Do you want to lose weight? Or feel better in yourself and lose weight? Or feel better in yourself without necessarily losing weight? Do the two go hand in hand? So many of the women I know and work with say to me that they can’t feel good about themselves until they have lost weight. They are on a permanent mission to lose weight. They feel fat and their body shape defines them.
This type of thinking often sets them up for failure as they embark on overly ambitious exercise regimes and strict diets. Their motivation and will power naturally peters out over time and they are left back at square one feeling fed up, fat and stressed.
An unhealthy focus on how we look not how we feel
We are so conditioned to focus on how we look, our weight, and our body shape rather than the way we feel. This is perpetuated by images of perfect bodies all over social media. Fitness gurus persuade us that it is about feeling good as they strut their stuff looking tiny and toned in their teeny crop tops and figure hugging sports leggings. There seems to me to be an inherent contradiction here.
This is a particularly pertinent time at the moment as people struggle with weight gain and overeating as they are stuck at home and are feeling fat in lockdown.
Most of us can’t lose weight like celebrities
We are bombarded with images of celebrities displaying drastic weight loss results. Adele springs to mind most recently. We desperately crave the miracle ways to get these results forgetting that celebrities have countless resources at hand and often a lot more time than the average person. I am by means criticising Adele, she looks great, I sincerely hope she also feels great. I hope she has transformed her look in a healthy and sustainable way.
But in reality who can afford to employ a full time personal trainer, dietitian and psychotherapist to help them navigate the complex road to sustainable weight loss?
Of course there’s the growing movement against this ingrained culture of thinness through movements such as #bodypositive. Inspiring role models like Lizzo are paving the way for a healthier way of relating to our different sizes and shapes.
Changing the way we see weight loss
Of course weight loss is such a complex, multifaceted issue and not just about food and exercise.
I have been thinking about whether there’s a different way to look at this which is thankfully emerging as a more recognisable and healthier way to relate to ourselves in the wellbeing space.
What about if we shifted this dislike of our bodies so we were focusing on how we felt rather than how we looked? You may say to me that that doesn’t make a difference, you feel fat. But being overweight is not a feeling. You can change the way you relate to your emotions and feelings through dedicated self-reflection and hard work.
As the great Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi says in his seminal book Flow: “what would really satisfy people is not getting slim or getting rich but feeling good about their lives”.
Focus on the way you feel rather than the way you look
If we focused on what makes us feel good it might just have a ripple effect and end up giving us the results we want in terms of weight loss and toning etc. It can’t be this simple I hear you say, but I think it actually can be. If you find an activity you love to do you will crave doing it to the point where you need it in your life. It can become the fuel to drive you forward in your life and help you thrive.
True you won’t lose weight fast, and it will require dedication, effort and hard work, but you will transform your mindset and your lifestyle for the long term. And you might just start to feel better in yourself. You might also gradually start to drop the pounds as you begin to nurture and treat yourself with compassion and care.
I have seen this time and time again with people who have felt sluggish, overweight and living largely sedentary lifestyles. As soon as they find something they love to do their whole outlook can shift and create a positive ripple effect in all areas of their lives. Behavioural expert BJ Fogg talks about this positive ripple effect in his work on Tiny Habits which I will be exploring in a future blogpost. Again, this isn’t easy but it is entirely possible.
I transformed myself through exercise so you can too!
The picture on the left is me many years ago before I had discovered my love for movement (I did exercise but it was always a chore and I had a very unhealthy relationship with food). Granted, I wasn’t by any means enormous, but I didn’t like the way I looked and I was obsessed with it. I definitely didn’t feel good and I was caught in a vicious cycle. I had to change.
The picture on the right is me now after 15 years of swimming, running, cycling and more recently strength workouts and yoga. I am not saying I have what is considered the culturally acceptable perfect body, but I am generally quite OK with how I look. I treat myself kindly, nourish myself with healthy food (for the most part) and I generally look after myself.
This is obviously a very complex issue and my approach won’t work for everyone but I am on a mission to try to help as many women as possible feel better in themselves, through movement and healthy eating, whatever their size or shape!
If you would like to work with me to feel your best self, through my coaching and training programme, then contact me and I will be very happy to help!
