86. Summer Ready: Confidence Over Body Image

In this conversation, Stacy Heimburger discusses the challenges many face during summer, particularly regarding body image and negative self-talk. She emphasizes the importance of shifting the mindset from being 'summer body ready' to being 'summer ready' in terms of enjoyment and gratitude. The conversation also highlights strategies for building confidence and reframing negative thoughts, encouraging listeners to embrace their bodies and enjoy the summer regardless of societal standards.

Takeaways:

• Summer can trigger body image issues and negative self-talk.
• Confidence and compassion are essential for self-acceptance.
• Negative self-talk is a common experience, especially in summer.
• Shifting from 'summer body ready' to 'summer ready' is crucial.
• Mindfulness and gratitude can enhance summer experiences.
• It's important to focus on enjoyable summer activities with loved ones.
• Reframing negative thoughts can help improve self-image.
• Finding thoughts that evoke confidence is key to feeling good in summer attire.
• Investing in a few quality clothing items can boost confidence.
• You deserve to enjoy summer regardless of your body size or shape.

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This episode was produced by The Podcast Teacher: www.ThePodcastTeacher.com.

Transcript

Hey friends, welcome back to the show. So summer is just around the corner and for many of us that means it is about time to dust off the swimsuits, hit the beach or maybe just lounge by the pool. But for a lot of people it can be a really difficult time and a lot of anxiety, a lot of just negative self-talk everywhere. Everywhere, I know from personal experience and from my clients.

Summer can just be tough, right? It can trigger so many body image issues. A lot of us are recovering from old diet trauma and just bathing suits are the worst of it, right? We don't want to try them on, we don't want to buy them. We end up getting really cheap ones off the internet that are not supportive. They're not holding anything in. They are just not helping us at all.

And then we've got social media flooded with just perfect, beautiful, airbrushed, lovely bodies. Reminds me of someone on Instagram trying to, I think she was trying to sell a bra. She clearly had like 20 year old perfect boobs who did not need a bra. And that's what we're dealing with, right? So we're going to talk about some of the negative self-talk. And then I want to talk to you about confidence being a feeling. And I know that I've talked about this before, but.

If you're new to me, I'm not going to make you go back and find old episodes. We're going to talk about it again, okay? Because confidence and compassion and our self-talk are things we should just talk about all the time because they're so, so, so important. And no matter how many times I coach on them, how many times I coach myself, it still comes up, okay? It is perfectly normal.

to have negative thoughts about ourselves, about our bodies, especially this time of year, when we have been thinking those negative thoughts for 40 plus years, to think that they're just magically going to disappear is really just not reality, okay? Even if we do all the coaching and all the self coaching and we're feeling really good about ourselves, there's still going to be times we look in the mirror and our brain is just like, bleh.

Stacy Heimburger (02:20.61)

Right, like that's terrible. We look awful, gross, don't wear that. That does not mean that all of your hard work is not paying off. That does not mean that your coaching is suddenly not working. That doesn't mean that anything is wrong, okay? It just is an old, old habit. We can really, I think if we expect that those things will never go away, that we're just trying to like turn the volume down on them.

Right, John Acuff's book, Soundtracks. If we turn the volume down on the negative self-talk and really try and turn the volume up on the positive self-talk, I think that is a better visual so that we don't freak out when the negative stuff still comes. Okay? So that little negative self-talk that we've been turning the volume down and it's been going really well, it can start to get a little louder this time of year.

And it's because we're wearing less clothes and we're outside more and it's just easier for the inner critics to come out, okay?

If we're thinking I don't look good in a swimsuit or I need to lose more weight before I put that on, or this is where I find a lot of moms not being in the pictures with their kids, or they're doing that thing where they're strategically putting the children in front of them so that you can't really see them in the picture, all with this thought, I'll do it later when I'm summer ready, when I'm bathing suit ready, when I find the perfect bathing suit, when my legs just look a little toner, right?

Those things like don't define what summer ready is. Summer ready, I would really love us to turn this concept of summer ready into more of a mindset gratitude practice than our body image practice. And what do I mean by that? I, you know, I listened to other podcasts and there was someone talking about really just preparing for the summer in a way that

Stacy Heimburger (04:24.426)

we maintain what's important. So we put what's important for the summer to the front of our minds. So we can do that in a number of ways. We can think about what really worked last summer. What did I love about last summer? What made me really happy? What gave me a lot of gratitude? And make a list of that. Put that stuff on the calendar first. I love this concept. I don't even know where I heard it, but it is this idea about planning when to eat outside.

I'm originally from the Northeast and we could eat outside all the time. Now I'm in Louisiana and there's so many critters and it's so hot, eating outside is not very easy. But I love the idea of maybe once a week, we go to the pool in the neighborhood and we just eat dinner there, right? We just have dinner at the club, like Fridays at the pool, whatever we want to name it that's cute that the kids will like, and really just soak in summer with our kids.

I think that would be wonderful. So that's, I would love for us to turn summer ready into mindset ready in that way. What are things I must do? Like we're going to go to fireworks. Where are we going to do that? Do we want to go like berry picking? Do we want to go on a little weekend vacation? Do we want to, whatever. Do we want to spend every Friday at the pool? Do we want to go visit the aquarium? Do like family trips? So.

let's get summer ready in that way and not summer ready in my body's not okay way. So let's just something, some food for thought there. But I want us to just be aware that our negative self-talk might step up a little bit. And I don't want it to stop us from having fun. That's the point, right? So if we can change the shift from.

bathing suit ready to summer ready, like ready to have fun with my friends and my family. I think that would be really helpful in just giving us a season that is just more enjoyable. When we listen to our negative self-talk, it can really physically affect our bodies. I know I've talked about this before, but that feeling of heaviness and dread and just disgust, that's mine.

Stacy Heimburger (06:48.522)

Hopefully yours isn't that bad, but that's mine. When I am thinking all of that and feeling all that, my brain doesn't like that. It is uncomfortable. It is unpleasant. And my body wants it to stop. And so it will have a tendency to really encourage me to overeat. My food chatter will go up. My food urges will go up. And it all stems from my negative self-talk.

this constantly criticizing our bodies, it can really trigger a lot of stress and anxiety and we just don't want those things. So what are some little free frames that we can start with? So I love adding just a little qualifier to the end of my negative self-talk. I've...

taught thought ladders and thought switching and all of those things and if they're available that's great. So if I have the thought like no one should see this body in a bathing suit and then I can consciously catch it and then change it to you know I just have a human body and I don't care what people see in my bathing suit or something like that that's wonderful but sometimes that's not available. So if I have a super negative thought sometimes just adding a little

Qualifier on it can be helpful. So if I have a thought like my god My body is not ready. I can just say yet, right? So my body's not ready yet That feels a little bit better. It's not great, but it feels a little bit better and so these little qualifiers like and I'm working on that yet So what right so something like that on the end of our self-talk?

can be really helpful. So I don't look good in a bathing suit. I don't look good in a bathing suit yet. I don't look good in a bathing suit and I'm working on it. I don't look good in a bathing suit and who cares, right? So those are all like tag-ons or little additions. If we can say in our brains, I don't look good in a bathing suit and change it to I'm worthy of enjoying my summer no matter what.

Stacy Heimburger (09:09.932)

That's amazing. If we can't, just a little qualifier. And I'm working on that. And I have a human body and people can deal with it, right? My body is strong, whatever, okay? Anything better than I don't look good in a bathing suit. First, because who decides what good is? Okay, who decides? What was good 50 years ago is not good now, right? What was good 20 years ago was not good now. So.

you've had that as your qualifier. I don't look good in a bathing suit for this year, right? 2025 is not, the picture of beauty does not match mine in 2025. It might match later. Who cares? At the end of the day, who cares, right? We have to be super compassionate and

I think the easiest way to do that is to just focus on me and really try to not focus on what anyone else is saying. So we've talked about reframing some negative thoughts. We've talked about changing our mindset from some are body ready to some are ready as far as gratitude and mindfulness. Let's talk about confidence just in general and confidence as a feeling.

So I teach you the framework, right? We have thoughts, those thoughts create feelings, those feelings create actions. So our negative self-talk creates a negative feeling. Usually that action is something to reinforce the thought. So if I think I don't look good in a bathing suit and then I feel really bad about myself and then I go eat ice cream to feel better, I am actually reinforcing the thought, right? I'm probably not going to look any better in a bathing suit if I eat ice cream every time I have that thought.

In the same way, I can think thoughts that make me feel confident. And when I feel confident, I can wear my bathing suit no matter what. Okay, so some of what I was teaching, talking about before was kind of giving you thoughts to borrow. But these thoughts of like, I have a human body, my legs are strong, I like look fine enough in a bathing suit. Those are all to give us better feelings.

Stacy Heimburger (11:31.394)

What I would love for you to try is to really focus on the feeling of confidence and ask yourself, what thoughts do I need to feel confident? Right? So what thought would make me feel confident in a bathing suit, in shorts, whatever?

So that is going to be different for you than for me. But the way we test them is we have a thought and we kind of close our eyes and we think about what feeling is that giving to me. So if I think the thought, my legs look okay in shorts. They look all right, I'm all right. And then I close my eyes and I think about that and see like, that tap into confidence?

For me that actually does. I know it's not like a super strong thought. It's not like roar confident, but it's confident enough to put shorts on and go outside, right? That's what I want you to practice. I want you to try and find some thoughts about your body, about this summer, about being outside with less clothes on that can make you feel confident.

It's one thing to force the shorts on and go outside and be like shrinking like a wallflower or be super self-conscious because we think people are looking and that's just going to cause stress and anxiety too. I want you to try and think of thoughts that make you feel confident or at least indifferent to other people's opinions. If we can't get to confident, how about like, I just don't care what other people think, that's good enough. And to me, they feel a little bit the same.

Confidence and I'm doing my own thing here. Like I don't care what other people think are pretty close So that's what I want you to try and get to so that when you go outside in the shorts or go outside in the bathing suit We really are not feeling shame underneath all that I Want you to do that and feel okay? You're just a human and humans are all shapes and sizes so

Stacy Heimburger (13:48.942)

Also, just to help a little tiny bit, get something that makes you feel good, okay? Don't get the $1 Teemu bathing suit that has going to have no lining and no support. Like, don't do that to yourself. So I'm not saying you have to go spend $400 on a bathing suit, but why don't we get like one nice summer dress, one nice pair of shorts, one nice bathing suit.

That feels a little bit good when we put it on. It will help this whole process and you're 100 % worth it. So we want to feel good, all right? We want to feel confident if we can, but we don't want to feel ashamed. And I don't want you feeling like you have to be in a sweatsuit and be miserable when it's 100 degrees outside.

Stacy Heimburger (14:45.058)

So let's do a recap and key takeaways, okay? Number one, it is totally normal if your negative self-talk just ramps itself up when we're trying to expose more skin and be outside more, around people more, right? We're not hiding in our den in the cave in the winter, we're venturing out.

So while we venture out into this brave new world, it is normal that your self-talk will ramp up, your negative self-talk. That doesn't mean we have to listen to it, okay? And we can come up with some creative ways to modify or change it.

I want you number two, to think about changing your entire idea of summer ready to be one that has nothing to do with your body and much more to do with what is your plan for your people, for you, for your enjoyment of the summer. Summer ready in a mindful gratitude type situation. Again, that has nothing to do with our body. And then number three,

we can change our thoughts to feel more confident so that when we do put those clothes on and we do go outside, we don't have to feel ashamed. And then like bonus tip four, I guess, is maybe buy yourself something that you feel really confident in, that you feel good in, that you know flatters you and looks good so that when you do go outside, that is not playing a role, okay? So you in...

deserve to enjoy the summer no matter what the scale says. There is not some magic number that you step on and like the world crumbles and says no summer for you, okay? This is not like a Jerry Seinfeld no soup for you, right? We get to enjoy the summer no matter our size, no matter our shape, no matter what we wear, okay? So I hope this is helpful.

Stacy Heimburger (16:57.134)

Please, please, please let me know if it was. I would love to hear if you thought this was helpful. for those of you on YouTube, please subscribe for more tips. I'm going to get you through the summer. I'm going to give you lots of helpful tips and we're going to do it together and feel great. All right, bye guys.