FIT is the new SKINNY

I'd be lying if I was to say that I have never felt pressured by society's image of what a woman should look like. I can remember so vividly watching videos of perfect women and their perfect bodies and scrolling through endless Tumblr accounts of Thinspo. Even saything that word in my head takes be back to being 15 *shudder*. By no means did I have any form of mental/eating disorder but the dreaded calorie counting started and didn't stop for several years. At this point I really didn't understand nutrition and became frustrated living on 1,200 of the wrong kind of calories and not losing weight. 

This was a mentality I believed for several years until the fitness movement really took a hold and blew the skinny obsession out of the water, well....for me at least. 

Throughout 2016 I wised up on nutrition and became more and more exposed to photos of super fit, toned and muscular women who were a world away from the thigh gaps and collar bones I had previously been aspiring to. It was like a switch, my brain did a complete 180 and all I wanted was to be fit, not just skinny. 

When I was younger I was the flabby kind of skinny, I had no muscle which gave the illusion of being slim and all I wanted was to fit into the next size down. Working out and building muscle was a scary thought because at first I got bigger (or at least psychologically thought I did). It wasn't until about 6 weeks into working out that I saw my thighs become lean and the layer of fat was disappearing which revealed the muscle that I had been building underneath. This happened all over my body. Funnily enough, after beginning to overlook the weight loss obsession that felt as if it were hard wired into my brain and focus on fitness was when I really started to lose weight! 

Now, to coin a phrase "abs are made in the kitchen", there is really no denying that working out is useless without a good diet. By no means do I follow the perfect plan, I still eat chocolate everyday (I battle my own inner demons on a daily basis - demons that take the form of a sweet tooth) but I incorporated my '5 a day', that old chestnut. Cravings began to alleviate as my body was receiving the nutrition it wanted. As well as this, the simple fact that eating more fruit and vegetables were filling me up and so I naturally ate less sugary foods to keep me fueled. 

I am by no means perfect and on the days I eat a lot of 'bad foods' I tell myself that it's okay - every now and again you need to rev up your metabolism to stop it slowing down. I'd just kick my ass extra hard in my workout that day. 

Being in such a happy head space allows me to appreciate the trends that are changing for the good and that instead of my social media feeds being filled with thinspo, I see smiling fit and healthy women who look like they can take on the world. 



Fit is truly the new skinny...Or at least in my head it is. 


*Disclaimer: I am not commenting on whether being skinny or not is a good or bad thing but that being healthy is what really matters and with health comes endless opportunities.  

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