All in body image
This is a note from my journal one week into my senior year of high school.
This is one of the times that journaling really tugs at your heartstrings. If you don’t have a regular journaling practice, I’d encourage you to start, even if it’s just one line in your planner or on your phone about how you felt that day, and this is why: you gift yourself the opportunity to witness your growth in real time.
We tell ourselves we'll be happy when we're small enough, we'll eat the cheesecake on Friday when we've earned it, we'll love ourselves when we hit our goals.
We believe the freedom to wear a bathing suit, the deliverance that allows one to choose the curly fries as well as the salad, and the liberation to appear in candid photos are things for other people.
(Who are those people? We don't know, but they're certainly not us.)
We keep aiming to shrink ourselves, and, as a result, we stay hidden.
How's that working for you?
Sometimes I think we make fitness and nutrition more complicated than they need to be.
"Easy for you to say; you have a degree in this, and you've worked in this field for almost a decade. The rest of us don't have that knowledge and are supposed to eat low-carb and go on 74 walks a day one day, low-fat and nothing but short intense workouts the next," you might be thinking, and I get that.
But I firmly believe the barrier to entry feels so steep by design: if the world keeps you believing there's a secret or, "one weird trick," then you won't trust your own body or yourself, and you'll hand over whatever you have to restore that feeling of competence that seems to be locked in a golden tower.
Monday morning did roll around, carrying an unwieldy dose of guilt and shame every time.
I’d wake up, feel badly for not, “sticking to the plan,” wondering why I couldn’t just have one, “cheat meal,” why I had to do this every time, why anyone ever saw anything in me other than a fraud, and I’d step on the scale.
I lived and died by that number.
If it wasn’t too far off my Friday weight, then I somehow, “got away with,’ eating foods that didn’t work for me, because my feelings didn’t matter if they weren’t reflected on the scale.
If I WAS far off my Friday weight (which I often was), I was a failure, and the only solution was to buckle down even harder the next week, promising myself that this week, a “cheat meal,” would be just one meal.
Been there? How’s it working for you?
We’re told, at every turn, how we must define ourselves.
We all know the narrative of the overculture: womxn are supposed to be small, demure, delicate. We're constantly in pursuit of shrinking and forever deferring to someone – anyone – with more authority.
Many of us hold this societal ideal in the lofty turrets of our minds for a lifetime: we remain locked away like Rapunzel, hoping someone will climb the tower and ask us if that ideal is, in fact, who we are or what we want. In the meantime, we accept it and work tirelessly to fit into that mold.
Has it ever occurred to you that you can ask yourself?
Your alarm goes off, and you blearily rub your eyes as the mechanical beep (or, you know, the sounds of The Rock Clock) ring in your ears.
It's still dark outside. You're dreading putting your feet on the cold floor, but the bills don't pay themselves, so you swing around, hunt for your slippers (you missed one, so now you're awake), and head to the bathroom.
As you brush your teeth, you look in the mirror and take in your presence for the first time today.
What do you say to yourself?
“No one ever told me it wasn’t about my body before.
It was never about me. Nobody before you. I hope you know that has given me the ability to move in the world with less fear and shame; I can be entirely myself without disclaimers and I get to reclaim all of that energy and put it into things and people I love.
It has an impact on every single person around me.
No one told me that I can be as smart and insightful as I am and STILL not know that it isn’t my body’s fault and it isn’t about my body.
I can be a genius and still be fucked up by these things, but I don’t have to be anymore.”
And neither do you.
I grew up in an emotionally abusive household, and I received a message from a young age that I wasn't good enough. For millions of reasons, but the point on which it all converged was my body.
My body became a physical manifestation of everything I wasn't: I wasn't tall, or thin, or unconventionally beautiful like my mother, or quiet, or succinct, or self-controlled.
I was too much, constantly spilling over the edges of my container, and my body was alleged to have reflected that.
It's effortless to pick on our bodies; the "flaws" there are visible, after all, so they're very easy to pinpoint.
A distinction between self-love and self-acceptance:
#selflove is trending, for good reason: we deserve to feel safe, nurtured, and adored in our own arms. We're entitled to butterflies in our stomachs when we behold ourselves in all of our glory (and I'd encourage you to take time to do so regularly. #alwaysbefeelinyourself).
But if you're constantly pinching yourself in the mirror to focus on what doesn't measure up, self love can feel 45648 miles away.
Ready for some unconventional holiday season advice?
You don't have to "earn" your body (or mashed potatoes).
It's the language of the season, the undercurrent of every holiday-themed meal, but I don't find it productive. In fact, it often does more harm than good.
I think it's terribly destructive to use this language, not only because it sets us up on a food-as-reward-fitness-as-punishment cycle, but also because it reinforces an idea I am vehemently against.
Bodies change.
At present, you find yourself in the midst of circumstances that supply different stressors, different time constraints, and different desires than those of the ghosts of circumstances past.
Fitness doesn’t have to be a punishment.
It’s not the Visa for food binges. No debt collectors will come calling.
You’re allowed to move in a way that makes you feel good, simply because it makes you feel good.
You can discover your desires, your fears, your passion, and your power in the gym, all without changing a damn thing about your body if you don’t want to. And you can change and sculpt your body without the current iteration being “bad,” “wrong,” or, “gross,” if you so choose.
