“When you truly love yourself, you have the confidence to ask for what you want” with Aimee Beltran and Fotis Georgiadis
Most people think that body image and weight are just vanity things. The problem is that they go much deeper than just surface level. When you hate yourself and don’t like what you see in the mirror, you aren’t going to show up fully in the other areas of your life. You are not living up to your full potential. When you don’t love yourself, that shows up in your career, your relationships, and your overall quality of life. When you truly love yourself, you have the confidence to ask for what you want. You aren’t willing to tolerate anyone that doesn’t reciprocate that love.
As a part of my series about “Learning To Finally Love Yourself” I had the pleasure to interview Aimee Beltran. Aimee is a confidence coach and the Founder and CEO of Irresistible YOUniversity. She empowers women to love themselves by breaking down body image issues, so they can lose the emotional weight and gain confidence to look and feel irresistible…at any size. She is also the host of the Irresistible You Podcast, author of the blogs; Irresistible Icing & Irresistible Pets, and author of the Amazon Hot New Seller, “The Irresistible You Journal.”
Thank you so much for joining us! I’d love to begin by asking you to give us the backstory as to what brought you to this specific career path.
I have over 15 years of experience creating instructional content and managing learning communities for some well known corporations. I was always hired into brand new roles without a blueprint. I’ve been a pioneer, forging my own path…knowing that I was always meant to be an entrepreneur.
I started my blog, Irresistible Icing back in 2010 as a way to share my story about my struggles with weight, body image, and confidence. I quickly realized that my passion and purpose is to empower women to stop waiting for the weight. I took that passion and blended it with my corporate instructional design experience. I now run my own online learning community called Irresistible YOUniversity. I offer courses, coaching, consulting, workshops, and retreats focused around personal development topics.
Are you working on any exciting new projects now? How do you hope that they might help people along their path to self-understanding or a better sense of well-being in their relationships?
Yes! I recently re-opened the doors for enrollment into my signature course/group coaching program, Irresistible YOU. This program is designed for women that want to end the yo-yo diet/body hate shame cycle. Through my proven #IrresistibleYou framework, I give them five guiding principles that they can apply to their life so that they can lose the emotional weight and gain the confidence to create the life they crave.
Do you have a personal story that you can share with our readers about your struggles or successes along your journey of self-understanding and self-love? Was there ever a tipping point that triggered a change regarding your feelings of self acceptance?
Absolutely! My entire brand is based upon my own experiences and journey with self-love. I went on my first official diet at 12 years old and continued to lose and gain weight for most of my life. I would chase new diet fads and gimmicks hoping and praying that would be “the” thing that would fix me once and for all. By “fix”, I thought it would help me obtain the perfect body. I thought that getting to my goal weight and finally having the perfect body would make everything else in my life perfect and happy. Feeling frustrated, I had an epiphany that I could look at any picture from my life and tell you how much I weighed and how I felt about my body. This is how I determined good and bad memories. I could no longer stand the yo-yo diet / body hate shame cycle and I knew that I had to uncover the reason why I couldn’t stop it. From there, I discovered what was missing and that’s what led me to to create the Irresistible You framework.
According to a recent study cited in Cosmopolitan, in the US, only about 28 percent of men and 26 percent of women are “very satisfied with their appearance.” Could you talk about what some of the causes might be, as well as the consequences?
I think that diet culture and the media has a lot to do with these low numbers. Body image issues are an epidemic especially among women. It actually doesn’t matter how much you weigh. I’ve come across so many women that would be considered to have the ideal body but they hate themselves. We live in a society that values weight and beauty over everything else. Women are taught directly and indirectly that their worth comes from how they look. That is then fueled by the constant messages from the media about dieting mixed with images of women that most of us will never look like. I think a lot of the landscape is now changing and we are starting to see body diversity thanks to more plus size models and real people that have platforms online such as Irresistible YOUniversity.
As cheesy as it might sound to truly understand and “love yourself,” can you share with our readers a few reasons why it’s so important?
Most people think that body image and weight are just vanity things. The problem is that they go much deeper than just surface level. When you hate yourself and don’t like what you see in the mirror, you aren’t going to show up fully in the other areas of your life. You are not living up to your full potential. When you don’t love yourself, that shows up in your career, your relationships, and your overall quality of life. When you truly love yourself, you have the confidence to ask for what you want. You aren’t willing to tolerate anyone that doesn’t reciprocate that love.
Why do you think people stay in mediocre relationships? What advice would you give to our readers regarding this?
One thing I’ve noticed in my community is a large amount of women that tell me their self-esteem and confidence was shattered due to a toxic relationship. They come to me because they don’t even know who they are anymore but they want to change. People stay in mediocre relationships because they don’t know their true self-worth. When you don’t love yourself and can’t see your own worth, you’re willing to tolerate just about anything. This is why women stay and have trouble walking away. They believe that they won’t find anyone else and they are afraid to be alone. As cliche as it sounds, if you don’t love yourself, you can’t expect anyone else to love you either. Once you know your worth, you are not going to tolerate anything less than from someone else.
When we talk about self-love and understanding we don’t necessarily mean blindly loving and accepting ourselves the way we are. Many times self-understanding requires us to reflect and ask ourselves the tough questions, to realize perhaps where we need to make changes in ourselves to be better not only for ourselves but our relationships. What are some of those tough questions that will cut through the safe space of comfort we like to maintain, that our readers might want to ask themselves? Can you share an example of a time that you had to reflect and realize how you needed to make changes?
I’m going to address this question from the point of view with weight and body image. I’m not anti weight loss and I don’t believe in the “health at every size” movement. Losing weight because you hate yourself is toxic. This is why so many women get stuck on the yo-yo diet/body hate shame cycle. They are only focused on losing weight and getting to a specific number on the scale. They are doing it from a place of hate and shame. Dieting is dangerous because it doesn’t actually address the real problem. It doesn’t address the why or the mindset shifts that need to happen.
There’s nothing wrong with wanting to lose weight if it’s coming from a place of love. That said, the only way to successfully lose weight is to do it from a place of self-love.
You can love and accept yourself while also striving to improve areas of your life.
So many don’t really know how to be alone, or are afraid of it. How important is it for us to have, and practice, that capacity to truly be with ourselves and be alone (literally or metaphorically)?
I love alone time. I’m an introvert and that’s how I get my energy. Spending time with yourself is how you really get to know who you are independent from a relationship. I teach my students that alone time is so important for growth and development. We all need this time to feed our soul!
How does achieving a certain level of self-understanding and self-love then affect your ability to connect with and deepen your relationships with others?
I’ve been married almost nine years and together for over 13 years. I’ve seen our marriage mature and develop so much since starting this journey. When you don’t know yourself, you don’t have a clue what you need in your relationships. Getting to know yourself deepens your awareness and understanding so that you connect with people that you need. It also goes back to what I said earlier. When you love yourself, you know what you aren’t willing to put up with.
In your experience, what should a) individuals and b) society, do to help people better understand themselves and accept themselves?
Stop thinking about it so much! It’s about taking imperfect action every single day even on the days where you’d rather sit on the couch and binge watch while eating cake. You can’t understand yourself until you put yourself in situations that are outside of your comfort zone.
What are 5 strategies that you implement to maintain your connection with and love for yourself, that our readers might learn from? Could you please give a story or example for each?
I’m giving you a sneak peek of the 5 guiding principles that I teach in my courses. Ready? Here we go!
1. Break the Rules. This is about figuring out what rules you’ve been living by and rewriting them. In other words, what negative beliefs do you have about yourself?
2. Make Confidence Queen. In order to love yourself and be successful at anything, you need confidence. Confidence has to be at the center of your life. Hence, why “she” is the queen!
3. Feed Your Soul. This is about doing the things that makes you happy and fulfilled. We get so busy with life that we forget to take time to do the things we love.
4. Be in the Moment. This is about being mindful and staying present in all that you do. I focus this around food but also on everything else. When you hate your body, it’s easy to go to another place mentally just to get through the moment. This is about being in the moment regardless of where you are on your body love journey.
5. Get Your Glam On. When you look good, you feel good. This is about defining your own signature style and self-care.
What are your favorite books, podcasts, or resources for self-psychology, intimacy, or relationships? What do you love about each one and how does it resonate with you?
Any book by Brene Brown because of the way she approaches shame and vulnerability. I love the Super Soul Sunday podcast with Oprah because there are so many amazing nuggets of inspiration. I have to also shamelessly plug my podcast, Irresistible You if you’re looking for advice on body image and emotional eating.
You are a person of great influence. If you could inspire a movement that would bring the most amount of good to the most amount of people, what would that be? Maybe we’ll inspire our readers to start it…
Thank you for that. I have a movement of my own called #IrresistibleYou. This is about women creating the irresistible life they’ve always craved. It’s about not waiting for the weight. It’s about creating your someday today and living in the moment…regardless of your size or weight. I encourage you to share how you’re living an irresistible life by using #IrresistibleYou across social media!
Can you please give us your favorite “Life Lesson Quote” that you use to guide yourself by?
Can you share how that was relevant to you in your life and how our readers might learn to live by it in theirs?
I’m a quote junkie! I seriously have too many to pick just one. I will share a mantra that I repeat frequently when I’m feeling the anxiety rising. “Faith over Fear.” Anytime I’m doing something out of my comfort zone, I repeat that over and over again. What are we all so afraid of?! Just have faith that everything is going to be ok…no matter what. Even if you fail. It’s still a learning experience.
Thank you so much for your time and for your inspiring insights!
“When you truly love yourself, you have the confidence to ask for what you want” with Aimee… was originally published in Authority Magazine on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.
