Body Image

September 8, 2014 / ktbuchs87

Body image. I’ve written about it before and I will probably write about it again. It is something that I know many people out there struggle with. It is something that I struggle with daily. If my own struggles and experience can help even one person, then I count that worth it. That being said, if you don’t feel like reading another post about this topic that is totally fine. Check back Wednesday and Friday for more healthy recipes and tips. Otherwise, read on.

I had done it. I had made the decision to get healthier and I had stuck with it this time. Things just clicked and I ate better, found exercise that I loved, and I lost weight. Clothes started to fit better, I felt healthier and had more energy than I had before. It was like a Cinderella story, if Cinderella was overweight and ate junk food and then magically changed. I thought that because all of these things were happening, I would be happy. I would finally feel like I looked like I should. I would be self confident, I wouldn’t talk negatively about my body, and I would finally have a good body image. I was wrong. The magic Cinderella story didn’t happen like I thought it would.

I was shocked to realize that even though I had lost weight, I still had problems with my body image. At the beginning, I had trouble matching the image in the mirror with what I saw in my head. I was still the bigger girl in my mind and I just couldn’t see the new girl who had finally lost the weight. Over time, I was able to finally see what was really there. Through the help and support of friends and family, I realized that I looked different than I thought I did. It also helped that I could wear smaller sizes and do things physically that I couldn’t before, like run a 5k race. I started to feel better about the way I looked, and I was relieved that it felt like my body image issues were starting to get better.

Imagine my surprise now where I find myself struggling again. It’s been about three years since I dealt with those first weight loss body image issues, but those challenges are starting to creep back into my life. This time though it isn’t problems with matching my mirror image to my mental image. I find myself playing the comparison game and I really hate that I’m doing that. I tell others never to compare themselves to anyone else because they are their own unique selves. No one is like you or can ever be like you so you should celebrate your awesome self. And all the while I can say those things to others, I can’t seem to get myself to believe those sentiments.

The thoughts and questions that run through my mind are so hypocritical of what I want others to think. Shouldn’t I have six-pack abs with all the core exercises I do? Why can that person eat more than me and still have muscles? Am I eating too much? Am I eating too little? Am I not eating the right things? Why can’t I do a full push-up without struggling the whole time? Shouldn’t 5 miles feel like a breeze to me by now? And on and on and on…. I feel like that insecure, high school girl, worried that everyone is staring at me and judging me, all over again. Why am I doing this to myself? Why do I have to go through this AGAIN?

Rather than sit here and wallow in my returning body image issues, I’m going to tackle them head on. There are things that I can do to stop the comparing game and start being proud of myself. I need to stop looking at all the Pinterest images and health magazine models with bodies that aren’t attainable to the majority of the population. Nothing good ever comes from trying to compare myself to them and wonder why I can’t look like them. I’m not them, I’m me and that is just fine. I don’t have a six pack, but I can hold a plank for seven minutes and I know that my core is strong. That’s good enough. I can stop worrying about all the things I might not be doing perfectly for my health. I am a human being and I will never be perfect. That is good enough. I won’t compare the way I eat or how much I eat to other people’s diets. My body needs to be nourished in it’s own way and as long as I feel healthy and am getting adequate nutrition, I shouldn’t worry. That is good enough. I should be proud of all that I can do physically. So what if I can’t clean and jerk an 85 pound barbell or run a marathon in 3 hours? I can do a whole heck of a lot. I should be grateful that I have a body that can do so much. That is good enough.

My overall message for this post is that I, and you, are good enough. Yes, it’s tiring and a little frustrating that I still have to deal with body image issues. I wish that I didn’t have to deal with them and that like the weight I lost, they would just go away. But that’s not the reality of the situation. The reality is I will continue to work on my self image and I will continue to try and help others do the same. One day I know that I can get to the place of feeling totally comfortable in my beautiful skin. Until I reach that point, I will continue being positive and working hard. And that is good enough.

Unhealthy Is Hard

August 25, 2014 / ktbuchs87

About a month ago, I wrote about how it was hard to be healthy. It takes a lot of willpower, motivation, and just plain old work sometimes to be healthier. This post is about the being unhealthy and how it can be just as hard to be unhealthy as it is to be healthy. Stick with me on this one, I promise it will be alright in the end!

The first thought that might cross your mind when you read that unhealthy is hard is, “Yeah, right”. When you glance at the surface of being unhealthy, it looks pretty easy. You eat whatever you want without caring about the effect it will have on your body. You don’t exercise and spend your free time sitting on the couch or computer. You don’t have to sit there and plan our meals and do prep work so you can eat well the whole week. In fact, it seems really nice and carefree to be unhealthy. But like I said, that is just the surface. When you really look at an unhealthy life, you see the challenges and the struggles.

For me, one of the hardest things about being unhealthy was my confidence and self image. I had zero confidence and my self image was fairly low. My goal in life was to blend in and in a large crowd, I was good at that. Sure, with my friends and family I was outgoing and personable, but put me in a room with a bunch of people I don’t know and I tend to blend right into the woodwork. I knew that I was overweight and didn’t look good and wasn’t eating healthy. Because of that, I also thought that everyone else thought the exact same thing about me. I figured that they took one look at me and knew how unhealthy I was and judged me as a lazy person. I realize now that probably wasn’t true, but at the time that is how I felt. Due to my natural inclination to fade into the background of most situations, it was really hard for me to finally break out of my shell and take steps to be healthier. Working out in front of other people terrified me because of course they were all watching me sweat and struggle. Making healthier food choices was worrisome because they might take notice that I was eating better and then start talking to me about it and I would have no idea what to say. These may sound like silly struggles to you, but for some of us this is really difficult. It seems easier to just stay in our shell and live with being unhealthy than try to take on the monumental task of taking steps to be healthier.

Which leads to another challenge of being unhealthy, the whole aspect of, well, being unhealthy. It is hard to deal with all the consequences of unhealthy choices. There are the medical consequences, things like diabetes, heart disease, high blood pressure, and a myriad of other ailments. There are the physical consequences, such as not fitting into clothes, aching joints, and weak muscles. There are the mental consequences, being made fun of or put down because of your weight, not feeling or looking like you want to, and being judged by others around you. Those are a lot of struggles for one person to take on and some people have been doing it for years. That is a lot of stress.

Why don’t they just change? If you’re unhealthy, just do something about it. Sure, it might be hard to live with all of those challenges, but it’s within their power to turn their lives around. To a degree, yes. Many of us do have the capacity to “fix” all these problems ourselves and start being healthier. But it takes a lot to get to that point. No amount of other people telling you to get healthy can actually make you get healthy until you reach the point where YOU yourself want to get healthy. The other side is that sometimes when you’re on the outside looking in, you can be made to feel like you don’t belong. How many times have you seen someone who is clearly struggling at the gym? You’re running along at your solid pace and the person next to you is sweating to maintain a brisk walk. You’re flying through your reps while the guy on the next machine can barely do one. I’m not saying that healthy people shouldn’t work out in public, but they need to remember that they started at the bottom too. Don’t forget what it was like your first time working out and show a little compassion to others who are just starting.

The same goes for eating. You didn’t just instantly start eating kale salads with homemade dressing one day, you built yourself up to that point. Slowly making changes and evolving the way you eat. Don’t judge the person eating a huge cheeseburger with the tiny side salad. That might be the first time they decided to get a salad instead of fries and that is a big deal to them.

Life is hard, whether you live it in a healthy or unhealthy way. There are challenges that each lifestyle has to face and neither one should feel diminished because of those challenges. It takes courage to stand up and decide to change your habits and start being healthier. It takes strength and motivation to keep going on a better path when there are temptations all along the way. I want you to realize that each choice you make, good or bad, is unique in it’s own way. It will present it’s own set of struggles, but you can meet those struggles head on. If you are still on the unhealthy side of the tracks, believe in your potential and don’t be afraid to take that first step. For those of you on the other side of the tracks, you’ve come so far and you can keep going. It may be tough, but you are tougher.

Craving Conundrum

August 5, 2014 / ktbuchs87

The word craving can take on a positive or negative meaning. It all depends on your view. Many times it takes on a negative connotation. It’s something that needs to be controlled, fought, and denied every minute of every day. You have to have willpower to deal with cravings and you have to be strong to fight them off when they arise. This is how I used to view cravings.

I have had a complicated relationship with food. I have had many food “demons” to deal with along the way and I have had to have an incredible amount of willpower when it came to changing my eating habits. Because of my past experience with this, cravings were always something that were bad. I felt that a craving was a moment of weakness that had to be fought and avoided at any cost. To cave would mean I was weak and I would beat myself up. It was a vicious cycle of feeling out of control and not feeling strong enough to deny my food urges. Clearly it wasn’t working out for me.

I know many of you might feel that way too. Maybe you have had a rough time with food and you have come to view a craving as a bad thing. While I don’t like to place the blame on too many outside sources, the media does have a part in the way we view cravings. So many fitness and health websites or magazines put out articles with tips and tricks to fight your worst craving. They tell you if you have enough willpower you can fight off the evil craving and stick to your healthy ways. I gobbled those articles up and tried all their tricks like counting to a hundred and waiting for the craving to pass or drinking a glass of water when I got a craving. Sometimes they worked and sometimes they didn’t. Everytime they didn’t I felt like there was something wrong with me. Why could I not control myself? What was wrong with me?

Nothing was wrong with me. I’m human. It isn’t weak to have a craving for ice cream or pizza, that doesn’t somehow make me a failure. Once I realized this, I started to work on changing my idea of craving. I read more scientific articles and journals about cravings rather than relying on the grocery stand magazines. Turns out that researchers are finding that craving certain foods might be your bodies way of telling you that you are deficient in a certain nutrient. Nobody goes around saying, “Man, I’m really craving a big bowl of brussels sprouts!” They do say that they could really go for some chocolate or potato chips or pizza. Well, a craving for chocolate might mean that you are low on magnesium and should eat some nuts. A craving for potato chips could be a sign that you need some calcium and should fill up on dark, leafy greens. Our bodies are amazingly complex and for the most part are able to tell us exactly what they need. Our job is to learn how to listen and interpret those signals properly, then act accordingly. Cravings are one of the bodies signals that it needs something. The problem occurs when we misinterpret that signal and think that because we crave chocolate ice cream we need to eat that chocolate ice cream. In reality, we need to learn what our body is really saying when it craves chocolate ice cream.

You are not less of a person because you crave “bad” things. You are not a failure if you resolve your craving for a cookie by eating a cookie and you are not doomed to be a slave to your cravings forever. Start to look past the initial craving and see what it is that you really need. If you are constantly craving one certain thing, meet with your doctor or other health professional to see if you are nutrient deficient. Then find the healthier alternative to your craving. Once you start learning what you really need and making the right choices, it will be easier to interpret your cravings and get the things that your body really needs. It will be tough at first to not eat the potato chip and do the work to find out what you’re actually craving. But the more and more you do it, the easier it becomes. If you slip up, don’t beat yourself up. Remember you are a human being and no one is expecting you to be perfect. Being healthier is all a learning process, one that lasts a lifetime. It’s ok to make mistakes and fall. How you react and what you do to change after those mistakes says more about you than the actual mistake. Pick yourself back up and get right back to it!

Using Shame

July 28, 2014 / ktbuchs87

Have you heard of dog-shaming? The basic idea is that a dog will do something bad, like chew up a pair of shoes, and then the owner will write a snarky sign, put it in front of the dog, take a picture and then post it on the internet. It’s actually pretty funny and I have had my share of laughs over the ridiculous things that dogs do. There is a new trend going around though that I refuse to find funny and that is fat shaming.

I was listening to the news last week and heard that there was a facebook group started called fat shaming. It was based in California and people would post unflattering photos of overweight people on the group and then usually write hurtful comments along with the picture. Supposedly the group was shut down but then put back up and then shut down again. I have no clue what the current status of the group is and quite frankly I don’t care. My question is what were the people of the group trying to accomplish?

My first instinct was to believe that these people were just mean and hurtful and were trying to put others down to bring themselves up. The thought never crossed my mind that they were in any way trying to help these people better their health. Then I remembered hearing about a school a few months ago that was sending letters home to parents with overweight children, essentially doing the same thing just using nicer language. This school thought that it was doing the right thing to help those kids become healthier. Instead it sparked anger and outrage not only with the parents but the community as well. In my opinion this tactic should spark a little anger and outrage, because it really isn’t effective at all.

Think of the last time that someone made you feel ashamed about something. Think of feeling ashamed about a part of your personality. Did that feeling of shame make you want to get up and change? Did you feel thankful that someone pointed out your flaws in a possibly hurtful matter? I’m going to take a stab in the dark and say probably not. Using shame to make a person change their ways is not very helpful. In fact, it’s counterproductive in most cases and makes the shamed person fall even deeper into their bad habits. When it comes to health, if all you’re doing is telling someone that they’re fat or eat too much or look horrible in a bikini and should never wear one, you aren’t doing anything to help them make a change in their health. You’re breaking them down even more than they already are, and they’ll do the only things that they know how to do to cope. They’ll eat more food than they should, or sit on the couch all day instead of go for a walk, or maybe even put off a doctors visit because they don’t want one more person to make them feel bad about their health. Shame can exacerbate the problem.

It’s not just other people shaming someone that can cause problems. If you use shame on yourself, you’re doing just as much damage possibly more. Tearing yourself down will never get you to make positive changes and become healthier. All it does is make you feel hopeless. Believe me, for years I told myself I wasn’t good enough, wasn’t pretty enough, didn’t have the right body, wasn’t athletic. You know what all that negative talk did? Absolutely nothing good. I would talk myself out of trying things just because I didn’t want to further embarrass myself. I kept doing all the things that I knew weren’t good for my health, because there was no point in trying if it was always going to be this way. I told myself negative things and that resulted in a negative outlook on life and myself. Once I was finally able to realize that I am so much more than I thought, and once I started to talk to myself in a positive light, suddenly positive changes started to happen. It wasn’t easy and I definitely still have my days where I start to get down on myself, but things are so much better when I build myself up rather than tear myself down.

I don’t know if those who partcipate in fat shaming are coming from a place of concern and honestly believe that they are helping people. I don’t know if they are just doing it to be mean or they think it’s funny or they are trying to make themselves feel better. I do know that it is not helping even a little bit. In order to help those that are struggling with their health, we need to come at them from a place of compassion. We need to use positive tactics rather than negative ones. We need to offer support and encouragement and know when to back off and let them figure it out. These are the things that will bring about healthy change and a better life. Dog-shaming can be funny and merit a chuckle or two. Fat shaming is never funny and we all need to work on being more positive and less negative.

This Is Hard

July 7, 2014 / ktbuchs87

One of the messages that I hope to convey on this blog is that health doesn’t have to be hard. You don’t have to be a world class chef, capable of complicated cooking techniques. You don’t need to live at the gym or buy into crazy gimmicks or expensive equipment. There are so many simple things that you can do to be healthier and enhance your life. But make no mistake, healthy can be hard.

Yes, there are ways to make the decision to be healthier much easier than might think. I try to do my best to share those tips and advice with you. What I mean is that there are days that you are going to struggle. There are times that you are going to wonder why you’re even doing this and if it’s really worth it. There will be moments that you want to quite and you may very well give into those feelings. Believe it or not, this happens to everyone. Even the healthiest person you can think of will have moments of doubt and question their choices. Maybe their moments of doubt last only a minute, but they are still there.

I have gone through periods of time where I really wonder why I am doing this. It’s hard, it takes a lot of self motivation and willpower, and to be honest I get tired. I get tired of constantly choosing to take the healthier route. Some days it would be SO much easier to just get take out food for dinner. It would be heaven to just sleep in and skip my morning workout. Sometimes I long to just spend my whole Saturday on the couch watching TV and downing huge bowls of cereal like I did when I was in high school. I don’t want to prep my meals for the week, I want to sit on my butt and look at pictures of cats on the internet. I don’t want to drink another glass of water, I want to have a huge glass of store bought, sugar-laden juice. This is hard, it drains me, why do I keep on doing this?

I have had every one of these thoughts and many others that are less than stellar. It might seem like I am totally unmotivated to be healthy anymore. It might seem like I just want to give up and that I should stop complaining. You’re right. The thing is, these gripes and struggles are what makes me human. They are also what makes me stronger and even more motivated to continue as well as try to help others. Overcoming obstacles and challenges are part of what makes you unique. They add to your character and make you stronger. If you never had to face any adversity and were able to breeze through life, you wouldn’t be the person you are today. Health is like any other part of your life. It takes strength, some days more than others, to constantly commit to being better than yesterday. It’s ok to feel all the feelings that you do about being healthier.

What do you do though when you feel like there are more bad days than good ones on your journey? For me, I try to think of all the things I can do now that I couldn’t do before. It helps me to see the progress I have made over the years. It also helps to think about how I felt about myself before I started to make changes in my life. I wasn’t very happy, I was very insecure, and I didn’t feel healthy or strong like I do now. I know I don’t want to feel like that again, so that helps motivate me to stay the course when I’m having a rough day. Sometimes you’ll even find help when you least expect it. Maybe a family member will comment on all the hard work you’ve done and how it looks like it’s really paying off. Maybe a friend will start to make healthier choices because you are. Maybe, like me, you’ll realize your story and experiences can help others feel the way you do now and you want to do what you can to help them get there.

It’s ok to feel doubt and want to give up. You aren’t superhero (or maybe you are, don’t worry I won’t reveal your true identity) and even superheroes have their down days. Use those doubts and fears to make you stronger and shape your personality. Don’t let them tear you down to the point where you don’t want to try. Learn from them and adjust your journey from what you learn. I know that you can do this and it’s time for you to believe that you can too.