Sex & Body Image: How to Feel Confident & Comfortable in Bed

In this video, Nadia Bokody, sex columnist, YouTuber, and Astroglide official ambassador, talks about sex and body image and shares her tips to help you feel confident and comfortable in bed.

I've had a career in media for the better part of a decade now. And being a woman in the public eye has its challenges. One of them is that my body image and my appearance are constantly being scrutinized. And that can really take a toll, particularly over the last few years, when I experienced a lot of fluctuations in my weight due to some medication that I was on, it was really difficult to get through those changes in my body and the comments that I was getting on them online and still really keep my confidence in myself and keep that body confidence in the bedroom as well because our body confidence affects us so much in the bedroom when we're being intimate with a partner. But along the way, I did work at three little hacks that helped me to feel better in myself, regardless of what shape, size, or weight I was. And these are three hacks that I still use today. And if you put these three hacks into use, I guarantee you, they are going to help you feel amazing in your body, regardless of what size it is. So let's get into them.

Women are especially taught to basically measure our worth against the numbers. On the bathroom scales and so if that number goes down, we can feel elated and excited. And if the number goes up, it can ruin our whole day. If not our whole week, the problem with measuring ourselves on the scale is it can start innocently enough. It can be something that when maybe just doing once a week or once every couple of weeks, but because we know those scales are there and because we place so much emphasis on that number, it can be very easy to start weighing yourself more regularly. And before you know it, you might be finding that you're weighing yourself every day or even multiple times a day. And even most health experts don't recommend weighing yourself daily because of how much outright fluctuates across a diet. Our weight can even fluctuate across a week. If you want to really move away from really placing your whole sense of self-worth and your outlook for the day and your mood on that arbitrary number because that's really what it is an arbitrary number. Then the best thing you can do for yourself is to get rid of the scale. A number is not going to tell you anything about your worth as a human being or about how sexy beautiful and amazing you are and what sort of a partner you are. And in fact, there's actually a lot of research that shows now that bodyweight is really not a good way for us to measure how healthy we are. A lot of doctors have stopped even using the BMI as a really accurate scale of measuring people's health, just ditch those scales. Either throw them out, give them away, or just put them somewhere so they are out of sight and stop measuring your worth, not by a number and instead on how you feel about yourself and what you bring to the world, because what you bring to the world and what you bring to your relationships, whether that's your friendships or your relationship with your partner is so much more than how much you weigh.

Women in particular are taught that our appearance is the most important thing about us. We are usually complimented on the way we look from a very young age, little girls are often told that we look pretty and beautiful, we're told that we look good in our dresses or in certain clothes that we're given. And that leads us to constantly equate our value and our worth with the way we look. And so we can get really caught up on appearance-based compliments and the best way to take your sense of self-worth away from the way your body look is to start complimenting yourself on all the other amazing things that you bring to the world. Now, you can do this by putting some post-it notes around your house. Like I did, this is a strategy that works really well for me. Or you can even just verbally say these things to yourself in the mirror each day when you wake up in the morning, look at yourself in the mirror and tell yourself. I am kind. I am strong. I am a great friend. I'm a great partner. I am a great sister. By actually ironically taking the emphasis away from our body and focusing on who we are and the value that we have to offer. We can actually feel better and more comfortable and more confident in our bodies. At any shape or size...