Body Kindness Book Summary - Body Kindness Book explained in key points

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Body Kindness summary

Name: Body Kindness
Rating: 4.3 (242 reviews)
Author: Rebecca Scritchfield

Rebecca Scritchfield

Transform Your Health From the Inside Out – and Never Say Diet Again

4.3 (242 ratings)

23 mins

Brief summary

In 'Body Kindness' by Rebecca Scritchfield, the author teaches readers to reject societal beauty standards and embrace body acceptance. By practicing self-care and self-compassion, we can nourish our bodies and improve our overall well-being.

Topics

Healthy Living The Body Sports

Table of Contents

Body Kindness
Summary of 8 key ideas

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Key idea 1 of 8

What’s in it for me? Discover a healthier lifestyle based on self-compassion, rather than strict rules.

If you’ve ever tried to keep up with some new exercise plan or stick to that new diet everyone’s talking about, there’s a good chance that you started out strong but eventually drifted away from it. Don’t worry; it happens to most of us. And the reason why is that most of these self-improvement concepts are riddled with more rules and guidelines than any reasonable person can put up with for more than a couple of weeks.

What’s really harmful is all the stress and guilt that comes with trying to measure your food, count your calories or, god forbid, miss out on a scheduled workout. If this sounds all too familiar to you, then you may enjoy hearing about body kindness, a different approach to feeling better about yourself – because isn’t that what dieting and exercise are supposed to be about?

As author Rebecca Scritchfield explains, this approach is about putting aside strict rules and figuring out what is going to work for you based on your unique circumstances and what’s important to you. You’ll find plenty of tips and advice on how to relax, let some joy into your life and live healthier at the same time.

In these blinks, you’ll find out

how some diets can turn into food phobias;
why you probably need more sleep than you’re currently getting; and
how making a “PACT” with yourself can curb your negative thinking.

Generating happiness through good life habits can instigate an upward spiral in your life.

When you think about the factors that contribute to happiness, do things like money, youth or a slim figure come to mind? Well, according to psychologist Sonja Lyubomirsky, these factors only contribute to around 10 percent of a person’s overall happiness. Your daily choices account for 40 percent, while the remaining 50 percent comes down to your genetic makeup.

The 40 percent that makes up your daily choices is a pretty significant factor to have control over, nonetheless, making the right choices requires a great deal of willpower. But the good news is that you can make it easier on yourself by developing good habits.

If you repeat a healthy behavior often enough, you can turn that behavior into a habit that becomes second nature. In other words, you’ll reach a point where you won’t even have to think about it – it’ll just come naturally to you.

For example, let’s say you want to be less frivolous with your time at home after work. Maybe your routine now is to absentmindedly waste time checking your Instagram feed or anxiously scamper around the house looking for something to do.

Well, this time could be made more productive if you develop the habit of coming home, changing your clothes and doing 30 minutes of yoga. This would be a win-win scenario as far as your happiness is concerned. It’s not only a healthy practice; it would also help quieten down your mind after a busy day at work, and it would allow you to enjoy your evening more consciously.

The positive effect that good habits can have on your life is something the author calls spiraling upward.

The easiest way to understand this concept is to see it in action. Let’s say you want to increase your creative output. For instance, you could start spending 30 minutes doing some creative writing after breakfast. This will both spark your imagination and let you start the day with the positive feeling of being productive.

Now, that positive feeling often carries over into another good decision, such as a willingness to do some exercise or a feeling of being energized enough to tackle some household chores. This is how a good habit can get you spiraling upward.

Thus, the more positive habits you have in place, the better you’ll feel. This, in turn, will increase the chances that you’ll continue making good choices on how to spend your time throughout the day – and that will lead to even more good feelings!

Strict diets can create a toxic relationship with food, so try a more reasonable, balanced approach.

If you feel constantly worried about what to eat, you’re not alone. There’s no shortage of magazine articles, blog posts and social media conversations filled with fearful warnings about what you should and shouldn’t eat. So it’s no wonder that people obsess over their diet to the point that they’re at war with food – constantly fighting over the question of whether or not something is healthy or unhealthy.

But here’s the irony: What’s really unhealthy is all that anxiety over what you eat! In fact, obsessing and being fearful of food is downright toxic.

Exercise is one of the best things you can do for your body if you do it for the right reasons.

Even if exercise isn’t your favorite thing to do, there’s a good chance you’ve had at least one workout that left your mind feeling clear and your body feeling a certain lightness and energy that only comes after physical exertion.

There’s a good reason people feel this transcendence after a workout; it’s because exercise is among the best things you can do for your health.

Sleep is important for physical and emotional well-being, so create a restorative sleep sanctuary.

Are you one of those people who can wake up after just six hours of sleep feeling perfectly energized and restored? Well, if so, you can consider yourself special! Research shows that only 5 percent of the human population carries the genetic variation that allows them to fully recuperate after just six hour of sleep. Meanwhile, the other 95 percent of us require significantly more.

Getting the right amount of sleep is about more than just getting some shut-eye; it’s vital to the well-being of both your mind and body.

If you act mindfully, negative thoughts don’t have to lead to negative actions.

There’s a good chance you’ve tried certain diets or exercise regimens that didn’t stick. Or maybe you’ve been to nutritionists and therapists but stopped when you believed they weren’t doing you any good. With enough of these experiences, you may start feeling hopeless and decide that you’re done with self-improvement plans altogether.

If such thoughts sound familiar, don’t worry. Having them can happen to the best of us, and it doesn’t mean that you can’t follow through on whatever life changes you hope to make.

Have more fun by making the mundane meaningful and by remembering to laugh.

Do you ever look around you and think, Why is everyone so serious? The author has not only had this thought; she’s even gone so far as to suggest there’s an ongoing fun famine, which is characterized by a general lack of silliness and too many people just going through the motions of mundanity.

If you feel like your life could benefit from making the mundane more meaningful, here are some tips for doing just that.

A personalized plan that addresses what you value is an effective way to lead a healthier life.

Now that you have some ideas for how to be kinder to your body and bring more joy into your day-to-day life, let’s see what it looks like when you bring these ideas together into a master plan.

With a good plan in mind, you can have a strong foundation to rely upon – one that can provide ways for you to practice body kindness in every aspect of your life.

Self-compassion is essential to body kindness, so speak to yourself as you would to a good friend.

You’ve probably heard the saying “no pain, no gain,” which suggests that self-improvement requires fighting and pushing your way through discomfort. This can lead to people thinking it’s okay to be hard on themselves and to regularly dole out self-punishment, but it doesn’t have to be that way.

Being harsh with yourself is far more likely to bring about exhaustion and cause you to give up rather than persevere. And that’s why practicing regular self-compassion is a far better method for success.

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What is Body Kindness about?

Body Kindness (2016) offers a refreshing approach to your overall physical and emotional health – one that allows you to tune into your own unique body and discover what is best for your well-being. This approach does away with one-size-fits-all dietary and exercise rules that often introduce a lot of added stress and anxiety into our daily lives. With small, easy-to-implement steps, you can learn how to boost their health and happiness, without the rules and rigidity.

Body Kindness Review

Body Kindness (2016) is an empowering book that challenges society's narrow definition of beauty and encourages readers to embrace a kinder, more compassionate approach to their bodies. Here's why this book is worth reading:

Offers practical tools and strategies to develop a positive body image, build self-compassion, and practice self-care.
Combines personal anecdotes, scientific research, and expert advice to create a well-rounded and informative guide.
Delivers a powerful message about self-acceptance and body positivity, inspiring readers to redefine their relationship with their bodies and live a more fulfilling life.

Best quote from Body Kindness

If you find yourself caught in a pattern of choices that you feel bad about, something isnt right.

—Rebecca Scritchfield

Who should read Body Kindness?

Anyone tired of the latest fad diets
People looking for tips on living a healthier lifestyle
Nutritionists, coaches and psychologists

About the Author

Rebecca Scritchfield is an experienced fitness counselor, health counselor and nutritionist. She developed the body kindness approach to health and well-being, which forgoes the usual diet restrictions and focuses on personalized self-care instead. She has appeared on CNN and the Today Show, and she has contributed articles to The Washington Post, Oprah Magazine and many other publications.

Categories with Body Kindness

Health & Nutrition

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