If you’re a woman you probably have some variation of a body image issue: you’re a healthy weight but you hate a certain body part or several parts; you’re overweight and hate yourself for this perceived weakness; you’re the “ideal” of thinness and yet can’t sustain any lasting satisfaction from this; you’ve gotten into a habit of being dissatisfied with your looks; you feel others judge you for any imperfection. The list is long.

How body image problems start

I’m not immune to body image issues. I had body image and self-worth issues as a teen when I became a dieting champion to control what I could in our chaotic household — namely my weight. I would show the rest of my family what self-control and will power was! I would go on impossibly depriving diets, all the while making cakes and sweets for the rest of my family. Then I would pig out at the homes where I babysat (what must they have thought when they came home to riffled-through pantries?). Of course, I wasn’t conscious of all the emotional dynamics at the time.

Sarah Maria, who is a body-image expert and the author of Love Your Body, Love Your Life, identifies a couple of themes in my story that are common for other women and men who face their own body-image issues. First, dieting can become tied into the basic need for safety, especially for people who have faced some kind of abuse (physical, emotional, volatile anger, etc.).

“Food becomes your sense of stability and safety. And, there is the broader theme of ‘being perfect’ underlying the desire to be lovable,” says Maria.

I share that dieting made me feel powerful as a teen and young adult. In my case, Maria says that my super dieting may have also been part of an underlying desire to be special, as in “Hey, look at me, I can do this.”

Body-image hell

Maria went through her own lifelong body-image issues of dieting, compulsive eating and purging. As she describes it: “My whole life got narrowed down to the belief of: ‘If I’m thin I’m worthy. If not I want to die. I won all kinds of awards, but they had no impact on me.”

As a young adult, she suffered health problems that caused her to gain 30 pounds in 3 months. This plunged her into a deep depression.

What makes her so remarkable is how far she has transformed her beliefs about herself and created a beautiful and loving reality for herself. This dramatic life arc makes her book a gem for anyone looking for new ways to view themselves and likewise transform their life reality.

Becoming aware of the grace in your life

Like all of us, we have grace that comes into our lives whether we recognize it at the time or not. For Maria, the grace was yoga. As a stressed out 16-year studying acting in New York City, her collage movement classes led her to teach herself yoga. Eventually this interest would lead to meditation and a continued spiritual journey of exploration and self-discovery (along with therapeutic help).

According to Maria, in two and a half years she went from a life that was hell to living every single day in a state of love and gratitude.

The seeds of inspiration for her book

I ask Maria why this book? She replies, “I was reading the The Seven Spiritual Laws of Success. There’s a line in which Deepak Chopra says you can suffer through your karma or transform it by doing something like writing a book. Within four months I went at all the Chopra Center events that were available.”

Maria says that the book is for:

• anyone whose quality of life is being undermined by their sense of self-worth and they want to break through negative beliefs and feelings
• anyone who wants to find their power to create a life that they love. “What I needed was a mind shift that was empowering, not debilitating,” says Maria.
• people who are ready and willing to grow spiritually

Love Your Body, Love Your Life is full of body-image wisdom such as:

The truth is that your sense of inadequacy is an illusion, or more a delusion…Many Americans suffer from this grand delusion: If I am not thin/tall/toned/beautifu/youngenough, I can’t live my life fully or realize my dreams.”

In her book, Maria says that there is nothing wrong with wanting to be healthier or stronger, or to feel more radiant. It’s “when your desires for improvement are motivated by a gnawing sense of inadequacy, a subtle belief that you are not quite wonderful the way you are…When you learn to fully befriend, accept and love yourself…improvement can happen with patience, ease, and grace.”

Beyond conditional manifesting

Before we get off the phone we discuss a bit about manifesting. Maria believes that it’s wonderful when people make the transition from victim-hood to embracing their wonderful ability to manifest something other than pain and misery.

These days, Maria is personally interested in what is Beyond the five senses, beyond physical manifesting. As she says, “Manifesting is a conditional realm based on, ‘If I get this then…, If I have this then…’ True unconditionality is unshakable. Everything that shows up is a gift whether or not it lines up with your expectations or external reality. I live in a state of love, beauty and abundance.”

To read more about Sarah Maria’s self-image book, Love Your Body, Love Your Life go to her website at http://www.sarahmaria.com/. The book launch includes lots of free bonus gifts.

Melissa Wadsworth is a self-help author, inspirational speaker, and personal potential coach specializing in intuitive dream boards.