Changing my morning routine when I started my own journey towards more body confidence was one of the first things I did. You can’t have a good day feeling great about your body if the first few things you do in the morning are comparing yourself you other women’s bodies on social media or criticising yourself when catching your reflection in the mirror. If your morning routine (even if you don’t put a label on it, whatever you do in the morning and that you do every day is your current morning routine!) is anything like the above, it will impact your body image negatively, and day after day it is going to add up.

Why is my morning routine so important?

There are a few things that most of us do in the morning that set us up for failure when it comes to body confidence. Such as scrolling for 20 minutes on social media when you’re still in bed, being exposed to all the messages about weight loss, about other women dieting, and of photos of fitness influencers or women who have the body you dream of having. If that’s you, this means that the first thing you’re doing in the morning is compare yourself to other women. You might even start thinking that maybe you need to go on that diet too, or that you need to lose weight. So when you finally get up to get ready for your day and come across a mirror, you might judge yourself even more harshly.

Comparing yourself to your friends, to the images you see on social media, doesn't make for a great start of the day. In a morning routine designed to make you feel good, you get to focus on your own goals and celebrate and reflect on your own achievements instead. Comparison is one of the biggest triggers for negative body image, so remember that focusing on yourself is key! I have recently released a podcast episode on how to navigate social media and body issues, you can listen to it here ✨

Your goal with a morning routine should be to take the first few moments you’re awake to start implementing new healthier habits. The first step is to identify the ones that are not serving you and might be making you feel bad about your body and impact your confidence in general.

Spending 5 minutes scrutinising yourself in the mirror while criticising your arms or your belly or your thighs is not going to be doing much good for you. So learning to change the way you talk to your body, if you're often criticising it or saying that nothing looks good on you, should be a part of your morning routine if you’re striving for more body confidence.

A new and improved routine

In a morning routine built for body confidence, you’re aiming to foster new habits that will help you reconnect with your body: that’s crucial when on the quest to more body confidence. One of the first things that happens when starting to have a negative body image, is that we disconnect from our body. We stop looking at it, we avoid our reflection in the mirror, we try to avoid feeling it, and we only talk to it as to an enemy. A good morning routine for body confidence will have practices to help you bridge that gap and reconnect to it. It could be dancing, yoga, or any time of movement really as long as you do it while being mindful of what you feel in your body.

The morning routine you pick should make you start the day on a positive note, and boost your mood right from the beginning. It should also give you the opportunity to add self-care and self-love practices early in the day, to remind yourself to appreciate and nurture your body. These healthy habits could be in terms of nourishment, hydration, exercise and mindset, that you will keep practicing day after day and that will bring you results on your body confidence little by little. Our goal with this new morning routine is to build new habits over time, practice them day after day, and being consistent with something that makes you feel good will inevitably bring you a sense of pride and confidence.

Mindset work is also an important part of a morning routine for body confidence. Replacing your negative beliefs about yourself, identifying the ones you hold about yourself and shifting them and replacing them with new positive ones can make a big difference on how you approach your day. Journaling, gratitude practice, mirror work, EFT/tapping, affirmations... There are so many tools available, you get to pick the one that works for you!

I recently launched a new freebie, a Morning Routine Builder for Body Confidence. You can grab your FREE copy now on this page: Morning Routine Builder. I’ve included my favourite practices and the ones that helped me on my journey, and there’s a full section on Mindset practices you can pick from to add to your own morning routine.

I'm looking forward to hearing what your new Routine looks like ✨