It’s the New Year and although we chinked glasses and wished everyone the best over a week ago, it’s taken for the normal routine to kick back in for me to get back to my computer and write about the subject that’s been burning away for days. In fact, it’s been burning away for years and no more so than at this time of year.
To kick this off, these are a few of the comments I have read on social media over the past few days:
“I’m overweight, I have no confidence.”
“I feel so fat, I don’t want to go out on a date with my boyfriend.”
“I lost 5 stone last year and put half of it back on, I’m such a slob. How could I let this happen?”
The diet industry has this brand of self-loathing well stitched up. Join our club, pay the fee and we’ll turn this all around for you.
Now, I’m not knocking diets. They work for some – I know plenty of people who have lost weight and kept it off. But they don’t work for everyone and I think in this case, it has less to do with the body and more to do with the mind: in particular, self-worth.
So, for everyone who’s ever felt like a big, fat, lazy failure, let me tell you something:
You are already amazing.
Do you know why?
Your liver performs over 500 vital functions, scientists don’t know about everything it does – you’d not live a day without it. Supplying glucose, fighting infections, storing nutrients, recycling waste and detoxifying your body it is a chemical powerhouse that gets on with its job without your knowledge.
Your skin spans 21 square feet, weighs nine pounds and contains more than eleven miles of blood vessels and 45 miles of nerves. Home to 1,000 bacteria (most of which are vital to its health) it rejuvenates itself every 28 days.
Your stomach produces hydrochloric acid (up to 3 litres a day) to digest your food – an acid so powerful that the stomach also produces its own neutralising agent in the stomach wall to protect itself.
Your strongest muscle? Your tongue. The smallest? Only 1mm in length in your ear, holding in place the smallest bone in your body. The hardest working? Your heart – 115,200 beats a day, 42 million beats a year, over 3 billion in a lifetime. It’s mind boggling.
And your brain? The only organ in your body to feel no pain, it contains 100 billion neurons (and there are 10,000 types of brain cell), weighs 3 pounds and contains 400 miles of blood vessels. Laughing at something uses at least five areas of the brain and it’s estimated that we have 50,000 thoughts a day, 70% of which are negative. The organ is 60% fat and it houses 25% of the body’s cholesterol: and without this, it would not be able to perform the estimated 100,000 chemical reactions a second. Information can travel at 260 mph.
Sit for a moment and think about all this.
Really think.
Granted, sometimes bodies fail but there is still so much to marvel about.
So:
- How can a body be devalued because of a number on a scale or a measuring tape?
- How does the size of someone’s clothing demean the complexity of the valuable gift they’ve been given?
- How can something so vital, so unfathomable so irreplicable end up ready for the rubbish heap when really it’s nothing of the sort?
It’s nonsense.
However you feel today about your body and what it can do, know this: the fact that you are sat reading my blog post means that you are already amazing. The work of heart, the eyes, the brain, the liver, the lungs, the skin, the hormones and the millions of other processes going on have brought my ideas to you.
You love, you live.
Dammit, you rock!
Just breathing makes you amazing.
Consider:
- Walking uses over 200 muscles. It is thought that it helps expand the hippocampus area in the brain: concerned with learning about new places, its shrinkage in women over 60 has been linked with dementia. Far from being a passive, ineffective form of exercise, there’s nothing like walking.
- A recent American study found that female heart disease is more likely to be caused by inactivity than excess weight.
- Swimming requires the rhythmical stretch and relaxation of the skeletal muscles, naturally inducing a restorative, meditative state. It releases endorphins, uses free floating to relieve stress and fight or flight hormones and regulates and strengthens the cardio vascular system without putting undue pressure on joints.
- Regular movement like running or sport strengthens the digestive tract, making it more efficient.
So:
- What if you didn’t need beast yourself at the gym or nigh-on starve yourself to be a valid human being?
- What if you were to rethink the things you’ve been told about size, weight and dieting?
- What would happen if you chose to nourish your body because it’s an unbelievably complex, unique, living organism?
- And what harm would come from moving your body your way: making it stronger, more able to carry out your dreams, more capable of interacting with the people you love?
- What if we found new and helpful ways of linking health and self worth?
Because there are those who will tell you that you need to be a certain shape or size, deny yourself life-giving food or beat yourself up on a daily basis in order to be an acceptable human being.
Ignore this: their thinking is self-defeating and counterproductive.
Because you are already amazing.
Use this as a starting point and allow everything else to follow.
I’m passionate about this subject so check out my other body confidence and plus size fitness blog posts using the tag cloud to the right. And if I’ve motivated you to re-engage with your most marvellous body, then drop me a line and tell me what new reasons you’ve found to love yourself.
