Many of us have now spent two weeks watching some of the best athletes in the world do their thing. They all look great, don’t they? It’s enough to make the rest of us feel rather inadequate. But hang on a minute, let’s think about this. With all the training they do, and all the careful nutrition, enough sleep etc, they do look their best, but they’re not doing it to look good.
Long distance runners tend to be light and skinny; they don’t want to carry extra weight, and their training has this effect, too. Sprinters are very muscly and need well developed upper bodies as well as legs. Rowers and swimmers have broad shoulders and well developed arms. Cyclists have big, muscly thighs. Everything they do in terms of training and nutrition is geared towards excellence in their chosen sport. Looking good is a by-product.
Some of us could really benefit from thinking this way. There’s so much emphasis on how we look, and for many women, the motivation to exercise and eat healthily comes from wanting to look slimmer. Surely there’s something more important than this? We are actually free to choose different priorities. We could decide that we want to be fit and healthy, that we want our bodies to be functional and as free of problems as possible. We could decide that we want to put the best fuel into our bodies that we can, and avoid stressing them too much by eating rubbish.
I’ve found that adopting this attitude, just a little bit, has been a big help. I live in a society that prizes slimness above health, and so I’m easily prey to worrying about my body shape, but I want to choose differently. So….when I was 17 I hated my thighs; now they’re a lot bigger than they were then, but I know that’s partly because they are so full of muscles! I work on my squats and lunges because I want my thighs to support my knees when I’m running and keep me mobile as long as possible. I know that there are many, many women slimmer than me, but I would choose fitness over body shape any day.
As with so many issues, I believe the most important step is for us to recognise the messages we are being bombarded with. The media, our parents, our friends, we ourselves – we are all conspiring to make women, including ourselves, feel inadequate unless we have the perfect body shape. And of course perfection can never be reached. Naomi Wolf examined and explained the dilemma this causes in her excellent book “The Beauty Myth”, first published in 1992. Tragically, 20 years later, the situation has got worse, not better.
Let’s decide to see it for what it is. Body shape is superficial, and the global obsession with the perfect body is forcing women everywhere to feel inadequate. How sad. What is important is keeping that body fit and healthy, so that we feel as good as possible, and so we can do everything we want to do – enjoy our all too brief lives! I’m determined to move forward, chip away at this, and break away as far as I can from the stifling demands of our beauty-obsessed society. While, of course, exercising most days and eating properly. Who will join me?
It is so hard, isn’t it, not to get caught up in making the right changes for the wrong reasons? I’ve been slowly (about a year and a half) working my way toward better fitness. When I began, I just wanted to be “skinny”, but it didn’t take me long to realize that A) I’m never going to be what most folks consider skinny, and B) there was so much more to be gained by losing some weight. Even though I’ve still got about 25 more pounds to go before I reach my goal (and even though I’ve made zero progress for months now), I *FEEL* so much better than I did when I began. Sure, I look a little better, too, but I’ve realized that’s sort of icing on the cake.
It’s heartwarming to us those ordinary mortals, after years of training and hard work had triumphed against all odds. We know that these athletes had worked hard to develop their physical skills. We can’t help but be one in their triumphs and empathize in their defeats.