If you want to lose weight you just need to: run a lot, don’t have “cheat” foods, cut back on sugar, don’t eat before bed, limit your alcohol intake, only eat three times a day and never eat carbs. Who else has heard advice like this in commercials, magazines and weight-loss ads? Absolute bullshit. Maybe this is a lifestyle for a Barbie Doll, but not a human. As a woman going through constant emotional, mental and physical changes, not only do we need to feed our bodies, but feed our minds. And not just feed it with foods that will keep us alive but with foods that we ENJOY.
How can we expect ourselves to enjoy the spontaneity of life if our eating and workout schedules are so monotonous? With the daily stress of: work, school, friends, family and our own well-being, our bodies aren’t always going to feel 100%. That means listening to what your body wants, not what you think you have to do based on some diet book telling you what foods you can and can’t eat. Some days our bodies need rest, other days it wants sushi, sometimes a burger sounds good and a lot of the times just whatever is in the fridge that you can throw together… as I am literally writing this having some fries and chips as a side with my salad. It’s all about balance right? Actually yes.
Think of a balanced lifestyle like an old fashioned scale: one end is strived perfection and the other is happiness. You may be following a strict workout routine and a clean eating plan. At first the happiness and strived perfection are in perfect balance. But you want results… and you want them fast. So you start to intensify these regimens a little more and a little more. Soon things that usually make you really happy give you terrible anxiety: going to ice cream with friends, getting popcorn at the movies, watching movies all day in your pajamas, eating Halloween candy, making Christmas cookies…. You start to think these things don’t fall in your “perfect” plan, so you start to reject them, avoid them and fully deny yourself of being able to enjoy them. The once balanced scale fully tips and the strived perfection is so bogged down that happiness is left with nothing. Everyone wants to be happy in life, right? Well, if we constantly pushing away things that make us happy in a motive to get a perfect body or whatever… true happiness is impossible. Doing things on a strict plan without letting ourselves drift off this plan mitigates our freedom of how we want to live our lives.
I’m not here to say we should always binge on ice cream, burgers and candy and watch movies all day. I think having a workout schedule and rough guidelines for dietary needs are actually very important. For busy people or those that need structure, creating a guide for yourself is helpful in keeping yourself accountable and on track. At the same time, following a regimented plan to a t can turn unhealthy very quickly. Not letting yourself enjoy the little things in life can lead to unhappiness which overall does not contribute to living a balanced, healthy lifestyle. Your mental health is just as important as your physical health.
So how exactly do you live this so-called “balanced” lifestyle? It’s simple. If you’re hungry, eat. If you’re tired, sleep. If you want to go to the gym, dedicate time for yourself and do it. If you want to go out to dinner with friends, DO IT! Basically, whatever your body is telling you, listen to it. The biggest mistake you can make is judging your own body’s needs off of what someone else is suggesting to you. They don’t know your body, only you do.
I recently read an article for my gender, media and diversity journalism class that focuses on the effects of advertising and popular culture about dieting and food mentality on how women view their own bodies and image in society The article is by Jean Kilbourne and is titled “‘The More You Subtract, The More You Add’: Cutting Girls Down to Size in Advertising.” One part that really stuck out to me said, “The magazines and ads deliberately create and intensify anxiety about weight because it is so profitable. On a deeper level, however, they reflect cultural concerns and conflicts about women’s power. Real freedom for women would change the very basis of our male-dominated society.” This quote really spoke to me because it made me really think about what I have learned about being a woman in relation to food, body image and men based on popular culture and advertisements. Advertisements create a warped mindset around what is seen as “normal.” Sometimes we are so numb to these messages that we don’t realize the true impact of them on our mental health until we take a step back and observe the trends and patterns happening around us. Today it’s so often I hear people joke about starving themselves to look a certain way or talking about how much they need to run to work off how much food they just ate. I’m sorry but when people say things like this I really don’t find them funny at all. I don’t want to play into a never-ending game of making yourself feel shitty and trying to use food-depletion or running your body into the ground as a mechanism for counteracting eating, reminder, a thing that is necessary for growing, reproducing and living. ‘
I never was a kid that worried about nutrition labels or the amount of calories I was burning. I have been an athlete for as long as I can remember and I never worried about nutrition labels, calorie intake, macros or the amount of calories I was burning. I didn’t have to. I had school all day, my mom would always pack me a lunch with every sort of nutrient I could ask for, I had soccer practice everyday and dinner waiting on the table for me when I got home. How can you worry when your daily schedule allows you to go to school, be active and have healthy meals cooked and prepared for you without effort? But that anxiety-free lifestyle came to a halt when I started to compare myself to other girls, started reading more popular culture magazines and watching shows that reinforced what a normal woman should look like. Yes, I’ve always been small, but I also didn’t have a flat six-pack or the skinniest legs. But growing up, I embraced it because I was the “badass soccer girl.” But as my daily feed started to fill up with how to get a flat stomach and how to lose weight, my mindset changed. I wanted to be the skinny model in the pictures, the trendy girl on Brandy Melville’s instagram. My once healthy relationship with food and exercise because an obsession. Like my example earlier, my scale tipped. A downward spiral into avoiding outings with friends because of food anxieties, always feeling exhausted for running my body into the ground, shivering because I was cold and losing the goofy, silly part of me. This happened for about a year and a half until after my freshman year of college. I lost about 20 pounds. Lost a lot of muscle and lost part of my “badass soccer girl” charisma. This is a long anecdote and if you’re still reading please know this was very hard for me to write and makes me feel very vulnerable. But I want to share this because I don’t want other people to feel like they need to fit a “perfect” image of what a woman’s body should look like. I want young women to know that whatever they are interested in, whatever makes them spark, hold on to that and don’t let anyone else tell you how you need to do things.
Again if you’re still reading, thank you. For letting me rant and letting me tell part of my story. I want other young women to know that feeling comfortable in your skin and embracing who you are is SO important. After patching my relationship with food and exercising I can fully say I’ve never felt happier in my own skin. And you know why? Because I no longer workout with the mindset of burning off the food I ate. I no longer limit myself to only foods that fit into a specific caloric or macronutrient plan. I no longer look in the mirror and pick out the imperfections. I don’t have time for that shit… because frankly, I’m working on futuring my career, empowering others, being a good friend, having fun and doing what I want to do. I feel like myself and I love myself. And you should too.