Body Liberation
Everyone has been joking about gaining the "Covid-19" (lbs) while staying home more. I guess this is the new "freshman-15" that everyone seems to think they gain during their first year of college that I was terrified of getting myself. The first time I heard someone say the "Covid-19" relating to weight gain I admittedly thought it was pretty funny. As time has gone on and many of us are all still working from home, it is true that many people are tending toward more sedentary days. With more time at home, it is easy to feel less active, and increased time sitting has been correlated with worse health. However, it's not the overall health people are concerned about more than a few pounds of weight gain.
Now, it's nothing new to hear people worrying about gaining weight, especially for me working in the fitness industry. I've often heard clients complain about weight gain and a desperate need to lose 4 pounds. I suppress the urge to roll my eyes and sigh exasperatedly when I'm told about the goal of weight loss. I definitely understand the feeling, as I often will complain of the same exact thing to my husband that my clients complain to me, this need for two, four, five pounds we want to lose. I fall into that same trap even as much as it bothers me to hear it from other people. When we hear others complaining about their own body it can be triggering for us to start judging ourselves as well. While it is important to reduce sedentary behaviors for health and wellbeing, I don’t believe in promoting fitness to burn calories or to look a certain way to "fix" something about the body.
As a fitness professional, I encourage everyone to engage in moderately-challenging movement practices as consistently as possible because movement reduces chronic pain, increases capability, increases strength, and decreases the likelihood of many debilitating diseases. I believe in exercise to feel vibrant, to relieve pain, and to feel capable. I exercise because it is my self-care and because I enjoy it. I need my daily exercise to feel happy and healthy.
But, I also sometimes get stuck in the "should" of working out because I don't want to gain weight.
Recently, I had a relapse of disordered body image. I generally don't weigh myself as I don't believe it is a helpful gauge for general fitness, but I decided to jump on my scale as my anxiety spiked. I had gained two pounds. Freak out ensued. I was sure I was getting fat, I would just keep gaining weight and it would never stop. But do we ever think about why we worry about this? So what if I had gained a few pounds? It is actually common for adult weight to fluctuate 2-5 pounds within a day depending on the level of hydration and time of day. Even though I was worried about the number on the scale, I had recently been feeling extremely strong and capable. I was strong in my weight lifting, improving my biking up harder hills, running at a more consistent pace for farther distances, and doing more advanced challenges in my Pilates training.
Shouldn't our strength, how we feel, our energy, our capability, our vibrancy for life be what we focus on instead of a number on a scale? I want to be able to do things, lift things, move my body freely, and be active.
I was underweight in college, a skinny ballerina, a size small, watching what I ate, a vegan simply to be able to restrict what I was allowed to eat. I was also extremely depressed and fatigued. And yet I STILL felt fat, not skinny enough and wanted to lose more weight. There is always farther to go when you're a perfectionist surrounded by unnatural, unachievable, perfected body images in media and magazines.
In my mid-20s I stopped dancing professionally and started working out in a gym for the first time. Even though I had always been athletic and had daily movement practices, this had previously revolved around primarily dance and yoga. I slowly got into new forms of movement, started running, lifting weights, spinning, boxing. As I got stronger and more capable I started realizing what my body could do. It wasn't only a vessel to complete choreography on stage and to look a certain way, but rather something that could keep me active because it felt good to move, breathe, and sweat.
During the Covid pandemic, I've again made new progress in my own personal training. Since our gym is closed I've been running and cycling outside. I've learned how to run farther and bike greater distances and go up more challenging hills. I am stronger than I have ever been in my adult life. I'm also the heaviest I've ever been in my life. And yet I feel good.
So why does this create anxiety to be a couple of pounds heavier but feel strong? There is this stigma of fatness equating laziness, stupidity, ignorance, gluttony, lack of discipline, lack of control. There is an idea that our beauty, our bodies create our worthiness.
As Savala Trepczynski describes, in her article listed below, women are not only hit with constant unattainable standards of beauty that we compare ourselves to, but we are also made to believe that our beauty matters to our worth as women, and that "weight control is deeply rooted in female obedience and social hierarchies, including racism".
Diet culture and ideals of thinness are both sexist and racist, forcing us to conform to white, male ideas to control how others look and behave. Food is supposed to be enjoyed, a celebration of family and friends and of cultures, pleasure, and sustenance. Diets are control, obedience, and shrinking the amount of space we take up.
It seems like everyone has something, or multiple somethings, that they don’t like about themselves, even though most of the time other people never notice those things. But we can have an incredible, joyful life as we are right now. Our worth has nothing to do with the size of our bodies. We aren't unsuccessful simply because of our body shape or weight number. I can say it, but after years shadowed in the fear of gaining weight, it's hard to remember and actually believe that we are worthy simply because we are here, not because of how we look.
As I've been struggling with old body image issues flaring up, I've deeply appreciated what Chrissy King has to say on this issue. She describes "Body Liberation" as a means of freeing ourselves up from living for other people's expectations, judgments, validations, and the freedom to exist as we are in this space right now. We're allowed to stop wanting to shrink ourselves to look a certain way, and instead focus on what our bodies are capable of doing, what our bodies allow us to do in the world.
As our bodies will always be changing there is not a destination to reach in body perfection, just as there is no destination of body acceptance. But the combination of the ideas of Body Neutrality, that the body is ok however it looks even if we don't like it, and of Body Liberation, that the body is free from diet culture and can exist as it is, can help us move forward toward peace with ourselves.
It's a constant journey to decide to love ourselves and to be okay with who we are right now. We can of course have fitness goals if it makes us feel good, but every day we have to remind ourselves to take up the space we deserve instead of trying to shrink. You are enough, as you are, right now.
"We are inherently worthy because we exist, not because of what we look like." -Chrissy King
"I remind myself that my most peaceful and fulfilling life can be in the body I have right now." -Savala Trepczynski
Articles: https://www.health.com/mind-body/savala-trepczynski-diet-culture-racism-health-at-every-size https://www.health.com/mind-body/chrissy-king-strength-training-health-at-every-size