Body image is a topic that usually makes one think of teenaged girls
starving themselves thin. But most people, no matter how old or young,
have a feeling or image of the way their body should look. This image
is composed of the actual view in the mirror combined with life
experience, such as the image of our own younger/fitter/slimmer body,
and the expectations of the way their body “should” look. This “should”
comes from media images, parental influences, peers, past experiences
or who knows what….
In my many years of fitness training I have noticed one common pattern
among new fitness participants. Most newbies start a fitness program to
“get healthy and fit” and to change a particular body part. Note the
operative phrase here is particular body part. For example, it’s common
for men to want to lose the fat roll around the midsection (“love
handles”) and for women want to trim the hips.
Have you ever really observed other people in your gym? If you do, you
will notice that there are a lot of men doing upper body and arm work
and a lot of women doing lower bodywork. I recently prescribed outer
and inner thigh (abductor/adductor) work to a client who was an
experienced bodybuilder. Yet he had never trained these muscles
specifically because he felt these exercises “were for women”!
Yes, we’ve all heard for years that it’s impossible to “spot reduce” by
exercising the body part, but emotionally this idea is hard to
own…especially for newbies. I can’t tell you how many times I have given
a person a weight training and aerobics style fitness program which is
enthusiastically started but at the 1 month follow up it’s revealed that
the exerciser has thrown out exercises that did not target the imagined
problem area and replaced them with extra sets of the exercises that
did.
Now, take that same newbie, get him or her working out regularly and
systematically for about 6 months and you get the beginnings of real
body transformation. What does this mean? It means different things to
different people, but to me it means BALANCE…and balance is beautiful.
A body system that is in balance moves better, stands straighter (this
means looking better in your clothes), can be trusted to perform
physical activities longer and better and is less likely to sustain
injury. Yes, the person’s perceived “problem areas” change, but so do
all the non-problem areas.
The most interesting thing that I’ve noticed is that with this body
change, the newbie now truly enthusiastic about his or her changed body
also has redefined goals and expectations of what it means to transform
their body…and what a healthy body should look like. It’s very common to
hear women clients say that they had no idea that their arms could be
so attractive and shapely and for men to comment that they like having
legs that aren’t so “skinny”. These very same women started out
avoiding arm work because they only were thinking about slimmer hips.
After six months or so when new trainees start to see real differences,
they talk about how they feel a real sense of accomplishment (it is hard
work to get there no doubt about it!). They begin to formulate new
fitness goals which are surprisingly different than the ones they
started with. These folks have not only begun to transform their bodies, but they have also transformed their thinking. Their perception of their body,
or body image, has become very different.
They KNOW they look good and feel good!
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