Thoughts of your body image are taking up so much space in your brain that you cannot enjoy other parts of your life. You do not feel comfortable in your body and cannot accept your body, so you either are ashamed and hide, or try to change how you look.
Sound familiar? We’ve all been there.
NEWSFLASH!
The diet and fitness industry profits off of our body insecurities…
They focus on the idea that we should change our appearance. Give in to this, and life, in general, will never be satisfying enough because the one and only important thing will be what you look like…
…but it doesn’t have to be this way.
Some food for thought: If no one else existed in this world, would you still be self-conscious about your body?
Of the many things I do in the fitness industry, being a personal trainer is one of them. Often I get new clients who come in telling me they want to lose weight. I ask them why this is important to them. The answer is usually to be “in good shape” and “healthy”. Cool. I continue to make my way through their evaluation and they eventually ask me if I’m going to weigh them.
Then I go on my rant (lol) on how the scale is inaccurate, it’s not a good representation of overall health, it’s detrimental to your self-esteem if you look at it every day, it further feeds into your body insecurities, yada yada yada. Then, I say to them “you can get on the scale if you still want”. They usually say no. Boom. Message received, and I have my proud trainer moment.
Now, I easily could have profited off of their insecurities; gotten them on the scale, told them they were “overweight” based on their BMI, and given them a glossy glimpse into their future with a different body composition. Unfortunately, this happens a lot in my industry; the focus solely being on changing their appearance and not on overall health, function, and self-esteem.
I see super dangerous examples of this in the media as well. Kim Kardashian proudly documented her weight loss journey to be able to fit into one of Marilyn Monroe’s dresses for the 2022 Met Gala. As seen on her show The Kardashians (my mom and I’s guilty pleasure) she was able to shrink down just enough for her upper body to fit into the dress. True to form, the dress wouldn’t zip up around her backside because you gotta keep that booty! (note my sarcasm). And did you catch Gwyneth Paltrow’s recent interview with her doctor where she talked about her intermittent fasting and bone broth soup lunches? #cringe
I consider myself a strong-headed, independent, body-neutral 29-year-old. But it wasn’t always that way. Like many young people, I fell victim to the messages out there to change my body. Although I was too lazy to actually do anything about it, my self-esteem definitely suffered and my body image issues were highlighted. But through having worked so closely with people in a fitness environment for many years, I was able to become truly body neutral. The negligence of the fitness and diet industries have long lasting negative effects, and it targets the most vulnerable, often women and girls under the age of 25. And now when I speak to my female clients, in general the only ones who are truly accepting of their bodies are the ones who are over 60. I believe that is because a significant amount of time has passed since their menopause symptoms started to occur and they stopped caring about other people’s opinions.
There are 2 to 3 times in woman’s life where she will go through major body changes: puberty, childbirth (if she so happens to choose), and menopause. 60 years of body fluctuation occur until they are finally able to accept their bodies. This is so unfortunate because we shouldn’t only start to feel comfortable in our bodies after that much time has passed. That’s 60 years of being insecure?! Unacceptable.
So I ask you once again: if no one else existed in this world, would you still be self-conscious in your body?
Probably not. If I can change the mindset of even one person reading this, I will have accomplished something. But I know there is so much more work to be done. I know I may sound like a broken record but please listen to me… there is so much more to life than what you look like. Go out there, live your life, enjoy the company of the people that you love, experience the things you want to experience, go after everything you want because you are more than worthy. What you look like is the least interesting thing about you and it doesn’t have to hold you back anymore. <3