Sign up to listen to my brand new private podcast - Confident as F**k (Even When You're Not There Yet)

This week’s episode is a big one — especially if you’ve ever felt torn between wanting to feel good in your body now *and* still having goals you want to reach.

So many women see accepting themselves as they are as some kind of surrender. A white flag. A moment where they “give in” and never change again.

But what if there’s another way? One where you can:

✔️ Feel confident and connected to your body

✔️ Drop the constant shame spiral

✔️ And still make meaningful, empowered progress?

In this episode, we dive into:

💥 Why learning to *like yourself now* isn’t a betrayal of your goals

💥 How chasing change from shame never delivers long-term results

💥 The difference between disconnected and connected motivation

💥 Why self-acceptance is actually the start of real, sustainable transformation

💥 What it looks like to *reconnect* with your body — and work with it instead of against it

If you've ever thought: “If I accept myself now, I’ll stop trying.” “I can't feel good until I lose the weight.” or “I’m scared to slow down because I might never get there…”

Then this is the conversation you didn’t know you needed.

**PLUS**: I’m sharing something BRAND NEW with you — a free private podcast series:

Confident as F**k (Even When You’re Not There Yet)

....to help you feel strong, at ease, and connected in your body *right now,* while still moving powerfully towards the results you want.

It’s 5 value-packed episodes based on my 3Rs method to help you:

✨ Reclaim your confidence

✨ Reconnect with your body

✨ Rise into the version of you who doesn’t need permission to feel good

Sign up now at 👉 https://www.confidantas.co.uk and start listening today.

One of the things that I will die on a hill for is that we cannot possibly make genuine, lasting, positive change if we're not able to learn to be okay with ourselves exactly as we are right now.

But there's a problem with this concept, because too often we see the act of learning to feel good in our bodies now as giving up or giving in, an admission of failure, an end point from where we will never see the changes we've been working so hard to achieve. But what if it's not a straight choice between either working on yourself or giving up? Because we absolutely can create the space for both.

And often when we do, it becomes the missing piece that finally brings lasting change, lasting peace, and allows us to finally feel good in our own skin.

Welcome to the Busy Woman's Guide to Fitness and Wellness, where we celebrate you exactly as you are and help you to be the fit, strong, confident woman you deserve to be.

We tackle everything from diet culture and body image through to how to let go of the hustle, the pressure and the overwhelm and find your balance and energy in a busy life.

I'm Alix, women's fitness and wellness expert, Therapeutic Coach, founder of ChickFit, and mum of two, and I'm here with your weekly dose of inspiration, helping you to rewrite the rules and live life on your own terms.

Hello, peeps, and welcome back to the Busy Woman's Guide to Fitness and Wellness.

And today it's all about self acceptance and some of the misconceptions that often go with that.

And this is a conversation I've had a lot, and one that I do get pushed back on, if I'm completely honest, because much as we kind of broadly understand this idea of self acceptance, it's often not something we really want to do because a lot of us equate it with giving up, with letting go of ourselves, with becoming complacent.

And we end up with this fear that if we do accept ourselves as we are, we're going to lose all motivation to change and we will never achieve our goals. So we keep chasing change because we think it will give us permission to like ourselves at some undefined point in the future.

And this drive becomes deeply rooted in this kind of sense of conditional worth. In other words, it's only when I have changed that I will become worthy. And that'd be all well and good, if we could all sit here and say that we feel good in our own skin.

But you only have to Take a quick look at the world around you, at social media, to know that that blatantly isn't true.

The world is full of women and men who feel rubbish about themselves, who are constantly trying to change their bodies to be acceptable, and who are searching endlessly for this kind of magic answer that we think is out there somewhere. And of course, we are not the ones who are winning in this great that has been created for us. And that's what it is. It's a game.

It's a game which is about making us feel crap about ourselves so that we'll keep trying to buy the solution. And that's ultimately what this is about.

If we feel rubbish enough about ourselves, we will buy the solution and we still won't feel good, so we'll buy another solution and we still won't feel good, so we'll buy another solution. Right? We're always chasing that end solution. And what it does is it really keeps us stuck in being constantly dissatisfied.

This dissatisfaction is what keeps us in motion, but it also make sure that we're never allowed to rest or celebrate or enjoy. It keeps us feeling like we're never quite there yet. And often that's because the goalposts keep getting moved as well.

So, you know, we do all the things that we're told to do and then we realize the goalposts have shifted again. And so I'm still not there. So now I've got to try again and try again and try again. And so we keep going.

We keep striving from shame, from disappointment, from not feeling good enough. And it also then keeps us reactive. We're always reactive to things. We're not being proactive about anything. We're being reactive to stuff.

Reactive to "I feel crap". Reactive to "I should be doing more of that", "I'm not doing enough", I'm not doing or I'm not good enough.

It keeps us in a constant state of stress about where we are, about the choices that we're making. And then even when the results do start to come, it often just doesn't feel like enough.

You know, I remember back in the day that, oh God, I was constantly on a diet and I got smaller and smaller and smaller and I lost all this weight. And yeah, it felt great at the time, but as soon as I got to the goal, those thoughts would start to creep in.

If I could just lose a few more pounds, then I'd truly get where I wanted to go. Then I truly would be able to feel the way that I want to feel.

Because even in that place where I was smaller than I'd ever been, I was dieting all the time, I was hungry all the time, it still didn't feel like quite enough. Still didn't quite feel like what I thought it was going to feel like when I got there. And so we are we're fighting.

We're always in motion. We're always moving forward, we're always striving, we're always being reactive.

We're always in a state of stress about where we're going and what we're doing and how we should be doing more.

And then even on the odd occasion, and it is the odd occasion, that we actually get the result that we wanted in the first place, more often than not, it still doesn't feel like it's enough. But what if you're sick of that? Because I certainly got sick of that. I got to a point where I was, I'm not just not doing this anymore.

I can't do this anymore. I can't keep with this exhausting conversation that goes on in my head 24 hours of the day.

So if you're in that place as well, if you're sick of that, then maybe it's time to rebel a little bit.

And I spoke a little while ago about these kind of quiet rebellions in our lives where we can step into something new, which isn't necessarily about a big announcement. It's not about making some big, massive change, but it's about the small decisions that you make that say, do you know what?

I'm not doing it like this anymore. And honestly, the more of us that can do that, the better the world becomes.

The more of us that say, no, actually, I'm not doing it like this anymore. I'm doing it my way. I'm doing it differently. The better the world becomes. But of course, the rebellion is not easy.

And like I said before, what can happen is when we say to ourselves, right, I'm going to work on just accepting myself as I am, that feels really scary because it feels like we might be giving up. And so we end up stuck. We end up stuck because we want to feel good in our skin.

We want to accept where we are, but we also don't want that because then we believe that nothing will ever change. We'll never reach those goals.

Now, I could get into, well, once you learn to feel good about yourself, then the urge to change is going to go away and you'll feel good anyway. I could go down that road, but I'm not going to because that's not what you want to hear.

That's not a particularly helpful route for me to take, you know. Yes, it's a lovely concept, isn't it? Just love yourself as you are and then you'll feel good anyway and you won't need to change. Right?

Sounds lovely, but it's not necessarily practical for us. That's not necessarily a thing that feels safe for us to do. So instead, what I'm going to offer you today is a third way in this, if you like.

So not being led by dissatisfaction, negativity and constantly feeling bad about yourself, but also not getting into a place where you feel like you've given up either. So could there be a middle ground here?

Could there be a middle ground where we get to feel good in our skin and we get to keep working towards our goals? I think there is, and we're going to talk about that today.

Now, before we get into that, how would you like a whole series from me on how to feel good in your own skin? Well, I've been working really hard to create a private podcast series that I can finally share with you today.

It's called Confident as F**k (even when you're not there yet).

And It's a free 5 part podcast to help you feel good in your skin now while you keep making powerful progress towards your goals, but just without all the shame, the pressure and the perfectionism.

And in fact, what I believe, what I know to be true, is that when we can learn to feel good in our skin now, it actually gives us the perfect jumping off point for making those changes. So this is for you if you want to feel strong and confident and at ease in your body and in your life.

And yet, no matter how much you do, how many diets you try, it feels like it's never quite enough. And we're going to use my signature 3R's method to help you to discover why confidence has nothing to do with your dress size.

How to rebuild trust with your body and stop fighting it all the time, and how to use that to create habits that stick because they actually support you. And then what it means to live as the confident woman you want to become.

And like I say, this isn't some plea for you to just love yourself as you are. And it's definitely not full of just hacks and tips on how to stay motivated.

It's actually about how you can show up differently for yourself and feel good in your skin now while using that as the foundation to keep working towards your goals.

So if that sounds like just what you need, then head over to confidentas.co.uk where you can sign up and I'll send you your private podcast feed so you can listen in.

Right back to this episode and we're talking about this third way.

This third way which where we allow ourselves to accept ourselves as we are, but we don't necessarily take that as a cue to give up. We take that as the foundation for actually making some of the changes that we would love to.

So I think the first thing I want to say about this is that I think that we sometimes see acceptance as a passive thing, but it is not. Acceptance is not passive.

Acceptance is actually about allowing yourself to be present, allowing yourself to actually take control of the situation, rather than it controlling you. Because, believe me, when you're in a state where you're like, I'm not good enough, I need to lose more weight. I don't look the way that I want to look. I wish I looked like that. I. You're not in control of the situation. You don't have agency in that situation.

So we want to give that agency back to ourselves. And acceptance is one of the ways that we can do that. It's hard, but it's one of the ways that we can do that. So acceptance is not passive.

So try not to see it as that. Try and see it as actually something very powerful that you get to do.

You know, accepting a situation is a really powerful thing that you can do, and know that from there you can accept and honour where you are now while also moving towards change. Instead of doing it from this really negative place, we can actually do it with kindness. We can do it with a bit more clarity.

So instead of saying something like, oh, my God, I need to get rid of this horrid fat tummy, instead, we start to say to ourselves, I want to look after this body that has served me so well, and I want to do that with nourishing food and movement. That feels good. We can all feel the difference between those two things. I need to get rid of this horrible fat tummy.

And actually I want to look after this body that has served me so well.

And I know that if we go down the second of these routes, we're actually more likely to achieve the goal anyway, because running away from stuff, it's never going to work for the long term. And this really is where this empowered change comes from. You know, feeling rubbish about yourself all the time. It offers zero empowerment.

It does not empower you to change. Instead, you are this thing that's faulty, this thing that needs to be fixed all the time.

And if I know you, and I think I do, then I know that you want to come from a place of empowerment. You don't want to come from a place of victimhood. We're not victims here. We are women that have what we need to make the change we want to make.

We just maybe need to reframe and empower ourselves in a slightly different way. So we're about taking control. We're not about being the victim. And we want your goals to stop being a punishment. They're not a punishment.

If they feel like a punishment, then they're never going to last. We want your goals to start being expressions of what you want more of in your life.

How do you want to show up in your life? Who do you want to be in your life? Those are the things that we want to be thinking about to send us in the right direction.

And this is one of, you know, this is one of the most powerful things you can do for yourself. This is about reconnecting with yourself, reconnecting with your body. And I had a conversation with somebody who was kind of was really talking about her body like it was an inconvenience, like something she was having to battle against. And I highlighted it to her. I said, it just. It sounds like you're working against your body. And she's like, yeah, do you know what? You're right.

It feels like that. It feels like my body is letting me down. It feels like my body's not doing what I want it to do, and I feel frustrated with it.

And we can't live our best lives in that situation.

We can't live our best lives when our body is the problem, when our body is frustrating us, when we are talking down to our body, when we're getting annoyed with it, when we feel like it's letting us down.

So what we did was we reframed everything as reconnecting with that body, making peace with it as it was right now, and actually starting to work together as a team. Not working against, but working as a team.

And I think a lot of us, if we take an honest step back and we think about that relationship, we realize it's not a healthy relationship that we have. It's quite a toxic Relationship, Sometimes it's saying a lot of mean things about our body, then at the same time expecting it to change.

That's never gonna, or it's never gonna happen for the long term. It might happen for the short term, but not for the long term. So that's what we really want to do.

We want to reconnect with this body, we want to make peace with it, we want to work together as a team.

Because a disconnected person, they're going to chase change from self criticism, they're going to struggle to feel satisfied, they're going to lose steam and bounce from one extreme to another or be in this kind of all or nothing relationship with nutrition, exercise and self care. And of us get there, get into that place, it's either we're doing all the things or we might as well not bother like a lot of us get into that place.

And if that's where you are right now, it probably means you're disconnected, it probably means you're disconnected from your body and we need to get you reconnected again. Because when you're reconnected, you start to move from love, not lack.

You give yourself grace, you give yourself permission to rest when you need to rest and you start to choose goals based on desire rather than duty, rather than what do I need to run away from today? It becomes what am I, what am I walking towards? What am I welcoming into my life? What do I want for myself?

And you know, I'm going to ask you now, which of those would you prefer to be?

The self criticizing, struggling to feel satisfied person who's losing steam all the time and bouncing from one extreme to another, or the connective person who's moving from love, giving themselves permission, who's choosing goals based on desire, like which one of those do you want to be?

Because I absolutely can promise you that self acceptance is not the end of change, it's not the end of growth, it's actually the beginning of real sustainable, self led change. And that coming from a place where you know who you are, you know what you want, you know what's important to you. So how does that land?

Are there places, especially around body image, where you feel like accepting yourself right now might feel like giving up?

And if so, is there some work you could do to start to bring those concepts together, to allow for both of those things to be true at the same time, where you could start to look at a bit of self acceptance and how that might be the basis to keep working towards your goals in a different way? And if you could do that, how much better would you feel? How much better would that process feel?

Maybe a bit lighter, a bit less pressured, a bit more easeful. Right, so we're going to cover a lot of this in this private podcast that I've created for you. We're going to really go into depth on this.

We're going to explore this. We're going to look at how we can go from the disconnected person to the connected person.

How we can find a bit more peace with where we are right now and how we can use that as a jumping off point to create more of what we want in our lives. And this, by the way, is not just about body image. Yes, this is kind of the jumping off point, I suppose, but this is about our entire lives.

This is about our confidence as people. Not just confident because we look a certain way to the outside world, but confident because we freaking well know who we are.

We are comfortable with who we are. We are comfortable with the choices that we're making. We are grounded in the choices that we're making.

We're being authentic to what is truly important to us. And we're not being constantly led by all of the stuff that's happening outside of us. Like, we want to find that internal peace.

So that's what we're going to do in this private podcast series. This is about not just your body confidence, this is about your entire sense of self, your entire sense of self confidence as well.

And I can't wait to share it with you. I've been working really hard on this over the last couple of months and I've been actually earlier on today recording some of these episodes.

And I'm just. I'm loving creating them because they just. They just feel so. What's the word? Nourishing. I think that that's what I want to do. I want to nourish you.

I want to leave you not feeling, my God, I need to be doing more. Oh, my God, I'm not doing enough. Oh, my God, I'm not good enough. I want you to be like, yes, I get it. This is the way forward. This is how we do this.

This is how I make these changes. This is how I feel good in my skin right now and how I continue to change and grow and move forward in my life.

That's what I want you to feel when you listen to this series. So go and get a hold of that at confidentas.co.uk I'll pop the link into the show notes as well.

Sign up and you'll get sent a feed, a personal feed for that private podcast so you can listen into those 5 episodes. Could do a bit of a binge if you want. I love that when I when I discover something on podcasts, having a little bit of a binge is lovely.

So have a bit of a binge on that and I hope that you really, really enjoy it. I hope you enjoy listening as much as I have enjoyed creating it for you.

But of course I'll be back here with the Busy Woman's Guide to Fitness and Wellness next week as well as usual. So do keep an eye out for that next episode coming your way. And for now I'm gonna love you and leave you and I'll see you back here again next time.

Foreign thank you so much for joining me today, beautiful people.

If you have loved listening in and want to make sure you don't miss out on future episodes, then simply subscribe or follow the podcast on your favorite podcast player right now. You can also come and join me on the socials @alixchickfit and I'll see you again next time.