Be More, Not Less

When I started in the health and fitness industry in 2003, I thought it was all about health and fitness. But what I got were people coming to me because they were unhappy with how they looked and wanting to lose weight.  Everything was about losing weight.  And losing weight and looking good don’t necessarily go with being healthy.  Women were worried about how they looked and said things like ‘if I could just lose 5,10, 20kg, I’d be happy’.

The central idea was that if we eat less, weigh less and be less, we’ll be happy.

Its really not surprising we think this way.  In 1991, 33,000 women told researchers they would rather lose 5kg than achieve any other goal[1].  Over anything else, from career aspirations, education, family and relationships, women would rather lose 5kg than any of that.

These days 10,000 people a month google ‘am I ugly’.  Young girls all over the world post videos of themselves on YouTube and ask people to comment if they are pretty or ugly.  This strikes me as the most weird, disempowering, destructive thing a girl could do to herself – allowing her self-confidence to be dictated by people she’s never met and giving validity to what those strangers think about something as superficial as how she looks and then basing her self-worth on what they say.

To be clear it isn’t our fault that we think this way, it’s not good, but it’s not our fault.

We get messages in the media all the time about how female bodies (and increasingly, males too) are supposed to look.  We know these images aren’t real and that the kind of body type we see in the media as being acceptable, desirable or normal is one that only 5% of women have or are capable of having.  These women are not normal shapes.  We know that it’s not achievable for 95% of us.  We know they have been photoshopped, airbrushed and enhanced.

And because we know this, we can assume we also know better than to be affected by these images.

But here’s the thing – research shows it doesn’t matter that we know the images aren’t real.  We’re constantly being fed this idea that being beautiful, as defined by the media or society is the most important thing you can be.  We’re exposed to so many of these images everyday – its estimated we see up to 3000 images a day.

We process these messages subconsciously and it frames how we see the world.  We see the same messages over and over and it gives us the sense that these images are real, even though rationally we know they aren’t.  It shapes the environment we live in and it shapes how we think about our values, and our ideas of love and sexuality, success and what’s ‘normal’.

We’re told over and over again what we look like is the most important thing there is and we learn that we need to spend time and energy and money on how we look.  When you’re fed this idea constantly you’re going to be influenced by it.

This look that we’re striving for isn’t achievable for 95% of us. So we fail. And then we feel guilty, ashamed and like failures.

These messages are so insidious and pervasive, girls as young as 5 are worried about how they look and their size.  One in 4 7 year old girls have tried to lose weight at least once.  One third of boys aged 8-12 are dieting to lose weight.[2]

When we receive these messages repeatedly, we start to get consumed by what we weigh and how we look, and how our hair and skin is.  There’s not much room to think about anything else. Important stuff like education and what we want to achieve in life, career, family, relationships, the state of the economy or the environment, or the world gets pushed aside.

We’re so busy thinking about how we look, we’re so conscious that we’re always being looked at and judged that over time we start to internalise it.  Instead of looking out to the world and thinking about what’s happening out there, and considering our bodies as the vehicle that takes us into the world to engage with it, we start to look inward and think about how we look to the world.  We stop engaging and developing our identities because we’re so concerned with how we present ourselves to the world.

The follow on effects of this really go without saying – depression and eating disorders, low self-confidence, undermining participation in health, education and social activities, low prioritisation of the value attributed to body and health.  It’s been shown across the US, Finland and China, with schoolgirls that if you don’t think you look good enough, if you don’t think you are thin enough you’ll score lower school marks than your classmates who are not concerned with this – how you think you look, not how you actually look affects how well you do in school.

A cultural fixation on female thinness is not an obsession about female beauty but an obsession about female obedience[3]. We become so wrapped up in how we look we become politically paralysed.

The latest findings from the Dove survey on beauty 2013 were:

• Nine out of 10 girls want to change at least one aspect of their physical appearance
• Six out of 10 girls are so concerned with the way they look that they are holding back from participating in important life activities. Of these:
  • 19% won’t try out for a team or a club
  • 19% won’t go to a party or social event
  • 15% won’t go to school
  • 13% won’t give an opinion for fear of people looking at them
• Only 4% of women around the world consider themselves beautiful
• 72% of girls feel tremendous pressure to be beautiful
• 80% of women agree that every woman has something about her that is beautiful but do not see their own beauty

The issue is not about wanting to look good or being attractive or sexy.  We should have the freedom to present ourselves how we want.  The issue is that focusing so much on how we look leads to an obsession with it to the point that we don’t consider our other qualities and achievements.  It starts to affect how we live our lives.

So, what should we do about this?

Well, we can be more, not less.

• Instead of thinking about losing weight, think about being healthy.  What do you need to be healthy?  Mental and physical stimulation, good nutritious food and great relationships and connections around you.
• Stop dieting – we don’t need to diet.  We need to eat real food that’s made from natural ingredients, not from chemicals.  We need lots of fruit and vegetables, high quality protein and some good fats.  When you feel hungry, eat, when you’re full, stop and figure out what each feels like.  If you’re doing that, you don’t need to ‘go on a diet’ and restrict your food.  Restricting your food does not work.
• Stop with the ‘good’ and ‘bad’ dichotomy.  We often talk about food as ‘good’ or ‘bad’, and by extension we talk about ourselves as being ‘good’ or ‘bad’ because of the food we eat.  You are not ‘bad’ because you ate the fries/ice cream/chocolate.  This sort of thinking separates us out into our ‘good’ side and our ‘bad’ side, it pulls us apart from the inside and we break ourselves down, judging ourselves and thinking about how others are going to judge us too.  We’re once again thinking about how we look to the world, or to others instead of getting out there and engaging in it.
• Instead of thinking about how you look, focus on what you can do.  Your body is not for looking at, it’s for doing stuff – whether you want to run marathons or climb rock faces, absorb learnings about the world or try new experiences.  Get out there and do stuff.
• Pull others up, and be encouraging, don’t put them down.  We should be here to work together and help each other be the best we can be.
• Enjoy your exercise.  Our bodies are made to move but you don’t need to be in the gym to do it.  So find an activity you love and get moving.  It doesn’t matter what it is, as long as you enjoy it – because if you don’t, you’re probably not going to be doing it for long.  Exercise does more than keep our weight in check – it improves concentration, memory, mental stamina and creativity, it lowers stress and it helps us to learn faster.  It also improves mood and makes us nicer people to be around.
• Taking part in sports teams helps us build connections and learn how to work with each other.  Exercise should be fun, and to help us feel good and healthy, and provide a place for us to hang out with our mates.  It shouldn’t be for the sole purpose of losing weight.
• Listen to your body – it will tell you what it needs.  It will tell you if you need to move more or less, it will tell you what it wants to be nourished.  If you find you’re having cravings ask yourself why – why do I want the sweet/salty/fatty?  Did you miss a meal yesterday, did you do more exercise, are you tired/moody/unhappy?  How does it make you feel when you eat that food, and how do you want to feel?  What are you trying to feed?

Instead of focusing on how we look, focus on what we can do, how we feel and what we can contribute to the world.

 

[1] Naomi Woolf, The Beauty Myth

[2] https://issuu.com/bodyimage/docs/reflections_on_body_image

[3] Naomi Woolf, The Beauty Myth