Recently I have been seeing and loving a lot of social media posts about body positivity - some people sharing about different body types and how we should embrace our unique bodies. So I just wanted to share my experiences and my thoughts:)
Let me start by saying something that I don't think I have ever articulated in words: For pretty much as long as I can remember, I have been the scrawny girl. And it wasn't because I didn't eat, it was purely because of the way that my metabolism works. If you know me, you know that I can eat a LOT if I wanted to. ๐
It's weird that I never talk about how I don't gain weight easily. I think the reason is that sometimes girls will just be like, "Oh, shut up, we know you are skinny without trying. Stop showing off." (that was a Chinese-to-English translation, so I don't know if I expressed the sentiment properly) Or sometimes randomly in conversation, girls will just say to me "I wish I was as skinny as you."
And even though I never really dwelled on these things, I think that these words seeded a very toxic thought in my head, which was "Fat is bad/unhealthy, skinny is good/healthy." And I pretty much thought that as long as I am skinny, I'm fine, I don't have to try to do anything to be healthier. And this is clearly such flawed logic, and when you read that spelled out in words it becomes so obviously wrong. But a lot of the times these toxic thoughts just lurk quietly in the back of your head and you don't realize the effect that they are having on you.
As a result of that I guess I've never really made an effort to take good care of my body. I mean, I've never purposely done anything bad to my body, but taking care of my body has just never been a priority. Never. I would always have school work and this extracurricular and that event, so I just never gave much thought to it. For this reason I don't talk to many people about the topic of health either - it just falls to the background.
So recently, I have been giving more thought to what it actually means to "love your body", and I was thinking how this could be compared to a parent-child relationship. Yes, I know this sounds like quite a strange analogy - but hear me out.
These are the 5 things I've learned about loving your body:
Loving your body does not mean comparing it to the 'perfect body'
You know those stereotypical Asian parents who go around comparing their kid with everyone else? Like, "Oh, did you hear about Auntie Chan's son? He got the so-and-so scholarship and got into so-and-so university!" (I am so thankful that my parents aren't like that haha.) But what is fundamentally problematic about this mentality is that they don't acknowledge how every single person is unique. Each person has their different temperaments and personalities and needs and aspirations.
In the same way, your body is unique. There is a 100% chance that your body is going to look different than everybody else's. And that's wonderful! It is so counter-productive to constantly compare the way your body looks to the way that someone else's body looks.
And I think it cannot be stressed enough how social media creates such a distorted view of the 'perfect body'. It's just like when Asian Mom talks about Auntie Chan's Son, only highlighting one of his achievements, when there is SO MUCH of Auntie Chan's Son's life that you simply do not see.
For one thing, an instagram picture does not accurately capture how a person's body looks, and for another more important thing, they way that someone's body looks does NOT capture who they are as a person.
Loving your body does not mean only caring about it when something goes wrong
Even though our physical bodies are not entirely representative of who we are as people, that is not to say that we should not think about our bodies altogether.
I say this as someone who has done so for a long time.
It's just like how sometimes, parents get so distracted with their work, that they just choose to assume that everything is fine with their kid without actually checking in with them. They avoid the difficult conversations and let their kid do whatever they want until something goes wrong.
To be honest, I think I have just put off thinking about my body as much as possible because I just thought it would be easier that way. In a sense, it is a form of procrastination. I try to justify it to myself by prioritizing many other things. But the truth is, as the days go by we build up a lot of different habits, and usually we don't consciously develop good ones. As a result, we become trapped in the way that we are accustomed to live, and it becomes challenging to consider changing. We just don't consider it worth the effort to think about our health choices, unless we get sick.
But what I am trying to remind myself is that the state of being physically (and mentally) healthy doesn't just mean the absence of noticeable diseases.
Loving your body does not mean complacency
To expand on that point, the human body is so intricate and dynamic, and you can keep working on it for it to become stronger and healthier.
Even though I don't think we should strive for our bodies to look like the so-called 'perfect body', I think the idea of self-acceptance can often be understood in such a broad sense that it ultimately becomes complacency.
And I am not trying to devalue self-acceptance, but I just wanted note how easy it is to have a misconstrued idea of it. In my own experience, trying to "accept everything about myself" and to convince myself that I am completely satisfied with the status quo has not been very helpful. I guess this attempt to "accept everything" is effectively suppressing the part of myself that knows I can do better, that I can be better.
You know how some parents just compliment their kids in every and all circumstances in the name of "positive reinforcement"? Those words might make the kid happy for a short period of time, but later on in life, they'll realize that these things don't lead to growth.
Loving your body does not mean blindly following a regime that works for somebody else
I guess another reason I have been hesitant to work on loving my body was because I had absolutely no idea where to start.
We are bombarded with soooooooo many dieting and fitness regimes on the internet, telling us how to get fit fast and how to lose weight quickly. Quite frankly, seeing all of these scared me.
Sometimes when we try these strategies and they don't end up working, we become discouraged. Kind of similar to how parents are told that this school and this tutorial center and this training program is going to help develop their kids well. So they send their kids there. And when things don't turn out exactly the way they expect, they become confused as to why that is. Maybe even frustrated.
But when it comes to fitness routines, I think more often what happens is: half of me is convinced that following these regimes should definitely work, and I feel conflicted because the other half of me is just like, "Well, what if it doesn't?" So I become too scared to even try.
But (I know this is getting kind of repetitive now), guess what, WE ARE ALL DIFFERENT! I find that I need to keep reminding myself of this because it's really so easy to forget. Just because something works for somebody else doesn't mean it is going to work for you in the same way. Not everyone gets a six pack after 10 sit-ups a day for a whole month. AND THAT IS TOTALLY OKAY!
Loving your body does not mean disregarding everyone else's advice
Even though I have been criticizing the internet in this post, it undoubtedly contains a lot of useful information about health.
I think it is very important to distinguish between the different kinds of information that exist on the internet. I have realized that the ones that really overwhelm me are those sponsored ads that show a cartoon person whose "extra weight" just disappears magically. Like they don't even bother animating it to show a shrinkage, but rather it's just an area of the flesh that somehow magically fades away. Or sometimes it's like, a dark colored grid that appears on the person's stomach that is supposed to represent abs. And you see in big words "Lose 30 pounds in 10 days!"๐
Clearly these ads aim to sensationalize and they are not helpful to us at all. However, we shouldn't let the loud unhelpful opinions stop us from trying to listen to things that are actually helpful.
My parents are awesome and they have told me several times about how parenting books have actually helped them a lot. There are quite a lot of parenting books at our home. ๐ If my parents had assumed that everyone giving parenting advice had malicious intent, well... then I guess they wouldn't have raised me and my sister as well as they have.
Don't be inhibited by fear and insulate yourself from the good information. Yes, the beginning can be very scary because you have to navigate something new. There are a lot of unknowns.
But in these situations, I think it is important to hold on to the things that you do know. Number one, that is better to think about taking care of your body than avoiding thinking about it. Number two, our bodies may be different, but we all have human bodies that operate with the same mechanisms. So the chances are extremely high that of the billions of internet users in the world, someone will share your experiences and be able to give useful advice.
As Eleanor Roosevelt says, "Learn from the mistakes of others, you can't live long enough to make them all yourself."
So the moral of the story is: learn what you can from others' experiences, but take it with a pinch of salt. Be adaptable. And be more intentional about what you are looking for.
SO WHAT DOES LOVING YOUR BODY ACTUALLY MEAN?
To sum up, loving your body is:
Acknowledging the uniqueness of your body
Making an effort to listen to your body
Encouraging/Pushing your body to be the best that it can be...
... based on what works for your body
... and learning about what works for others'
Ultimately, I think it comes down to realizing that your body is a very precious, one-of-a-kind gift. Don't neglect it or try to make it into something that it isn't.
I believe that THIS is the kind of self-acceptance that we should be working towards - learning to respect our own uniqueness, embracing our own potential, and loving ourselves enough to work on becoming better.