Would you like this year to be the "Year Of Your Best Body?" Of course! Who wouldn't. No shortage of ways to achieve that right now! Maybe the route to the YOYBB might be the 6am bootcamp sign-up? Maybe it's quitting sugar? Perhaps it's the personal trainer to drive up
Louise Thompson: Body love

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We look after what we love and value. It's that simple. Photo / iStock

We have been working on this in my group coaching programme Wellbeing Warriors, and the stuff it's brought up for people is just incredible. The habit of continually feeling that our body is not good enough. Not doing enough. Not thin enough. Fast enough. Young enough. Strong enough. Years of feeling guilty eating. Forcing yourself to the gym and hating very moment. Never feeling good enough. Turning those perspectives around to allow women who have covered up on the beach for years to wear a swimsuit and enjoy the beach - HUGE. There have been tears wept, I can tell you, as decades of self-loathing have fallen away.
Have we done that with a strict new eating plan? With willpower to force them to the gym? No. It's so much more fundamental than that. It all starts with love.
If you can learn to love, truly, madly, deeply fall in love with your body - the rest comes easily. You will feed it well, it's precious, it would be odd not too. You will move it in ways that energise and delight, it feels great, why wouldn't you? No force, no willpower. Just simple loving and honouring of the one body we will ever get. The eating plan and the exercise regime come without willpower and force when they are driven by love, not fear.
The secret formula to The Year Of Your Best Body does not lie in someone else's formula that determines how many reps or calories or whatnot. The true secret comes from releasing old patterns of self-loathing and reconnecting to love and joy. We look after what we love and value. It's that simple.
Loving your body will always get you much further long-term than hating it ever will. Loving your body, exactly how it is, right now is the first and most vital foundation there is for everything that follows. Whatever health plan you choose (and there are many good ones), it will be far more effective if it's layered on a base of love.