Snake Oils and Magic Bullets

I have struggled with my own body image for most of my life.  I was a “husky” kid (for you younger readers, there was essentially a big and tall section for kids called husky when I was young) and it just continued into adulthood.  Good relationships to food and daily exercise were not traits that were modeled for me in my childhood.  I was active, playing sports year-round and playing outside a whole lot, but I also did not have a healthy relationship with food and had an appetite for classic junk foods.  Once I got to college and was able to make my own choices with no supervision it only intensified.  I was clueless about finding a sense of balance with food and exercise, so I went out to eat all the time and seldom moved my body.  I would occasionally go to the gym on campus (which is actually ridiculously nice, and I wish I had made more use of) and do chest press, some curls and some other assorted machine exercises and then go back to my dorm and wonder when my abs were going to be popping while also enjoying pizza as a post workout meal.  Needless to say, I was clueless, but I had magazine covers and ads on tv that told me that with 20-30 minutes a day I could look like these people being paraded in front of me with bulging muscles and often very defined six packs.  At the time, I thought it sounded like bullshit, but I also never gave it a try so I could not definitively say whether or not it was.  Spoiler alert: It was indeed bullshit.

For years after college, I continued to gain weight, seldom moving my body and often eating a lot of food that was delicious but not ideal for my body weight nor my body image.  My shirts and pants got bigger and bigger and suddenly sizes I had once been embarrassed to wear were sizes I wished I was still able to fit into.  All along the way, I did not know the answer.  I knew I had a parent who had modeled dieting and had gone to group workout classes, but that parent had struggled with their weight, so it felt like the answer was some elusive mystery that only the wealthy knew or the people who would look miserable running on the streets might know.  But I did not want to look miserable, nor did I want to give up food I loved.  So, I continued, and became more and more acutely aware of my size as plane seats and stadium seats seemingly got smaller and smaller and as my size was not always in stock at stores.  Then, seeing picture of myself began to make me cringe and I knew I needed to make a change.  I had no idea where to begin and it felt overwhelming and like people who were in shape had been in shape their entire lives. 

Fast forward and I lost over 100# through altering my relationship with food and by moving my body more.  I don’t want to go into details about the process here since that is not the point of this article, but I had tons of reading I was able to do thanks to the internet where there was a lot of quality information about nutrition and exercise that helped me on my newfound fitness journey.  I realized how little I moved and how much I ate and that helped me understand why my body was carrying so much extra weight.  A doctor I had worked with prior to losing the weight saw me and asked me the secret, and when I told him I ate less and moved more he nodded and said he was just trying to make sure there was no secret he was unaware of.  I laughed a little but that also made me realize that for many of us, we desire a magic bullet, a quick and easy fix to the problem.  But there is not one.  It takes us examining our lifestyle and the choices we make and evaluating what our goals are, all while altering our habits and routines to create new ones.  But along the way in addition to that, I also got to see the ugly side of things where people marketed a quick fix.  Where coaches sold plans that were “guaranteed to get results” but where results were never found because they did not make the changes necessary for the results they promised.  That lead me to understanding the social expectations but also helped me to learn more about body dysmorphia and how prevalent it actually is.  I had hated myself when I weighed over 300 pounds, I was miserable and uncomfortable in my own skin and body.  Yet when I dropped down and was the leanest I had ever been, I also thought I still needed to lose weight.  I thought the key to my feeling happy and valuing myself lay in reaching a certain weight or a certain body fat percentage.  When the weight started to go up on the scale, I struggled because even though I knew logically adding muscle would increase the weight on the scale, somehow my value was also tied to that number on the scale. 

I would love to share that the desire to be a certain weight or a certain size had fully dissipated or that I knew the secret to avoid that conflicted feeling.  But I do not.  I still struggle to accept my body in the way it exists some days.  I have gotten older, and my body does not respond the same way it did a decade ago.  It serves me well, moving me from point A to point B, I walk very briskly and can move more than most people my age.  I can lift more weight than most people my age and I do not struggle with the health conditions many of my peers might.  But I still see my imperfections as “flaws” and I still struggle to accept that my body does so much and is deserving of love like so many other bodies.  I do not expect a perfect body from friends, family, nor potential partners, yet there is still that nagging feeling in me that I have to appear a certain way to earn love, attention, or affection.  I have ample data I use to drown that feeling out most days, but it can come creeping up still.  I will continue to point to the “health and wellness” industry as a root of that, because they promise things that they cannot deliver, and because there is little to no regulation of them and their claims, they face no repercussions for swindling people and doing a number on their self-worth.