My body and me (part 1)

Why progress is personal and how I came to appreciate and respect my body again

Throughout my 20s and early 30s, I had a fickle relationship with physical activity. I would pick something up (e.g., spinning, yoga, swimming, whatever), participate for a few sessions only to ghost or dramatically dump it usually months or a matter of weeks later.

I justified the ghosting or dumping each time by saying to myself things like: ‘I no longer enjoy this’, or ‘I can’t afford it’, and seen through a different light both could be seen as justifiable reasons. If you don’t enjoy doing something or it brings you an unreasonable degree of discomfort/pain, why continue to do it? Plus, the cost of some modalities of physical activity are prohibitive for many people¹. However, there was also a third reason that had a much larger impact on my fickle relationship than anything else: ‘I am not making as much progress like everyone else, so what’s the point?’².

What took me a long time (decades!) to figure out was that my concept of progress was seen through a narrow lens that could be loosely described as the ‘ideal female body’ - we all know the one, toned legs, sculpted arms, and tight abs. And thin, I had to be thin. This was all that mattered³.

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As a kid, I didn’t measure physical activity or my body in terms of progress (although I was still competitive during my junior school sports day as my parents could probably confirm), and instead, I expressed myself through physical activity as well as helping to expel a lot of big childhood energy: I danced, I did gymnastics, and I would go out and ride my bike after school during the warmer months. I moved about a lot.

Sure, I wanted to improve but for me this was different to progress. I enjoyed moving my body, but I was also less aware of my body. Rather, I compared myself to me, rather than to what other people were doing.

When I reached age 14, I was still very active. I had started a paper-round and walked for an hour or more each day, and I was also doing my GCSEs and selected to study physical education (PE). Here, I chose several activities that would form part of the physical component of the two-year qualification, including things like dance, tennis, and athletics. At first, I lapped everything up and like I had been doing for years before, I just kept moving.

Photo by Rainier Ridao on Unsplash

Yet, by now, changes had occurred both in terms of my physical transformation, and within my mind. Aside from growing hips, boobs and just filling out, enjoying the movement of my own body, and expressing myself became more challenging because I was acutely aware of other (female) bodies by way of comparison⁴. Sports lessons began to fill me with dread especially when it came to the 1990s mandatory sports kit (baggy, hideous PE pants come to mind as well as tiny, pleated skirts – I mean, WTF?!), and when some of my teachers commented on my reluctance to get involved, I was good at acting the role of a stroppy teenager. All this combined with a steady diet of female fashion magazines, witnessing my friend’s development, and discovering boys (plus, seeing their changes) led me to compare myself to other females particularly in my own year group at a micro level.

Social comparison is not all bad. It is an adaptive feature, and we can gain a greater understanding of ourselves by measuring our sense of self against others in many areas of life, for example at work, with romantic partners, and with friends. However, during our formative years, such as when we are teenagers, it can feel that our ability to compare ourselves to others accelerates and it has a deeper affect. Furthermore, just to add an extra twist, social comparison manifests at both a conscious and unconscious level, and in different directions too: upward, downward, and lateral⁵. Yet, if I had known any of this as a teenager and the complexities of the psychology around social comparison, I don’t believe that it would have made much difference to my understanding of the world. I just wanted to be like everyone else, but equally, I still felt like I had to become a better version of myself (just as long as that better version met the standards I had constructed in my head, thin = better person).

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Fast forward to my mid-30s, and I found myself tired… ever so tired of the constant comparison and the striving for something that was forever out of reach. It was freaking exhausting! Aside from being and feeling unfit and doing little consistently to address this, I didn’t like my body and certainly did not appreciate it.

Around the same time, I had signed up for a week’s introductory pack of sessions at a female-only resistance training gym. I am not kidding when I say that I hated those first sessions, I felt broken after every single one, and I wanted to dump it outright. But on this occasion, I didn’t. After completing the introductory pack, I made a commitment and signed up for an initial six month membership.

I will write more later about what helped me to stick with this modality of exercise, but, six years on, I can confidently say that resistance training changed the relationship I have with my body. Significantly, my definition of progress has evolved to become something more personal - I appreciate what my body can do and I have respect for its limits. Right now, I have an elbow injury, which means that I am restricted in what I can do at the gym and even with what I can lift/carry at home. A few years ago, this may have led me to stop going to the gym altogether, now, I recognise the importance of rest and recovery and ensure that I build these into my training, as well as modifying movements where necessary.

Things are not perfect by any means, I still go into the gym (or anywhere!) and make comparisons to other people and, to other female bodies. The big difference now is that I am able to catch myself before I internalise anything too deeply, or better yet, allow a lot of things to go over my head. I am no longer ruled by the same thoughts that I held in the past, and I am happy to have entered a healthier and more committed relationship with physical activity and my body.

I am always keen to hear feedback on my writing and while this essay is certainly personal in nature, I would love to hear from anyone who has also shifted their perspective about their body, and from those who are still figuring it out (I am). In some ways, I wish that I didn’t feel the need to write this post, but it felt important and when I started writing, I found that I couldn’t stop!

1. An area that I definitely want to return to - getting fit and doing any form of physical activity should be accessible for everyone; no matter your background, ability, and especially whatever your financial means. On a related note, BBC News/Sport published an article yesterday about a ‘shake up’ in funding to help tackle physical activity here.

2. This could also be translated to, ‘Why didn’t I look like the other women there?’

3. Out of curiosity when writing this essay, I conducted a not-particularly scientific study and typed in ‘ideal female body’ and compared this to a search of ‘female body’ and had a quick skim through the results using Google. The removal of the word ‘ideal’ did alter the search results to some degree, but not by much (notably, most females that appeared were also white). The former presented a slightly wider range of female body types, while the latter, brought up a number of pictures of famous celebrities with hourglass type figures.

4. I am aware that I am missing out a huge chunk of other, important things here such as structural issues related to gender socialisation, male gaze etc…, let alone biological factors like hormones and so on but for brevity and focus of this essay, I decided to leave these out for now.

5. More information about social comparison theory can be found here: APA Social Comparison.