When you think about diet culture, do you think about how it has affected your relationship with fitness? Often times we focus on how diet culture impacts our relationship with food, but it also has a profound effect on our connection to exercise and fitness.
The fitspo mentality promotes a narrow ideal that is widely unachievable, keeps us stuck in the patriarchal system of having to prove our worth, and harms us by taking us further away from listening to our bodies.
Key Takeaways
If You Are Ready To See Fitspo Die You Should:
- Get curious about how diet culture shows up in your life in a non-judgemental way
- Redefine what fitness means to you and how you can enjoy it without trying to change your body
- Reject the 'no days off' mentality and start listening to the signals from your body telling you what it needs
The Real Meaning of Fitness
Dan John defines fitness as your ability to do a task. That's it. Nothing about the way you look, the amount of muscle you have, or your ability to look like the 'fit' people you see on Instagram.
Society has adopted coded language around fitness that seeks to limit and control a woman's ability to show up in a certain way when it comes to fitness. In reality, you can include movement in your life in a way that is healthy for you right now and has no connection to the way you look. Your relationship with exercise should bring you satisfaction and make you feel good in your here and now body without the pressure of intentional weight-loss or body changes.
How Fitspo Harms Us
Fitspo harms us in more ways than one. Firstly, it promotes a narrow and privileged version of a certain 'look'. It also promotes a 'no days off' mentality, that scares us into believing that if we rest, we are not worthy, are not strong, or are going to lose our gains. This is simply not true and keeps us stuck in the mentality of proving our worth and exercising solely to change the way our bodies look.
One of the biggest ways fitspo harms us is by preventing us from listening to our bodies. Your body will tell you if it needs rest and if it is enjoying the type of movement you are engaging with. While getting to know your body in the physical exercise capacity is very personal and takes time, listening to your body's signals is the only way that you are going to get over the fitspo mentality.
Are you ready to embrace a version of fitness that is accessible, inclusive, and doesn't focus on changing your body? Share how you are embracing movement for the sake of movement and rejecting the fitspo life in the comments section of the episode page.
In This Episode
- Defining what fitness really is and why we need to broaden our understanding of it (3:55)
- Why the words used around fitness and fitspo promote a narrow ideal look (9:36)
- How the 'no days off' mentality continues to keep us stuck in proving our worth and value based on our fitness (13:40)
- The role of social media when promoting fitness as a weight-loss tool (18:56)
- How fitspo is harming us by preventing us from listening to our bodies feedback (22:44)
Quotes
"Diet culture doesn't just impact your relationship with food, it also has a prevalent impact on how we see fitness talked about, displayed, and some of the mentalities that are related to fitness." (3:01)
"Dan John says fitness is your ability to do a task, so right there, your ability to do a task, your ability to complete a specific physical task typically is what fitness really is. And yet we as a society constantly reduce fitness to a look." (7:49)
"If you are pursuing a specific type of fitness because there is a promise of a specific aesthetic look, is that actually 1) realistic for your body type? And 2) is it actually really bringing you a sense of fulfillment?" (12:45)
"It's worth thinking about how pushing through and saying 'I can't take any days off, I am not allowed a rest day if I take a rest day I'm lazy, I'm a loser, I'm a slacker, I'm going to lose all of my progress', how does that mentality keep us from really tuning in and listening to our bodies?" (24:00)
"The other way that fitspo harms us is it takes the emphasis off all of the other reasons why exercise can be fun and beneficial that have really nothing to do with weight loss or body size control." (28:55)
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LTYB 295: Changing The Way You View Fitness with Simone Tchouke