Understatement: change is difficult (Part 2)

Once again, I'm woefully late with this.  I'm starting to think I should just never plan to write here again, that way I'll be way ahead of schedule next time I do.  Anyways, it's been a couple weeks since part 1 went on the book, and the meal plan and exercising is going pretty well.  I'm losing weight, but more importantly I feel better.  I have more energy (fewer naps needed) and am more consistently upbeat than before.  Plus, I'm currently winning the competition, so that doesn't suck either.

Last post had just barely touched the topic of how the spiritual and physical interact on a personal and body image level.  Let's be honest, American culture sends a lot of really messed up messages to girls and women about themselves.  Whether it's the "damsel in distress" trope or just the photoshop augmented images held up as standards, there's a lot of really crappy stuff thrown our way.  Every single female I've ever known has gone through some element of continuous combat with the ideology of the female persona and physique, no exceptions.  Even with the semi-recent rise of feminism and the body-positive movement, there's still a huge gap between what we see in our world and what would be healthy.  As a woman, it completely sucks to have to sort out this reality every day.  As a youth leader, working with teen and pre-teen girls, it sucks even more watching them struggle through it and having very little help to offer.  Oh, you feel fat?  Me too.  That sucks.  Never mind the fact that most of them fall squarely into the healthy/average category and shouldn't be made to feel fat in the first place.  Either way, there's almost no advice I can give because, if I knew it I would have been able to do better myself.  For almost all women, it's a long road to acceptance of our physical selves, and most of us are likely making it up as we go, stumbling through all the pitfalls of self doubt, fad diets, body shaming, and all the other garbage that litters the road to self acceptance.

Besides the sheer fact that I need to be healthy again, my group of young ladies is a big part of what motivates me to make more healthy choices.  Learning about our physical nature and working to educate myself about all the science that goes along with it allows me to spread that knowledge to others, and I'm finding that much of what I'm learning wasn't adequately covered in any school or educational setting.  How messed up is that?  Our culture recognizes that there's this body perception problem caused in large part by our media, but doesn't fix the media or implement the accurate spread of counter information.  It's like we want to stay messed up forever.  For example:

1. Cardio and diet alone will not fix your body.  It will leave you lighter, but you'll never get the toned shape seen from the media.  Women especially think that weightlifting will make them too bulky or "manly" when not doing correct weightlifting will actually lead to the dreaded "cellulite" issues that they never know how to fix.  Do you have wobbly arms (the terrifying "chicken wing") or jiggly upper thighs?  All my trainers and nutritionists have said that tightening those areas is mainly achieved through proper weight training, not diet, not even excessive cardio workouts.  So don't bother trying to fix the last little jiggle by starving.
2. Everyone needs a little body fat!  Especially women.  Without it, we cause damage to our organs and can even do irreparable harm to our reproductive abilities.  Plus, each person carries this necessary fat differently.  In women, it's often found in one of 4 places: butt, boobs, hips, or stomach.  Each of these places are often considered "problem areas" by the women who keep weight there.  Ironically, what one woman most hates about where she holds her weight is the exact thing another woman would prefer.  
3. You cannot burn/lose fat by just cutting calories and going down to one or two meals a day.  In my personal experience, this can actually cause weight gain.  The nutritionist I saw said that when the body is deprived of regular caloric nutrition, our evolutionary responses assume that means that food is now scarce and goes into preservation mode, storing all possible energy sources internally for the coming period of complete famine.  The concept behind most current healthy food regimens is to moderate a low level of caloric intake throughout the day, sometimes 5-6 mini-meals a day, to keep the metabolism running constantly, but not in starvation mode.

So my advice to the young ladies I work with is two-fold.  First, accurately calculate your BMI and if it says you are in the healthy/normal range FORGET ABOUT LOSING WEIGHT!  If you're still not satisfied with your dress size, look into adding regular exercise to help shape your physique more to your liking, but don't try to starve or take drastic measures to get "better".  Second, try to make the very hard shift in how you evaluate yourself.  Are you basing your worth on how you physically compare to unrealistic standards?  Try to list out everything you are able to do because of your body: run, jump, play sports, help others, or (in my case) reach the top shelf.  We start out as little girls who are proud to show off all that we are able to do, from twirling in a circle, to our highest jumps and fastest running.  When did we let all the blessings of our health be drowned out by an arbitrary estimation from some uncaring nebulous source?

So, like I said in the part 1 post, my key to healthier choices (once educated) is to drown out not only my own cravings and self-talk, but much of the crap the world throws at me as well.  Right now, especially at the gym when I want to give up, I use music.  This video has a really catchy and upbeat sound, but what really gets to me are the lyrics, so have a listen!