For many of us we started to look at the food that we ate or the body that we had when we hit puberty. I know for me, I never really thought about it until I was about 13 and started to think I was “fat”. I wasn’t even close, but I was not a stick figure either. I was a quadruple sport athlete, and was very muscular but I misinterpreted being in shape for the word “fat”. I started watching every calorie I ate, and stayed away from anything that had an ounce of fat in it; if I ate fat I was going to get fat right?…..
Looking back, I had a body that probably most “skinny” girls would have wanted, but I let magazines, social media, and other outlets try to convince me that unless I looked like a wafer I would never be “pretty”.
When I look at this picture now it is so sad to me, that not only did I waste so much time worrying about what people thought, but I also was setting a trend and pattern that would haunt me for the rest of my life; I was never going to be satisfied with how I looked because I wasn’t satisfied with myself!
I found this wonderful article on the CrossFit Games site (www.games.crossfit.com) about a 14 year old who was in the same boat as most teenage girls, but after being introduced to the CrossFit community changed her outlook on body image for girls her age. She didn’t want to be skinny because that was “weak”, she wanted to be strong, muscular, and most of all healthy!
Please forward this article to anyone you know with teenage daughters, friends, or family. My path of how I viewed myself and food would have been drastically different if I would have just loved myself for the strong, healthy, beautiful teenage girl that I was. If we can change this morphed perseption into a positive healthy outlet it will save many teenage girls and grown women lives!
Fit Chic