It’s everything – learning to love and accept yourself right where you are is the foundation for change.  You can never get to positive, what I call self-honoring, choices from a negative perspective.  A person can’t judge themselves into loving themselves.  That’s why diets don’t work – they start from the premise that something is wrong with the person.  Look, nothing is wrong with someone who is overweight – their body has responded appropriately to being overfed.  We need to use compassion and understanding to explore the behavior – to recognize the emotional needs that the person has been trying to meet with food.  We need to help them find new ways to get their needs met.   We want to help them to get back in touch with what their body actually needs for sustenance and nutrition. 

 A negative self image is really just a distorted sense one has about oneself.  From a Spiritual Perspective we are all children of God in whom he is well pleased.  Everything that we have ever done is forgivable – in fact a loving God would never judge us in the first place.  It is the illusion that there is something wrong with us – compassion breaks the spell.  Compassion and understanding bring about an accurate perception of reality – judgment is a distorted perception.  So, as we become more compassionate and more loving toward ourselves, we become authentic – we learn to meet our needs in more self-honoring ways.  This is the doorway to a positive (more accurate) self-image.