On Body Image

The first time I ever thought to myself, "I'm fat" was when I was 15 years old. That seems pretty good these days, when you consider the fact that 40-60% of elementary school-aged girls (ages 6-12) are concerned with their weight or think they are fat (nationaleatingdisorders.org). Where have we gone wrong as a society that prides itself on progression that children are concerned with getting fat? Who did they hear it from? Where did they see it? How do they even know what classifies someone as fat? Truth is, they do not. A child does not understand Body Mass Index or obesity and the health issues it can lead to; they understand and value what they are told to value.

How does this happen? How did thinness even become something to value? 20 million women and 10 million men suffer from a clinically significant eating disorder at some point in their life (Wade, Keski-Rahkonen, & Hudson, 2011). What is it about body image that makes it so powerful that it can control a life, and even end it?

The image of the "ideal woman" has always been connected to what is difficult to achieve, to what is rare. A fuller, curvier figure was worshiped during times in human history when food was sparse, so one had to be wealthy and high in society to be able to have access to an amount of food necessary to achieve a full figure. Today, being overweight is more the norm, thus those who are thinner are the ones who have achieved the now rare body form...how silly. Our society chooses what is held in high regard based on what is harder to achieve. It is arbitrary, and it ruins lives.

Eating disorders and disordered eating habits can also manifest as symptoms other than simply just trying to lose weight in a drastic manner; when I was 16, I went through my "middle child syndrome" pretty heavily, and I believe that I developed disordered eating habits as a way to get more attention. I didn't initially care about losing weight, but in the end I became addicted to it, because simply not eating worked so well. I received the attention I so desired, but only because I lost so much weight so quickly that my family was concerned. I am thankful that I eventually just grew out of it and returned to a normal weight range.

Skip ahead a decade to June 2014, when I deployed to Kuwait. At 5'9", I was 185 pounds, and felt fine with it. I was capable of doing all of the physical demands the Army placed on me, albeit at a mediocre level. I liked myself, though. A size 10-12, waist 31, I generally felt pretty good and had no desire to try and lose weight. As long as I could remember I had been eating and drinking without a care. That summer, though, I picked up the habit of lifting weights. Just for something to do while deployed. It was fun, and in a couple of months I started to lose weight. I added in running a few days a week, lost more weight, and became obsessed. I was commended for my lifestyle changes, my Chain of Command sent me back to the U.S. to participate in the O/A Ranger Assessment due to my new found physique and abilities. I weighed myself everyday, sometimes more than once. I'm embarrassed to put this into words now, but it is important. Getting smaller was all I thought about while deployed. I woke up at 4 am to go to the gym for 1.5 hours. I never restricted what I ate; I just worked in an excessive manner; walking 7+ miles a day, and then working out on top of that. When I left Kuwait, I weight around 145 pounds, and I worshiped it. I came home and felt fulfilled every time someone told me how small I was. I tried to hide it from my boyfriend, but he is too bright to trick. Over the past nine months, he has given me pep talk after pep talk to bring me back to reality, and I really do believe he is what has kept me from spiraling down into an eating disorder. Since coming back and getting my head right again, I have let go of trying to lose weight and put my focus on getting stronger, and have I ever! I am usually okay with the weight I have gained back because it has been an insignificant few pounds, but my mentality is much healthier. At the end of the deployment, I could feel myself losing the fun and enjoyment in lifting, because my priority became taking up less space. Sometimes there are still days where I panic and want to fall back into an obsession, but my supportive love and the logic he helps me hang on to keeps me from doing so.

So how does this happen? Where does self-hatred come from, and what does it feed off of? Body Dysmorphia is an obsessive focus on a perceived flaw of one's appearance. People who suffer from body dymorphia fix on an aspect of themselves and hate it. It is so unhealthy and toxic to hate a part of yourself, and so unnecessary. The world has created arbitrary right and left limits of what is acceptable and what is not, what is beautiful and thus cherished, and what is less attractive. When a person decides to use these limits imposed upon them as a means to judge themselves, they step onto a dangerous slope. The healthiest way to develop your own reasonable standards of what is healthy and aesthetic is to first know the basic facts about what body fat percentage is under the Obesity mark for your height, and then factor in what your overall health goal is. Being in the "overweight" range doesn't necessarily mean you are any of the negative things you associate with being overweight. Powerlifters and bodybuilders are often at a higher weight than a runner of comparable stature. It all depends on goals.

Let's talk about #everybodyisbeautiful and #healthyatanysize. While I believe this body positivity movement is incredibly important and a step in the right direction, I think that sometimes it is misconstrued into an excuse for indiscipline. Healthy At Any Size should not be used as a blanket statement to justify accepting obesity. Frankly, obesity is NOT healthy. This is not about fat or thin. Obesity is a clinical issue that leads to various health issues that are very serious and can result in death. Yes, we need to move away from the worship of the Kate Moss waif figure and just let men and women experiment with their own health and find what works for them, but that does not mean we should be creating hashtags and grassroots movements that allow people suffering from obesity to shrug off responsibility and eat their way to a slow death. Or a fast one. I don't know how fast heart disease or diabetes kills you, but neither sound too great.

In the end, it comes back to being rational. Whether you have it in your head that you should be rain thin or you have decided that you can be 50% body fat because #bodypositivity, you owe it to yourself to step back and look at science. All logic comes from facts. Do the research about your body, what makes up your body, and what is an optimal make up for you to live a long and healthy life.