The Shape of Your Body
I believe being in harmony with your body depends less on the way it looks then on the way it serves bigger goals. These goals are defined by you. As long as your body is optimizing for these goal, you are likely to loose the lack of confidence or dislike for your body.
First, it is important to know that the 3 most impactful things on your body are: movement, nutrition and rest. They all impact the way you feel about your body.
Second, the physical looks of a body are the most tangible things we’ve got to evaluate and judge bodies, this does not necessarily match the way a person feels about their body. You can be the prettiest person alive and hate your body.
Third, for this posts sake, I’ve chosen to use tangible examples to illustrate my point since feelings are hard to portray and use in examples of bodies.
Fourth, the conclusion of this post is that a healthy approach for your body and what makes you feel good about your body is to:
Define your everyday goals, unrelated to your body.
Use tools such as sleep, food and exercise to optimize for these goals (this is a continuous and long process).
Let the shape of your body be a consequence of 1 and 2.
The most important part is for your goals to be things you truly care about. If that’s the case you will be happy with your body too.
Fifth, the second conclusion of this post is that optimizing towards a certain type of body shape or look will never solve the problem of not feeling good about your body.
To explain my thinking, I will just use examples. The first bunch of examples are healthy approaches towards your body, while the second bunch are unhealthy ones.
What I believe to be healthy approaches that make you feel good about your body: (These are examples to illustrate my point, they do not tell you what your goals should be..)
I want to be the best at my sport.
To be the best at a sport, food, sleep and diet are some of the most important factors. Any sport is bodies performing against each other. It is therefore a straight forward example, easy to understand in the context of this post.
“I want to be chic coat-hanger.”
Karl Lagerfeld once said that while commenting on his skinny physique. Someone who has the goal of being a living coat hanger for chic clothes needs to be skinny. Therefore taking in less calories then the energy they spend is all that’s necessary. To do that, eating less and exercising more is the only thing that’s really necessary.
I want to be a good and stable dad to my kids.
A good dad probably has less time to optimize for a specific goal and needs to be more flexible in how they use sleep, food and exercise. There is a reason we call it a “dad bod”. It is the consequence of getting unregular sleep, not being able to exercise when needed and eating what’s available most of the times. The dad bod is perfect to be a good and stable dad.
I want to be the best scientist in the world.
A scientist needs a brain that works and a rational approach to things. They spend a lot of time sitting and focusing. They should probably sleep a lot to let the brain rest, have a decent amount of exercise to stay healthy and eat food that increases cognitive capabilities (healthy fats and a balanced diet).
I want to enjoy life which includes having drinks and fun regularly.
As a person who just want’s to enjoy life all that’s necessary is to be actionable and therefore keep up a decently balanced lifestyle.
I want to be a top-model in the old fashioned sense.
If the goal is to be lean, skinny and appealing to the fashion industry, the right diet and workout routine is necessary. Sleep seems to be less of a necessity.
I want my partner to like my body.
What that would look like and what needs to be done depends on what that partner likes.
What I believe to be unhealthy approaches that don’t make you feel good about your body:
I want to to find myself attractive.
I want to be more muscular.
I want to be skinnier.
I want to be physically healthier.
I want to feel better about myself.
I want to feel accepted for the shape of my body.
I don’t think that any of these are bad motivations in itself, I just believe that these approaches don’t turn out to make you feel better about your body, no matter how it turns out to look. It just doesn’t work to satisfy yourself psychologically.
The shape of your body is a consequence of using it to pursue goals that are bigger than “yourself”. What makes you feel good about your body is whether it serves you to get closer to these goals, not what it looks like.