Body Image Issues

I’ve been thinking a lot about body image recently for a variety of reasons. 

As a fitness professional, I’m privy to a lot of people’s thoughts, feelings, struggles and successes with their own physical health and mental ideals. I’ve also seen the different ways people have been affected by this pandemic. Some people have lost weight without doing anything because they ate out extensively (and when you eat out, you’re not in control of what you put in your food) and many people have gained weight because they’re working from home and don’t have the opportunity or need to move around as much in their daily life as they did before. 

You wouldn’t know if from the picture, but I felt terrible about how I looked at this time. I was under a lot of stress. I had just moved across the country, been through a house fire and I was studying for two certifications (sitting a lot). I had about five pounds that wouldn’t move. It’s amazing how much it affected my mental image.

I’ve also had incredibly committed health coaching clients who are doing everything right and due to hormones, genetics or a variety of other factors are having a slow slog toward their goal weight, even though their health markers are right on target. There have been others who look fantastic, but are struggling with pre-diabetes or other nutritional issues.

For the past fifteen years, I have been almost entirely making a living through various health and fitness avenues. I’ve studied for, and obtained, many professional certifications as well as the continuing education required to keep those certifications current. After a certain amount of time, it’s easy to forget how much the average person doesn’t know about their own body and how it functions. After all, even knowing everything that I know, I still struggle with my own body issues. Even living a healthy lifestyle for a majority of my life, I still have to deal with age related hormonal changes and ‘general wear and tear.’ For example, I’ve had scoliosis my entire life. Is it really surprising that after all this time of high level physical activity, I’ve had to jump into physical therapy to correct some imbalances that were causing pain?

Even knowing all that I know about genetics, hormones, the aging process, etc, I still compare myself to other people. Just recently, I met a friend in person that I had only seen online. (We’re in a writing group together that I had joined just before the pandemic hit and we moved online and have been there ever since.) Now, I met her on a low self esteem day for myself, but I was struck by how tiny she was and found myself becoming overly critical of my own appearance later on in the day. It happens to all of us.

One thing that has been a nice reminder in this regard is watching Aang and Cloud grow.

How can you not find them both adorable?

They were born on the same day, from the same litter. They get fed at the same time with the same food. They play together and get roughly the same exercise. Cloud is very lean and thin and Aang is a little more squishy and cuddly. The funny thing is, Cloud is the one that hogs the food and Aang will normally give it up to him if it becomes a competition. If they’re chasing the laser pointer, it’s Aang who will jump higher and run farther, Cloud hangs back and waits until the red dot goes where he wants to follow. It’s just the way they’re built.

I love them both. I think that they’re both adorable and cuddly in their own separate ways. I actually enjoy their differences. Aang is my fluffy, soft buddy who wants to find the highest place to jump and needs to be held every now and then. Usually just when you want to do something that requires two hands. Cloud is my inquisitive thinker who turns into a long baguette when he does a big stretch and who likes to balance on my shoulders and also on the treadmill instrument panel when I’m running.

I’m not sure why we’re able to look at our pets this way and not people. Perhaps because people have a little more choice in how they treat their bodies we feel more willing to judge them? But what if they’re just the fluffy Aang? Truthfully, we can make all the ‘right’ choices in the world and our bodies might not behave the way we want them to.

At the very least we should try to accept ourselves. This was hard for me to write because there are some parts of my physical self that I have a very difficult time accepting and that I’m still fighting to change. But I can fight to change the way I look at myself too.