body was ME!

I had a personal hangup about my stomach - wobbly with stretch marks. But, a bit of a suntan seems to have done wonders to my stretch marks, which has been a confidence booster.

I was always the skinny girl growing up, hated that I was flat chested, was straight up and down with no hips or bum, but now I am nearly 2 stone heavier than I used to be as a young un and I am definitely looking better for it. Woman are meant to have curves and now that I finally have some (finally! yay!) I am hanging on to them.

I think I've just grown up and realised that so what if I don't look like a Vogue model - I'm married to a lovely man who loves me, have two wonderful children and a cat that likes to settle on my wobbly belly at night. Worrying about what my body looks like is like worrying about the weather - pointless, just dress appropriately and you'll be fine!

I love my body. I'm in my mid-fifties, and while I would be last to be picked for anyone's shag team, I no longer care. I'm physically very strong and fit, and it gives me an inner snigger to go on the weights machine at the gym after a man, and up the weights.

I can run for miles across the fields without worrying about rape too, - whatever people say, women in their fifties are statistically less likely to be targetted than younger women, and I feel a sense of physical freedom that I never felt when young.

I think sport in whatever form is the secret of overcoming body hang ups, and more women and girls should be encouraged to take it up.

I was a size four before babies, I remember sitting on a beach worrying if people noticed how fat my arms and legs are. I am now waaaaay bigger but, apparently, in normal range. I am overweight for me. I'm not fit either, but never talk about dieting in front of the dcs, in fact not to anyone..I've never dieted, I found starving much easier.

My mother told me that she, my sister and my DH are all losing weight shouldn't I? I replied that my body has never been anyone's business but mine!!

I would like to lose a stone and will have to do it the hard exercise way.