Body Positivity
I am a fitness coach who embraces the idea of body positivity. Every body is beautiful. Every body is powerful. Every body is limitless. These are statements I say to myself about my own body on a regular basis. I have to remind myself from time to time because my mind has a way of convincing me the opposite is true sometimes. It happens to all people. Our insecurities show up and we shrink back from who we know we are, and who we are are beautiful, powerful, limitless people.
I became a fitness coach so I could help people realize their own beauty, power, and potential in themselves. One danger that coaches fall into is that we may want goals for our clients that they themselves don’t want. We may have preconceptions about what a strong, powerful, beautiful body is because we are fed a pretty constant diet of lean, probably white, mostly likely non-disabled, and almost always cisgender bodies as images of health, beauty, and strength.
I struggled for a long time as a member of the gay community to come to terms that I’m a big old bear. When I moved to the San Francisco Bay Area after college, I was ready to find my husband and meet lots of gay men and women. I had grown up in northern Massachusetts and southern New Hampshire in the 80s and 90s, and I went to college at the University of Notre Dame in Indiana (notorious bathroom cruising venues in the library….shhhhh), and I had only been to Boystown in Chicago once and had never attended a pride parade in my life. I was so excited to meet openly gay men and date. What I was greeted with was the term “bear” which was tossed onto me like a pejorative. A bear in the gay community is essentially a bigger and hairier guy. There are other terms for cliques that you can google, but be careful, some may lead you to NSFW sites.
You’re cute for a bear.” “You should go to The Lone Star because that’s the bear bar.” “If you weren’t a bear, I would date you.”
I was sent the message that my bigger body wasn’t desirable. I was sent the message that in order to be attractive, I needed to lose weight. The only people who would find me attractive were other bears. It took me years to embrace that yeah, I am a bigger guy and always will be. I’m not super hairy , so I’ve been bear-shamed by other bears for not being furry enough (ugh…can we all just be nicer to one another?). And what it took for me to finally embrace this term and make it part of my business name was to figure out how not to see being in a bigger body as a negative. There is still some stigma in the gay community, but things are gradually changing.
I changed my opinion about my body, and really all bodies, by opening my eyes to the beauty that was around me. I stood every day in front of my mirror naked and looked at myself and saw my body for the beautiful, powerful, and limitless body that it is. Instead of being grossed out or critical of the extra fat around my belly I saw it as a part of me. Instead of criticizing my thighs as being a little too flabby or thick, I saw them as a source of strength to carry my body through the world. I looked at the stretch marks and remember the insults and taunts from peers that made me never want to take my shirt off and embraced them as marks of courage for not giving in.
I’m not saying it is easy for everyone in the world to do this for themselves. It took me several weeks before I stopped rolling my eyes at myself. It took me years to internalize that I am a beautiful person even if I don’t meet everyone’s definition of beauty. It took me years to then turn that eye towards others and not think “they’re a little too big” or “a little too thin” or whatever judgment I may have about their bodies because, in the end, my opinion about them means jack shit.
I want to help clients realize this about themselves, too, if I can. I also have to remind myself that this is their journey, not mine. I’m just along the road as a guide. I can’t want them to lose weight or to lift weights to work on body recomposition because that’s what I think they need or want. I have to listen to them and figure out what they want and why they want it and work with them on that.
If your coach is trying to get you to lose weight, and you don’t want to, find another coach. If your coach is trying to get you to gain weight and put on muscle, and you don’t want to, find another coach. Find someone who won’t be quietly judging you and your body. Find one who sees the potential in you as much as they see it in themselves, and work with them to get you to where you want to go.