It’s the only one you’re ever going to have.
I’ve just celebrated my 60th birthday – I’m not quite sure how that happened as I still feel around 25 (most of the time), but it is a fact and there’s no point in denying it. In fact, I’m proud to be in my 6th decade on this planet.
On reaching these milestone birthdays it often gets us thinking about years gone by, perhaps our early adult years when many of us were worrying about not being slim enough, or pretty enough, yet in later years, looking back at photographs of those times, we may well have been slimmer than at any time since, with lovely plump skin and not a wrinkle in sight. Why is it that we don’t appreciate that until it’s gone?
Right now, I’m the heaviest I’ve ever been (lockdown has certainly had a hand in that), but I’m not going to get in a panic about it, nor am I going to embark on a fad diet, although I will be making some changes to eat more healthily as my knees will thank me for reducing my weight!
Yes, I have wrinkles and gravity is doing what gravity does, but I will never be as young as I am now and as life starts to return to something close to normal, I intend to enjoy life and celebrate in this slightly lumpy body I now have.
Taking care of our appearance and knowing how to dress the body we have in the most flattering way, can help us to look younger and feel more confident.
I recently worked with a client who had been struggling since hormonal changes due to menopause meant that her body shape had changed and she really had no idea how to dress any more. She was feeling pretty down about it and, as so many of us do, was focussing on the negatives and unable to look past them.
Once we had worked together and she understood her actual body shape and how to dress it to enhance the good parts that she had been overlooking and disguise the problem areas, as a result, her body confidence increased dramatically.
We often see a distorted view of our own bodies, exaggerating what we believe to be our problem areas, yet others just don’t see them. We are our own worst critics and it can affect every area of our lives.
The media play a big part in this too – showing us ‘perfect’ bodies that we feel we need to aspire to and beating ourselves up when we don’t attain that perceived perfection. Then there’s all the filters and photoshopping that goes on, making us believe that many of the women in magazines and TV adverts have no wrinkles and perfectly symmetrical faces!
No one is perfect – what is perfect anyway? We are all unique, beautiful individuals.
So, I urge you to love your body, take care of your appearance and defy other people’s ideas of how you should look at a certain age, indeed at any and every age!
If you’d like to help and advice on how to look the best version of yourself every day, without the need for filters, or surgery, do get in touch for a chat.