Angela Gargano (00:00)
You ever stand in front of the mirror and think to yourself,
I should look better by now. used to look so much better. I used to be so much stronger.
or my personal favorite, why am I working so hard and I don't look like the past version of myself or I don't look like that other person I see on the internet? Now, if this sounds familiar, welcome to the club. And here's the truth. If you can't love the body you're in right now, right now, you won't magically love the body you're chasing either.
And let's talk about why this matters and how to start shifting that mindset today so that you can show better for all areas of your life, for your work, for your family, for your friends. ⁓
and most importantly, for yourself.
Welcome back to What If It All Goes Right, the no fluff podcast for high achieving humans who are ready to stop spiraling in self doubt and finally feel strong in their bodies, their minds and their lives. I'm Angela Gargano, keynote speaker, six time American Ninja Warrior and high performance coach. And I've literally helped thousands of humans conquer something they once thought was impossible starting with their first pull up. And in today's episode.
It's going to be real. It's going to be raw. And it's probably one you've maybe needed to hear for a long time, because this episode isn't just about wellness or nutrition or longevity. It's about how you talk to yourself, especially when the mirror starts to feel like your enemy. So let's dive in.
So let's be real here, it's hard to love your current body when it feels like a stranger. And I see it all the time. I work with so many high performing women and they come in and they start saying, hey, I've been eating better, I've been moving more, I'm literally trying my best. But underneath, there is like this quiet loop that keeps coming in.
that says I don't look like I did five years ago, that my body's not reacting the way I did five years ago. Why is this taking so long? What's the point of doing this if I still don't feel confident?
You see, one of my clients that I have now, she was an avid triathlete.
And now with her full-time responsibilities, she's in this new season of her life. Her body feels different. Her pace is different. And even though she's showing up, because she is showing up, she's struggling to love this version of herself right now. And I'm curious if you can maybe relate to that.
And maybe your body, for a lot of women, it shifts because of hormones, right? Maybe you're working out and doing all the things you used to do, but the mirror is not matching the effort.
Maybe you're continually stuck in comparing yourself to this past version of yourself or to the girls on Instagram who seem to have it all together and like all figured out. And you're like, why can I be like that? So I want you to take a breath right now. I want you to pause here. This is where we go wrong.
We think that once we hit the goal, that you'll magically be confident. That once you lose the weight, that you'll magically feel better.
Once I fix this, then I'll finally love myself.
The deep dark truth is that you won't. Because body image isn't fixed on the scale. It's fixed by a shift. Now it doesn't mean that you can't have a story and you can't have a goal of wanting to change your body or recomp your body, right? But we have to love our body and all the different seasons that it's in currently.
instead of continuing to beat ourselves up over and over again about what we don't look like.
Now you might be like, cool, Angela, I'm sure you haven't had that problem. I feel like women are always coming up to me, kind of like grabbing my arms and looking at my body and thinking that I don't have any of these thoughts in my head. But I've had this so many different times, and I'm going to be super vulnerable with you and tell you something that people don't really expect. It's that I've struggled with body image my whole life. When I was younger, people in school would literally call me Angela.
they made fun of the fact that I had muscle. So the muscle was not beautiful then. The narrative has definitely shifted now. I would wear baggy clothes to hide my body because I was terrified of how I looked and being too much.
And even now, even now, literally still now, I still have moments where I catch myself reflecting on these moments and thinking, oh my goodness, like maybe I look too, maybe I'm masculine? Am I intimidating? Am I ever gonna be able to find somebody who will love my body? But the difference today is that I have those thoughts, but I don't live there anymore. I catch it and I reframe it. And then I shift it to kindness over critiquing my body.
And that's the skills that I want to pass on to you.
Now, I've also had body image issues because I used to do fitness competitions. That was when I was really, my goodness, I was so lean. I was so little when I was doing this. And after, I went right into it from going extreme dieting, taking all the seasons off my food, just going back to everyday life and gaining.
that weight feeling really fluffy in my body and just constantly looking in the mirror and being like, like, why do I look like this?
Well, that body I had before wasn't sustainable. Right? I'm not going to not put season on my food. Your girl loves food. We want to eat, right? And even now, with being retired from American Ninja Warrior after competing six times, there's so many times that I look back on that person and continue to be like, maybe I should go back to how that person was. How can I get back to there? But that's not helping with focusing on who I am now and who I'm becoming.
The truth is the only body you have is the one that you were in right now. Not five years from ago, not 10 pounds from now, right freaking now. And if you spend every day waiting to love yourself, you're gonna waste a life that's meant to be lived with joy, with strength, with power, living it now.
When you love the body you're in, you show up differently. You lead differently. You take risks. You speak up and you shine. And that ripples. That ripples into everything. It's powerful. So today I want to walk through three ways to start loving your current, your current body that you're in right now.
So the first thing is to say it out loud. Every day, thank your body for doing something it's doing right now. Seriously, seriously, I have a client who I literally, I her send it to me every day. I'm like, tell me, write it down to me things that you love about your body right now. Thank you for walking me through another stressful work day. Thank you body for hugging my kids, my doggy. Thank you for keeping me alive when I wanted to quit.
And it sounds silly, and it sounds like, Angela, you want me to say that out loud to myself? You can even say it at the mirror, whatever. Yes. Because this was going to rewire your brain, because your brain has been caught in this loop right now of thinking negatively about it. So the way to reframe it is to speak it out loud. It's to train your brain to be like, ⁓ actually, my body is doing some pretty epic things for me right now.
Number two is to catch and reframe the thought. So let's be realistic here. I can tell you all day, love your current body. Always think positively. That's not how our brain works. Our brain is always going to come back to thinking negatively. That's just how our brain is. But the next time you hear the voice saying it, recognize it. Let's say, for example, it's like, man, I feel so bloated and ugly. And shift it to, OK, I feel bloated today. And that's all right. My body's still strong. I'm still worthy.
I'm still here, I'm still showing up. And that's how you can take your power back and take your control back. Those small thought shifts is a massive ripple effect. And eventually as you keep doing this, it starts to actually reframe in it and it works. It works, it will snap. But you have to have that awareness and shift it each time.
Number three, move for love and not for punishment. The amount of people that come to me that are like, I've been working out because you're mad at your body, because you want to be smaller, you want to be less, less, less, less, less. I want you to move because it feels good to move, because your body deserves the motion, because you're focusing on what you have to gain, not what you have to lose, because you can take the walk, because you can dance in the kitchen.
Because you can lift something off the floor heavy. Because you can hold your grandchildren, right?
And you can say it with me, I move because I love myself, not because I hate myself. That's gonna allow the process to be 10 times more fun when you're diving into your wellness routine and the goals that you have.
Now, you don't need to love every inch of your body every day, okay? But you do have to respect your body. Support your body. Stand besides your body like it's a teammate. Because this body, she has held you through heartbreaks, breakthroughs, and everything in between, all the in-between moments. Your body's fighting.
Your body's with you. Your body is yours. And the more you speak to your body with kindness, the more unstoppable you're going to become. Now, I hope you're fired up from this episode.
If this resonate with you, please send me a message. And I do have something super special for you. I have a free course that I created all about becoming strong, tone lean, and confident in just less than four hours a week because I know time is a huge piece of this. And we're going to walk through all the things. We're to walk through scheduling. We're going to walk through the workouts to do, the nutrition, and things that are going to actually be sustainable for your body and work with your body in a positive way so that you can actually stick to something and not be like all over the place with like trying all these random things that you find
all over Instagram, right? Figuring out what works well for your current body and doing it in a loving way.
So check that out and if you're looking for deeper personalized coaching, we've got high performance coaching that we're doing and you can also book me to speak to your team, to your event. I just had an amazing pre-show call with an awesome community that I'm doing a talk for called Women's to Watch and a lot of this truly resonated with them on our pre-show call. So what we'll do is we'll sit down and we'll customize a keynote to really bring to your audience to create a massive impact to get them
Energize excited and to really create change in that moment not only for their body for their mind and for their leadership. So anyways, really grateful for you all to be here. Make sure you like and subscribe to this podcast and ⁓ Reminder, you know, what if it all goes, right?
