Appearance or health?

I’m addressing the following words to all of you, but mostly to girls and women.

Target – appearance

I wrote in my book that the main motivator behind being slim and healthy should be health itself. Unfortunately, for young girls is an abstract notion. They need a particular role model. A decade ago it was a skinny tall model. Nowadays, girls want to be fit more and more. It’s a much better reason, but what does it really mean? Well, for many it simply means: slim, muscular body, shaped in the shortest time possible.

Way to the target

Girls want the results right now. In a month, half a year the longest, they want to look like their favourite instructors, stars, or like an exceptionally good-looking schoolmate. They start to follow restrictive diets, often based on eliminating significant for health nutrients. Sometimes they starve. They exercise a lot to strengthen particular muscles. Sometimes without a proper warm-up. They exercise while being tired without giving some rest to their bodies. They don’t let themselves grow up calmly and healthily.

Effects

Effects usually don’t come. Calves are still either too thin or too big. There’s some fat on the belly, abs are invisible. Thighs are still bigger than mate’s ones, and the butt is not like J. Lo’s one despite exercising hard. The frustration is growing. Some girls stop having periods. I a girl/woman thinks that the appearance is the indicator of her value or lack of it causes life/social failures – she is on the wrong track. Looking for solutions to her problems, she reaches for supplements available in the Internet: for losing weight, muscle growth, dehydration, laxatives. Pure, often not reliable, chemicals. When a gynaecologist orders some tests to explain health problems, it turns out that a slim young girl/woman is overworked. Tired of torturous “workouts”, supplements for losing weight.

Costs

It’s good if the changes in the body caused by persistent strive for perfection are reversible. However, it’s hard to resume balance to the upset endocrine system. There can appear problems with getting pregnant. There’s a greater chance of autoimmune diseases that are dangerous and irreversible. Then a question arises: why was I doing harm to my body?

Good question, why? What for?

In my book I wrote: Why do you want to look like someone else? Treat yourself as an unique individual. Be slim because it is healthy and comfortable, but do not torture yourself and others in pursuit of looking like Ms X, because your genes are different, your metabolism is different as well as age and height, etc. My figure is the effect of my genes, diet and above all the sport I have been practising for several years on a daily basis. I am satisfied with my look, but there are still critical opinions about me: “too boyish”, “not very feminine”, etc. I like and respect my body, so I am not too much concerned about opinions of other people. Yet, I am a bit terrified when I get e-mails from, I suppose, young people who ask me to reveal my body measurements, because they want to look like me or make comparisons with me. What for? Let us be healthy, slim and cheerful, but different!

Girls, let’s be beautiful wisely!