Changes In Our Body

Over the past four months I have seen changes in my body simply from changing the way I eat ever so slightly and changing the kind of training I do. I’ve lost some body fat and I’m more ‘muscular’. But what I’ve realised is that any change in our body can be a challenging transition for us if we don’t come from a place of love and acceptance. Enjoying the results of our training doesn’t equate to having love and acceptance for our bodies. I have always had an attitude of ‘When I get leaner then I’d be happier with this bit or that bit’ or when I put on more muscle then I will feel good about my self and in fact the opposite has been true. I began to feel more pressure to look a certain way, more aware of my muscles and how masculine I felt, more aware of the fact that although I train hard, I still didn’t have ripped abs. Clients often say ‘If I just looked like you then I would be happy’ or ‘if I could just loose this tummy then I’d feel good’ but what they don’t realise is that I have parts of my body that I hate or have hated at one time or another. Changing our bodies from a place of shame may get the physical results we want but it’s not always about the physical aspects, sometimes acceptance of our bodies and thanking them for all the things they do for us in a day is more beneficial than being ripped could ever be. There’s nothing wrong with embracing your body and there’s nothing wrong with wanting to lose body fat or get leaner but knowing that these goals don’t define you and they aren’t the be all and end all. The health benefits of exercise are amazing, and the physical ones are to me a great too but there’s more to learning to accept and love our bodies than having the ‘perfect’ figure.

What I’ve realised over the past few months is that any change in our body (regardless of whether we or society view it as ‘good’ or ‘bad’) can be a challenging transition for us if we don’t come from a place of love and acceptance. I have often had an attitude of ‘when I get leaner (or slimmer, or fitter etc.) then I will be happy with my body’ but often the opposite has been true. We can become fixated on the things we don’t like and feel more pressure to look a certain way even when we achieve our goals.

Changing our bodies from a place of shame may get the physical results we want but enjoying the physical results of our training doesn’t always equate to loving and accepting our bodies. However, we can make change from a place of love and acceptance instead of a place of shame and we can enjoy the benefits of exercise without feeling like our bodies are not enough. There is nothing wrong with embracing our bodies and there’s nothing wrong with wanting to weight, the two are not mutually exclusive. Whatever our goals are remember our bodies are amazing (just think of all the things they do for us that we take for granted!) and there’s more to health and wellbeing that shaming ourselves ‘into shape’.

Smash your training this week guys.