Why I don’t have a Goal Body
I went to bed thinking about this last night and woke up this morning with it still on my brain, so obviously I have to write about it.
For my entire life, literally since I was around 6 or 7 years old, I analyzed my body with a critical eye. The shape I had, the size I wore, the foods I ate and how I ate them. Media Marketing has really done a number on the psyche of young girls and the way we look at ourselves. As a mother, it’s really quite disgusting, how we’ve allowed ourselves to degrade the self-confidence and therefore self-worth of little kids everywhere. I remember looking in the mirror at 7 years old and wondering if I had big bones because I wasn’t dainty or lithe. I wasn’t one of those little kids with muscles and crazy stamina. I’ve always had a softer, rounder body, and I’ve always found something wrong with it.
It didn’t help that my father was a womanizer who was always pushing me to eat a salad, but not that big of a salad, and “maybe you should skip ice cream tonight hun, you don’t really need it.” When I was 8 years old I was diagnosed with asthma, and put on numerous steroid medications to strengthen my weak lungs, and the subsequent weight gain afterwards brought nothing but disdain and disappointment to my fathers eyes. I was the one kid of four who looked like him, but after the steroids I was then even bigger than I was before, and he couldn’t handle the insult to his image.
My mother was more subtle about it, but still to this day, body shames me. It’s indirect, but she gets the point across: bigger bodies aren’t quite as beautiful as petite ones. Muscles aren’t attractive on a woman. Women should be soft but not squishy. All things I fail at.
So setting the stage with that as my history, it’s really no wonder that I’ve found myself in my mid-thirties trying to reprogram my brain and what I perceive as healthy, beautiful, and fit. As an artist who loves drawing people, I have a reverence for the variety in body types and shapes, and I love to appreciate them on a page. The way someone’s eyes can hold every secret they’ve ever kept, or how the lines around someone’s mouth can tell me how much time they’ve spent laughing. I love to observe people. I love to learn things about them simply by looking at them. Which is ironic considering how much I’ve hated that same observation when it’s directed at me, because what will they see? What if they hate it?
I decided 11 months ago when I started this quest for a stronger healthier body that I wasn’t going to give myself a goal body. I didn’t want to idealize something that I could never have. And that’s not to say that I started this with pessimism, because I didn’t. I started this with all of the confidence of the Sun if it were shining out of my ass. I had to think about it that way, or I never would’ve gotten up to do the damn thing. But I wanted to be realistic in my expectations of myself. I’ve had three kids, I’m in my mid-thirties, I have injuries in my feet, and malformations in my spine from years of abusing myself and not taking care of my body like I should have.
The media has done a great job of making fitness and health and beauty something only attainable by the wealthy, people who can afford surgeries, who can afford to eat organic and exotic ingredients and have private chefs who organize their meals for them, personal trainers who make house calls and that can spend hours working on making sure there isn’t a single dimple in their thighs. For a really long time, I fell for it too. I spent so much of my youth not understanding my body, not liking my body, and criticizing my body. Missing out on experiences and fun parties and joy, because I was led to believe that I wasn’t worth it. I was undesirable and undeserving.
Over the last eleven months, I have learned that my strong body isn’t represented in the media. I don’t have a marketable body type according to them. Trying to find representation of my body in media or marketing campaigns is like looking for a needle in a haystack- I may never see it. And while that’s been hard on younger me, the me I am right now, knows better. Finally.
There are so many variables that go into a fit and healthy body, and it goes so far beyond what you eat and if you exercise. If you have elevated cortisol levels or other hormonal issues, that can work against you. For example elevated cortisol will mess up your sleep, which will mess up your muscle energy and thus your workouts, and when you try to up the ante to push yourself, your body creates more cortisol which equates to more weight gain, and it all just sucks. If your liver is sluggish or your lymphatic system is congested, there’s another obstacle to weight loss. Hormones, organ function, food security, there are so many things that can hinder or slow down a person’s weight loss or health journey. So holding yourself to someone else’s experience, to the way someone else’s body responds to what they do for their health, is unlikely to have the same results.
I’ve lost inches off my waist and damn near everywhere else on my body, but I’m still wearing a lot of the same clothes I was last year. For a while, that was disappointing to me, but it’s not anymore. Because I know I’m stronger than I was a year ago, in body and in mind. In place of fat I now have muscle. I am firmer where I was all soft before. There’s definition in my shoulders and my waistline, my thighs are leaner, and I’m no longer afraid to wear shorts and tank tops. I’ve realized that a Strong body for me doesn’t look like a strong body for anyone else, because my body isn’t like anybody else’s. My body is mine.
Comparison is the root of self-loathing, and I’m determined to rip it out. I will not waste another second of my life comparing myself or my body to anyone else’s anything. My body was made to be strong, made to do hard work, to survive hardships and grow babies, to eat good food, and yes, swing a sword.
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