Life Is Too Short To Hate Your Body: Aesthetics, Strength, And Body Image

Now I'm sharing what I know with you fitness , nutrition and all the deeper stuff to help you discover your strongest body . Hello , hello , welcome back to another episode of your strongest body . Thank you for being here . As always , I swear we're going to get some guests on the show .

The thing about guests is that it actually takes a bit for me to get the scheduling out and to get everybody recorded and everything . This year I switched to a different kind of schedule to pick up my daughter some days , not to give you excuses , but to say that they're coming . I feel like we really need some guests .

So you get a break from me talking If you're still enjoying me talking . I'm glad you're here Today . We are talking about a whole lot of things . I want to title the episode Life is Too Short to Hate your Body . If you were to ask me what my ethos is as a human , I think it is . Life is too short to hate your body .

Life is too short not to live fully and present in your body . This is a complicated thing . I was trying to lay out some thoughts I had in an outline and they were still all over the place . I was like you know what , get on , start recording and we'll see where it goes .

If you know me , I have covered some of these topics before and I will cover them again . This body image is a huge term , and body image as it relates to training and nutrition . There are so many facets to it and it's so nuanced I can't possibly cover it in a quick episode .

What motivated me to do this episode today was I put a poll up in my stories about whether or not you exercise regularly , whether you see results from your workouts and if you care about that , and then whether or not you feel guilty , that you would like to see changes in your body . I got a ton of responses , which was awesome .

I can't say enough if you are someone who responded on my Instagram stories . Thank you , thank you , thank you . That interaction is so valuable . I couldn't say I was surprised , because there were many people who said sometimes I do . Sometimes I feel guilty about that . And then there was a handful of people that said I feel that way all the time .

And then there was a very small handful of people that were like , no , I'm good , I'm happy to , I don't really have those feelings about body change . I thought I'd bring that up today because I want to help ease your feelings , maybe the complicated feelings you have around changing how your body looks . I want to do it in a way that that is nuanced .

I mean , that's the whole thing with me . I want you to have the tools to leave this episode and start to give yourself some room to have varying and sort of contrasting feelings about your body and about bodies in general and still be able to feel your best .

And I think partially I want to do this because I think I have in the past been a huge contributor to this sort of shame around wanting to change how your body looks . And let me explain that .

And I think we all go on a journey , hopefully we all go on a journey with our thoughts and our beliefs that where in sometimes we sort of swing far on one end of the pendulum . I have explained before that I think I had a generally like pretty sort of kind relationship with my body until I about high school .

I experienced a lot of like I don't know , bullying about my body , but I didn't . I felt at the time that I didn't really hold onto it much .

I experienced a lot of praise for weight loss in the end of high school and early college weight loss that turned out to be a result of a thyroid disorder , and that was the first time I experienced like , oh , people do treat you differently if you're like a different size .

And then there were there were varying points in my life where where physical body image took a different role or I had a different opinion about it .

Particularly , I've mentioned before that I was sort of in a performance space space and a lot of people in performance are really thinking about how their body looks , because in a lot of times , like in dance and in theater , that is a decision maker from casting directors and things to give you a job .

So , all that to say , I have had different experiences with my own body image . And then I've had different experiences with my beliefs around body image , in the same way that I've had different experiences with my beliefs about training .

And let me say this I got into exercise and to training because I liked to exercise and I thought I could help people achieve a goal and at the time I thought that performance goals and getting stronger and feeling better , overall health , overall well-being , was superior , almost morally superior , to wanting to change how your body looks , to using training for

aesthetics . I really felt that way and I felt that way for a long time .

I felt that way for a long time Because it sounded good and because let me explain this and I think this comes from sort of older beliefs about feminism that were sort of put onto me , not sure where , like systemically , they were communicated to me , but it was under the belief , as a young woman , that in order to be taken seriously as a professional , to be

seen as smart , to be seen as altruistic , those were all things that were really important to me and to my own self image that the idea that you were interested or cared about your aesthetics , how you presented yourself , the idea of makeup or clothes or how your body looks , was in some way a a detractor from that and was sort of , I don't know , playing into

the patriarchy .

I now , as an older adult , have a better and more nuanced understanding of the fact that , like a woman's power can come from a lot of different places from their intelligence , from their career , from their desire to give back , as well as from how they present themselves and how they feel in their bodies and how they take pleasure and pride in how they show

their individual style or the pride in the way they look . So I have learned that there's more to that , that , again , it's just more nuanced . In the same way that I have discovered from training that when people feel better in their daily activities , they have a better quality of life .

I also think when people feel better about their bodies , how they look , how they show up in their day to day , they have a better quality of life .

And in my own discovery of the empowerment I felt in changing my physique and seeing my clients also change their physique and feel empowered , I came around to the idea that , like there's nothing more valid about training for performance , there's nothing more valid or morally superior about training for quality of life than there is for training for how your body looks

. That's a hard thing to sit with sometimes because , right , we understand that people get treated differently for the way their bodies look so you can understand in your head like I don't like that . We have these beauty systems or standards and I don't like this .

I am also a human being who wants to feel good in their body and you can have those sort of like combating ideals and live with them . And I think that's what's hard . When I hear people or when I saw people say like they feel guilty about wanting to change how their body looks .

That's what I was thinking about and I was thinking about my content for a long time , saying like you aren't your body , you're more than your body . If you want to have success in the gym , you got to have performance goals and you got to have quality of life goals , because those are the ones that are going to bring you real satisfaction .

I'm not saying that any of that isn't true . I'm also saying you can get real satisfaction from changing how your body looks . And I think about this . I was looking at some pictures . I do not have a lot of pictures of myself from like the entire time I lived in New York City . I lived in New York City almost five years . I have so few pictures .

It was when I was first a trainer . I was not comfortable in my body . I was kind of embarrassed of my body . I was never a person who would get in front of the camera and I experienced zero oppression about my body size . So I want to be clear about that . I was still a very what would have been conventionally just like average body size .

I hate using any of those words , but I just I want to be clear that I wasn't like experiencing hate or oppression because of my body . So take that into account here . But I like , didn't like it . I didn't like it . I felt I lacked confidence . I completely lacked confidence .

And when I did take pictures which I don't have many and like you don't have to have a ton of pictures , but I'll get to the point of this in a second when I did take pictures , I did that arm pose where you put it on your hip and it was like everybody was doing it because we needed our arms to look a certain way and like great , if you like , the

way that pose looks great . But it was so artificial for me and it was artificial because I was trying to be something I wasn't and I did , and it was so out of that lack of confidence and my lack of pictures was a little bit cause I wasn't all the time on the internet for my job , but also because I lacked confidence .

I lacked like a deep appreciation for who I was , what I looked like and how I presented to the world . And now I think about when I stand in pictures and like certainly I do a lot of posing like sort of like muscle and fitness types of poses , especially like post workout .

When I take an average picture , like just casually , I do not think about the way I'm standing , because and this is the point I'm getting to my presence in photos now is about having as many captured moments and memories of my life and who I am in this moment , cause I'm so proud of who that person is and I'm so appreciative of the people in my life and

the things that I do that I want , I want so many pictures of it and I wanna be present there and I want to not feel like I have to shy away . And so when I stand in a picture , I'm not thinking about my arms and I'm not thinking about how my legs look and I'm not thinking about that kind of thing .

And I know that seems a little like almost contradictory , because I like mentioned the posing and stuff . But there is a deep appreciation for my body that I've cultivated through strength and aesthetics .

That allows me to be who I am relaxed or flexed at any time and that's not to say that there isn't difficulty with that , that I don't run into my own sort of like bad body image days and I have an episode on that .

But overall , the experience that I created while training for strength and performance and aesthetics cause I train for aesthetics , like I have certain goals about my body , the way I want it to look . Does that mean I think I'm any more worthy as a person if I get those aesthetic goals ?

No , I just know that I am like doing it because it makes me feel good , it makes me more present in my life and that is my prerogative . That is autonomy . That's autonomy like in the best way . So that's a little rambly , but it's to say that I wish you a life where you aren't stressing over being in the picture , where you aren't feeling likely .

You have to pose in a certain way to even be present . I want you to pose however you want , relaxed . I want you to take the post-workout selfie . I want you to live in a world where you literally are the main character . I know and I understand the concept of like when people are picking on people for quote unquote main character energy .

But like , how sad is a life ? Is your life ? How sad for you if you feel like you can't be the main character in your own life , that doesn't mean you don't have friends or family or people you truly deeply care about . It's about you prioritizing what you need .

So I think , if you're struggling with that idea of like , I feel guilt around training for aesthetics . I feel guilty that when I work out , I do want it to change my body . I want to first apologize for my role in that , because I think in a lot of those ways where we're like , the only things you should be prioritizing are performance goals .

The only things you should be doing are this we have created a sort of opposing idea to like . There are people who are shallow and they train for aesthetics . There are people who are better and they train for performance . Oh gosh , how about we just all train for what feels good for us ?

We experience our worth in a multitude of ways , in a multitude of ways from how you give love to others , from how you offer things in the world , from how you see the world , from who you are in your dreams and your beliefs , and then how you show up in your body , is entirely something that you can feel worthy about .

There is a thing that was going around and I know I've mentioned this before because I sound like a broken record , but there was a thing going around that was all about your body is the least interesting thing about you and I think and I'm saying this now , in this moment , and of course , thoughts evolve I don't love that because it is again putting ranking

things about yourself , ranking what is interesting about you . So now , unless you're a philanthropist , or unless you are , like you have these three qualities You're not interesting , or like , talk about the pressure that puts on your personality . I think we don't have to constantly rank what needs to be most important . We can live in the duality of .

You are so much more than your body and you show up every day in your body . Right , you are so much more than your body . You are who you are , what you do , how you give back , who you love and what , what joy you bring into the world , how you critically view things , how you Problem solve ? Yes , yes , yes , yes , yes .

You are more than your body and Every single day , unless you never leave the house , you show up in your body . You show up in your body . If you don't leave the house in front of a mirror , you show up in your body . It's , it's the , the thing that we exist in . If you want it to look a certain way , who who am I to tell you that's not okay ?

And if you can think critically about how we have sort of put on a pedestal different kinds of bodies and how we have made some things More desirable than others , and you can still want Something different for yourself . You can still want something different for yourself .

You can still want to present your body in a way that feels good for you , and one of the ways to do that is to change it with exercise . Now , I know I've talked about it before , but yes , genetics Genetics are a big part of how your body looks and we can't mess much with that .

But there are things that you can do with training that will Change how your body appears , and I think what people imagine with training for aesthetics ? I think they imagine those Wild transformation videos online where it's like in one year I went from this to this Fine like .

If you want to do that , great Training for aesthetics can also be like in the last six months when I go to the mirror , I can see some more muscle . I can see some definition . That makes me excited to wear my tank top guys in the summer . If you don't want to wear sleeves , don't wear sleeves . I want you to feel like you don't have to wear sleeves .

If you don't want to , you can wear whatever you want at whatever Size you are . But I want you to cultivate that confidence in yourself to present in whatever Everway works for you . And so the idea of training for aesthetics can just be about Feeling like you look the way that you feel inside . Maybe it's complicated , I'm not .

I'm not trying to say that like it's not complicated . I want to give you Permission to exist in a space when , yes , training for performance and for strength is going to help combat the idea that you're that you're not , that your workouts aren't working unless you have a huge transformation . They're also just going to give you , like , a lot of confidence .

Reaching performance goals is really satisfying . Feeling good in your body and the way your body looks is also really satisfying . So we can marry these things together , I believe , with the understanding that it never stops Our critical thought around bodies and society and our role in that and how that is impacting us .

So there's some data and I don't have it in front of me about , like there is sort of a tipping point , for folks who spend more than a certain amount of time in the gym tend to have exhibit more symptoms of body dysphoria . Right , because , like , if you think about it , there probably is a point where we become obsessive about something .

Guys , you can get obsessive about performance stuff too . I see tons of people like having something to say about this isn't heavy , or that isn't heavy enough or that isn't strong enough . That's the same kind of thing as this body isn't worthy or this body doesn't look good .

So don't be fooled that performance and strength goals hold something where you can't get obsessed or you can't attach your worth to it . People attach their worth to performance goals too . It's about finding the balance , it's about constantly staying curious and it's about knowing that life fluctuates and we've got to be okay with wherever we are .

And through training for both of those things , I think you can cultivate the tools and the understanding to appreciate and build that deep , deep confidence in your who you are as a person and in the body that you live in , and and you will be better prepared for those shifts .

In this time of year I can't do all that , so I don't look exactly like that , or or this time of year I can , I can really push myself , and so I do end up feeling better when I'm able to do all of those habits .

So I do need to wrap up here , because I'm on a bit of a time crunch today and I know this was sort of like all over the place , but it is sort of and I will probably do more episodes on this . The too long didn't listen .

Of all this is to say , give yourself grace and allow yourself to be a human being who can both experience a deep psychological understanding of the issues that we have around bodies and the and the dangers that can lie in in becoming obsessive and or valuing others for different bodies , and also realize that you are entitled to feeling amazing about yourself .

And if you want to do that with training and if you want to manipulate how your body looks with training , you aren't any less of a person and like we can have both of those things and you can also be really cool at the same time . Like you don't have to . It's not always shallow . It's not always shallow as a point . I have a program coming in April .

It is a 12 week Program that will help you build visible muscle , increase your strength and develop that deep body confidence in time to experience your summer in your most confident body ever .

And we in this , in this program , I'm tackling these , these important mindset challenges as well , because we don't just get this all the time through the workout and the nutrition . All of that is in the program , as well as the skills to have a performance mindset and to have a Relationship with your body .

That is only going to do further amplify who you are and and and allow you to experience your best , most confident life . I'm so excited about this thing . I want to talk about it all the time

. Built bodies . It's a 12 week program . If I have the wait list in the Show notes , hop on the wait list . Obviously , no obligation to purchase . It's just gonna get you excuse me , gonna get you the information first . Okay , I Got a run . I hope you have a great day . I hope that it was a little less rambly Then it appeared in my mind .

But , as always , this is a conversation , so I want to hear from you , I want to hear about your thoughts in this . You can always email me , betsy , at be foster strong , calm or you can send me an Instagram DM at foster , underscore straight Go have an incredible day and until we and build your strongest body and I'll talk to you next time .