The Most Important Lesson For Our Daughters
Recently I read a quote somewhere from social media that really resonated with me and seemed to go like this, “Those extra 5-10 pounds that you’re always trying to lose and lamenting their existence, that place where your body naturally wants to be-that’s your life. That’s your late night pizza with your husband, that Sunday morning bottomless brunch with your best friends, your favorite cupcake in the whole entire world because you wanted to treat yourself. Those 5-10 pounds are your favorite memories, your unforgettable trips, your celebrations of life. Those extra 5-10 pounds are your spontaneity, your freedom, your love.”
One of the things I feel passionately about as a therapist and an advocate for overall mind-body health is a sense of balance. One side is loving yourself and how you look right here, right now, without limitations. On the other side is the need to take care of your body and your physical health. It is crucial to treat your body like a prized possession, to feed it well and often, to move and exercise, and to make sure no aspect of your physical health is neglected. But perhaps most importantly, the motivation for this balance must come from something positive, it needs to come from love and not from loathing.
A lot of women would say-what difference does it make what my motivation is? You eat salmon and broccoli for dinner because you want your body to run well, and I eat it because I am trying to stay under 1000 calories a day so I can lose 3 dress sizes before my friends wedding, the destination might be the same, but the journey is different.
But the journey towards health and the means we use to reach our final destination does make a difference. It’s like watching a mother with her child at a spelling bee. One mother tells her child “I love you no matter what, and I know you have worked so hard for this spelling bee. You are bright and capable and I know you can win if the time is right. Do the best you can, and either way we’ll go out for ice cream afterwards.” The second mother says to her child “we have been working with you for months on this spelling bee, go out there, win this thing, and make us proud or don’t even bother coming home tonight. Don’t embarrass yourself, go win!”. Are both mothers motivating? Absolutely. But one is building up the child to realize that her value does not come from one accomplishment alone, but rather from her effort and who she is as an individual. Whereas the other mother is setting her daughter up to believe that she has to succeed to have worth. The same is true with the voice and words we use to motivate ourselves throughout our journey to better health.
The journey towards health should be based on a foundation of our overall capability and solid confidence in our value and self-worth— not from numbers on a scale. Weight will fluctuate throughout our lives, this is pretty much a fact. If we tie our being “ok” with ourselves to simplistic numbers, we are guaranteeing future needless angst. We would never tie our self worth to our blood pressure numbers or blood sugar numbers. Yet we do just that with pounds and inches.
It’s time to say enough, it is time to think that we are worth more than the ideas society has sold me as to what makes an ideal woman, what my community has convinced me of, even possibly what my parents, friends or spouse have had me believe about myself.
Once we can get to some sense of peace and positive motivation- then it is time to take the next step.
There are lots of reasons why women can’t prioritize taking care of themselves, there is only so much energy that each individual woman has, and health cannot always be the priority. There needs to be no judgement on this, but when a time comes where health can be prioritized in this positive way, this can help a woman gain confidence and give her energy to take on her life in a whole different manner. When you feel good about yourself and treating your body right, it can feel like a completely new chapter of life has begun. Everywhere around me I hear women lamenting the way they look and most commonly their weight. It has become a natural volley of conversation at social events, in the grocery store, and at weddings to hear one women complain about her hips being too big, and then it’s the next person’s turn to say that her thighs are so large, to which the next woman feels obliged to jump in with how big her stomach has become. I’ve become so sensitive to these conversations that they almost sound like nails on a chalkboard. We need to stop this- we need to put an end to this. If not for us, then for the next generation’s sake.
I challenge all of us to thank our body at least once a day for something it enables us to do. Tune into your thoughts about the way you look and the want to ‘be healthy’. What words are you using to motivate yourself and can those be shifted to words that build you as a whole person?
Lastly, embrace what food brings to your life. Think about what those pounds you’re always lamenting mean to you in your life. They may not be worth giving up and they might actually be worth cherishing. Last week I bit into my favorite pizza in Israel, with that special Israeli pizza sauce. A few years ago I would have felt some guilt as I considered how much other fattening food I had eaten that day as I inhaled the slice. But because I brought this new perspective into my life, I was able to smile, close my eyes, and enjoy my pizza with the people I was with.
Is this perspective possibly fighting the tide of the need to be thin and diet culture? Yes it is, but I also believe that it’s possible. We owe it to ourselves, our daughters and granddaughters to say enough, this body shaming ends here and it ends today.
