You do not need to hate your body to want to change it
I don’t know a single woman who, at some point in her life, hasn’t tied her worth to the way her body looks. For decades, women have been surrounded by messaging telling us that smaller is better. That confidence, success, happiness, beauty and even worth somehow sit on the other side of weight loss.
We grew up with Special K diets, low-rise jeans, magazine culture, “nothing tastes as good as skinny feels”, “heroin chic” (how is this coming back?!), celebrity body obsession, red bull diets and an endless stream of messaging telling women their bodies were projects to fix. And when you are exposed to that messaging for long enough, it becomes impossible not to absorb it.
I remember being at school in the 90s and some of my friends being scouted by modelling agencies at 14 years old. These girls were naturally tall, naturally slim and genetically built in a very particular way. They did not look like that because they had discovered some magical secret or because they were worth more than the rest of us. They simply were who they were.
But those body types have been elevated to such an extent that they are deemed “better” than others. We have not been able to escape that belief, that some bodies are inherently more valuable or desirable than others. Now I have a daughter, the thought of her growing up to believe that, terrifies me. It makes me angry and absolutely determined that she will see the value in ALL of her, whatever her body looks like.
Almost every woman I have ever worked with has, in some way, had a complicated relationship with her body. The severity of that relationship changes from person to person, but it is always there. Some women have already done a lot of work around it. Some have not. But it is incredibly rare for me to meet a woman who has moved through life completely untouched by body pressure.
The problem is that women now feel stuck between two extremes
Now, thankfully, conversations around body image have started changing (notice I said started because it can still feel incredibly toxic out there, thanks social media). The body positivity movement has done a huge amount of good and it really matters that we are seeing more representation across media, brands, socials.
But I also think it is easy to feel trapped between these two extremes; being told your body should be smaller whilst simultaneously feeling pressure to love your body completely at all times. It is possible to feel like you’ve failed for not looking a certain way… and now, also feel like you’re failing if you cannot fully love your body all the time. And that, my friend, is a lot to carry.
Love is a really strong word - there are only a few people in this world that we truly love, and yet women are somehow expected to love every angle, every stage and every part of their body at all times, no matter what. Isn’t that just wildly unrealistic?
Wanting change is different to hating yourself
I think this distinction is incredibly important. Wanting to change something about yourself is not necessarily the same thing as hating yourself. Human beings naturally want to grow, evolve and improve. We do it in careers, relationships, mindset, education and fitness all the time. The issue is not wanting change…the issue is believing you do not have value until you do.
If you want to lose weight, that does not make you shallow, broken or anti-body positivity. But if you approach it because you think it will make you happier, more positive…better… then we are avoiding the underlying issue. The issue being that, consciously or subconsciously, you believe that being in a smaller body will change your impact and outlook on the world.
You cannot hate yourself into long-term positive change. You might force short-term behaviour changes through guilt, shame or punishment for a while, but eventually that relationship catches up with you.
Strength training changes the focus completely
One of the reasons I care so deeply about strength training for women is because it helps in slowly shifting the focus away from your aesthetic goals.
We start to think not only about “How does my body look?” but also “What can my body do?”. As soon as we look outside that number on the scale and towards the number on the barbell, then progress becomes far more multi-faceted. The change isn’t instant and it can take years of undoing that which took years to build up, but slowly you turn away from progress being about one number which for so long has defined how your day will go, towards:
Am I lifting heavier?
Do I feel stronger?
More confident?
Did I learn a new skill?
Has my energy improved?
Am I recovering better?
Walking further?
Proving to myself that I can show up for myself
Over time, we can start appreciating our bodies for their capability rather than constantly critiquing how it looks. That doesn’t mean aesthetic goals suddenly disappear, but it does mean they stop being the only thing defining your relationship with your body.
Body neutrality changed everything for me
Through my own training journey, I feel incredibly lucky that strength training helped me detach my worth from the way my body looks. My body is never going to look like Kate Moss in a magazine in the mid-90s! I am not Kate Moss.
I am me… A woman who has birthed three children. A woman who has had complicated relationships with food, emotional eating and body image at different points in life. A woman whose body has changed many times over the years.
I think a lot of women are exhausted from spending their lives feeling like they constantly need fixing. It can be relentless. But what if your body was not simply there to look good for other people?
What if you decided its purpose was more about walking you through the world, support your long term health, allow you to move in your own way, carrying your children, supporting your strength training, helping you say yes to life, keep you physically capable for as long as possible? Should I go on…I think you get the picture?
Detaching an emotion like hate or love from your physical appearance and moving towards feeling broadly neutral about the size of your body, is far more helpful than hating yourself into change. Over time, that then starts to become a very different relationship with your body.
You are allowed to want more for yourself
I think most women who say they want weight loss are rarely talking about aesthetics. It’s the easy answer when we talk about change and what we want to achieve. Most people don’t even realise it but, usually underneath it sits a desire for more. More confidence, more energy, more capability, better health, feeling more comfortable in their body. The tool they believe will get them all of that, is weight loss.
None of those desires are wrong - you are absolutely allowed to want more for yourself, you are allowed to explore change. You are allowed to pursue fat loss if that feels supportive for your health and confidence. But the closer you can get to detaching your worth from your body size, the healthier that journey becomes.
You need to believe that you are already enough now…Not ten pounds from now, not when your stomach is flatter.
Now.
And ironically, I think strength training often becomes one of the things that helps women finally start believing that.