Beyond the body: loving what you have

Now that you’ve born with me through my exhortations on cardiovascular health, strength training, flexibility and food, it’s time to feel good about yourself.

Not just because you’ve undoubtedly been reading my columns every week and have since begun running marathons and sworn off Nido.

You should feel good about yourself because you are you. I promise there will always be people out there that have ‘better’ bodies than you.

But, that doesn’t mean that there’s nothing about you that is beautiful or unique. When I first meet new personal training clients I ask them to tell me what they love about their bodies.

It’s disheartening how few of them can answer me without several moments of uncertain reflection. I think this happens because we (especially the ladies, but increasingly the men too) are constantly bombarded with images and ideas about what people ‘should’ look like.

We begin to think that we cannot possibly be good enough if we don’t fit these images. Worrying about these images can be as damaging to mental health as eating a cheese burger is to our physical health.

If we can’t figure out what we love about our bodies, then how are we supposed to love ourselves enough to live a healthy life?

This may be difficult at times (I for example appear to have developed the ability to grow giant pimples whenever I will see a guy I fancy) but how you think about your body will impact how you feel and how other people see you.

Confidence is sexy. Instead of beating yourself up all the time about not working out or eating well, think about what parts of you are beautiful. Feeling well leads to living well. After all, you want to take care of what you love.

Amity Weiss is a professional personal trainer from America living in Kigali.

Contact: Amity_weiss@yahoo.com