Body Positivity

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Do you ever scroll through fitspiration posts on Instagram or Pinterest and immediately feel discouraged? You know the images are meant to be inspiring, but they leave you feeling worse about yourself and your body. You look at picture after picture and even though the caption rambles on about wellness and self-care, all you see are slim, muscular bodies that you will likely never have…not without taking extreme measures, that is. The unfortunate reality is that although the health and fitness industry is generally sincere in desiring well living and longevity for all, often the subtle and sometimes not-so-subtle message is that you are not good enough as you are. Certainly, we all have progress to make in multiple areas of life. But body shaming and judging are not the answer. Body positivity is.

If you are new to the term, body positivity is simply adopting a forgiving and accepting attitude towards your body. The idea is that when you are overly critical or see your body as something to be whipped into submission, then you are more likely to resort to unhealthy exercise and eating measures to attain a certain look. A better approach to pursuing a lifestyle of health is to integrate these mindfulness principles into your movement practice.

Function Over Form

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To focus on function over form means to emphasize the performance aspects of movement. Notice how your body feels when you move and celebrate what it can do over just what it looks like. An example of this might be noticing that you can jog even longer on the treadmill than before, rather than merely looking for a lower number on the scale. Function over form is highlighting that you did a couple more repetitions than yesterday, rather than staring in the mirror waiting for your biceps to show. This philosophy towards fitness is a helpful way to redirect your focus from mere aesthetics of what your body looks like to the actual progress and gains you make in your fitness regimen. This shift in focus is also shown to be helpful in prevention and treating disordered eating and exercise habits. Ultimately, a function over form philosophy affords a more balanced view of fitness.

Balanced Eating

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Another area that needs a balanced perspective is in eating habits. Most people have been educated on the consequences of a steady diet of processed food, refined sugars, and excessive sodium intake. But did you know that there are consequences for being too “healthy” as well? It is possible in your wellness journey to become obsessive about avoiding “bad foods.” Bad foods to people with this mindset might be pizza, pasta, and pastries. Good food would be fruits and vegetables. You can imagine if you set up this moral view of food, then you run the risk of feeling guilty if you “cheat” and eat something “bad.” You might even set yourself up for bingeing if you have this mental attitude towards appropriate and inappropriate foods to eat. Another consequence is that people can become too restrictive in what they allow themselves to eat. In doing so, you run the risk of not getting the proper nutritional intake, or in extreme cases, starving yourself and losing an unhealthy amount of body fat. A good guideline is just to focus on fueling your body according to its energy needs and not worrying too much about what is good what is bad.

Non-judgement

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The good versus bad concept does not just apply to food. You want to start to eliminate it from your self-concept as well. You can do this by practicing non-judgment. A non-judgmental stance is when you remove all labels, opinions, judgments, or biases and simply notice what is. It focuses more on facts than feelings. For example, if you struggle to lift a certain weight on a given day you might say to yourself, “This feels challenging,” rather than, “I stink at weight lifting.” Another example might be, rather than saying, “I feel fat. I’m a fat cow,” you could say, “I feel the tightness of my clothes around my midsection,” With non-judgment, it is not about denying reality. It is not about saying something positive about yourself, no matter what. That is more of an affirmation. Affirmations are fine as well, but this mindfulness practice is a little different. Non-judgment about remaining gentle with yourself by neutralizing negativity. In doing so, it becomes easier to transition to a more body-positive, accepting view of you.

Radical Acceptance

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Another mindfulness principle for body positive fitness is radical acceptance. Radical acceptance comes from the idea that people create suffering for themselves when they resist reality. The way out of that suffering is to accept reality for what it is right now, not for what you want it to be. Maybe you do not like your body. You want it to be different than what it is. Maybe you have been exercising regularly for months and cannot seem to lose those extra inches in the midsection. Rather than fighting against it and creating emotional distress for yourself, why not accept where you are today. Radical acceptance says, “I might not like it or want it to be this way forever, but I accept what is for right now.” In taking that stance, you can start to ease the suffering and striving and start moving closer to the contentment you want.

Self-Compassion

Self-compassion has become a popular term in psychology, but it easily applies to fitness as well. Basically, it is the idea of relating to yourself just like you would relate to a really good friend. If you would not be harsh and critical of someone you love, then why do we deem it appropriate to be harsh and critical to ourselves? So, if you got off track with your meal plan one week, instead of beating then figuring, “Well, I might as well really mess up,” try to say, “I did the best I could,” or “No one is perfect. Try better next time.” Like non-judgment, self-compassion invites people to relate in a gentler way. This can be a powerful antidote in a culture of comparison when it is easy to feel as though you do not measure up. But try applying this Golden Rule in reverse. Be as kind to yourself as you are to others.

Self-Love

A final mindfulness practice that you can use to promote body positive fitness is self-love. Whereas the previously mentioned principles of non-judgment, radical acceptance, and self-compassion, work to remove the sting of shame and judgment, self-love goes a step farther. You do not just hate yourself less. You love and accept yourself more. Start by making a list of positive personal attributes, things that you genuinely like about yourself. Is it your sense of humor? Bring that into your movement practice. Is it your flamboyance? Bring bold patterns and colors into your fitness fear. Is it the fact that even though you are plus size, you can do amazing splits? Bring that into your workouts and show off those splits every chance you get. When you find the qualities that are uniquely you, you compare less and celebrate more. In doing so, exercise becomes motivated by self-love rather than self-hate.