Body Image + Body Love + Health Pt. 3
Pt. 3 Health
How body image, body love, and health all tie in together.
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Let me start with this: The fitness industry has failed you.
Because it’s really not about health or fitness at all. It’s about aesthetic’s, and they make a lot of money on your perceived inadequacies.
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The fitness industry pushes images into our minds about what health looks like.
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The truth is that healthy looks different for everyone.
You can’t always judge a person’s fitness by their looks.
We are unique in our sizes, shapes, and colors. This means our frames, muscle distribution, and height are all genetic.
While we can shape our body differently with muscle, we still must work with the gifts we are given from the factory.
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This is where body image comes in, and where representation matters. Things are changing, and we are starting to see more variation in the media, but growing up I remember only seeing one type of woman advertised. Usually thin, tall, large not overly muscular, and lighter skinned.
Now there is nothing wrong with women who have all of these qualities, and I am not about thin shaming, but the reality is most of us don’t look this way, and yet it is how we are being represented.
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This is why it’s so hard to have a positive body image, and subsequently, to love our body. Especially if you didn’t grow up in a home where you observed healthy habits and body relationships. For many of us, there is unlearning and repositioning to be done.
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In a world that targets our perceived inadequacies and imperfections, self love is radical and defiant.
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It’s taken me a long time to fully love my body. As someone who has struggled with anorexia, Bulimia, and body dysmorphia, I know all too well what it feels like to not feel “enough”. And on the other hand to be too “much”. I wish it wasn’t part of my story, but it is.
I’m still finding new and better ways to honor and love my body, because it does such wonderful things for me, and I enjoy physically pushing it beyond what I think is capable with sports.
This is a daily process for me. ’ve had to unlearn what I saw growing up, and beliefs I had about love, health, and image. I had to change.
Summary: First you love your body, wholly (even the parts you find cringy or more challenging).
When you move and eat like you love your body, it will love you back, and it will transform.
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I absolutely do not think it’s wrong to have a weight loss goal or aesthetic goals but they need to come from a healthy place.
Being thin/muscular is not worth your mental health.
Be healthy for a reason.