The fitness train is always looking for passengers to get on and ride it.

Health is one thing.

Obsession and addiction is another.

From the female standpoint, we have been conditioned to believe that we must have no flaws, no stretch marks, no imperfections.

This is not one more blog trying to change minds, these are words that I hope land with anyone that reads this that is battling with acceptance.

I used to belong to a group of females that applauded fitness. There was a whole social media group of women that were determined to be “fit”. Not one person loved themselves as they were. During that time I was anorexic, dangerously restricting calories and water because of control. I had the “thousand rule”, a thousand bleachers, a thousand sit ups, a thousand squats, a thousand crunches. I had the four pack abs, I had muscle definitions, rib cage protruding. I was “fit”. I was “perfect: and I looked like I had it altogether. In the group, none of us were happy. The women I knew hated their bodies, had body image issues, were restricting calories, were anorexic but unwilling to admit it. The goal was to be “fit” but really they were dealing with trauma. We had unhealed broken hearts and were actually dealing with devastation. Most of the women had a marriage that was awful, checked out husbands. Most had unresolved trauma that had wounded them.

It was about “getting fit” right?

We were miserable internally so we tried to manufacture a socially acceptable version of ourselves that would be acceptable.

THIS IS THE LIE:

If we are physically perfect, so must be our insides and our lives be. Our external is supposed to match our internal but even if our insides and our lives are ugly then we can at least try to make everything external look good.

Our external is supposed to be at peace and aligned with our outsides. We were never meant to operate out of the place of guilt, shame and fear as our primary vibration. Though we may experience those feelings they don’t do much for our future.

To be driven to manufacture an externally perfect life and feel the weight of pretending, is rough.

In several lenses: in many situations, I have seen people that appeared to be altruistic and seemed to be doing it for good reason. But they were unhealed and miserable.

And the groups I had contact with required me to shell out a bunch of money in order to be part of their group. I had to have some “skin in the game.” Which basically meant buying into all their doctrines and version of what they believed to be health and about what fitness was to them.

Soooo, if we aren’t gym rats or obsessively doing at home workouts, we aren’t only muscle and drinking protein shakes and we don’t look perfect then we aren’t acceptable?

I watched a community of women who pushed themselves beyond what they were physically able to do and it had nothing but harmful mental, emotional and physical complications. These diets, fads, pyramid schemes, only caused problems.

What were we chasing?

We were applauding each others demise.

I saw women who hated that their body had changed after giving birth to their children, that they were no longer teenage girls without breasts and widened hips and that they were still chasing an ideal that wasn’t real.

Why does any woman on the planet try to punish and starve, overexercise, restrict all for the sake of…what? To be fit?

To whom are we pleasing and to what audience are we trying to please?

Of course the argument is don’t be overweight and don’t be unhealthy.

But…..

Why thin?

Why are “eating disorders” an issue? Why are we chasing physical perfection?

To whom are we trying to please and what lengths are we willing to go in order to try to be “acceptable”?

Why are we seeking acceptance from other imperfect humans if we can’t even accept ourselves? When we are imperfect in different ways and in imperfect situations, is the reality, to what box are we fitting into?

If we were unacceptable to our caregivers, we usually find ourselves chasing that parental acceptance from others. A wound that will not heal from strangers on the internet and a void that will not be filled by people whom aren’t invested in us.

The truth is there are countless groups of women out there that are applauding extremes.

It’s called “challenges” and “pushing through” our “hang ups”; when in all actuality it is the going beyond to the point of pushing too hard.

For what?

What are we trying to become? and what are we trying to be?

Years ago, fitness was something people did with an as seen on tv Thigh Master thing and maybe Billy Blanks Taebo situation was going on.

We have the most access to mental health now and we are the sickest we’ve ever been.

In all truth, every woman that I ever met who was a runner was a woman running from her issues. A woman who was restrictive in her eating was a woman trying to control her past and trying to control her now. Her failed marriage, the trauma. If she could just funnel it into fitness, into trying to be “perfect”.

Going to the gym was a way to cope with the war at home. It was a way to deal with her past.

It was never her just trying to be healthy.

The constant feeling of resistance and the self-defeated attitudes. The desire to never even start because the work out was so grueling but an operator override to do it anyway because they had signed up for it. Ignoring the need for healing and rest.

Healthy never included restricting calories, fad diets, extreme exercise and trying to be a person with abs but was starving.

So what are we doing?

Why are we still trying to be thin? or trying to be stacked?

To be physically perfect?

If our life isn’t, our insides aren’t….?

I remember being in that group and it felt loving and welcoming. But the truth was, I was only loved when I was pushing myself beyond the max.

I had two non-stemi’s.

My heart failed.

I was restricting what I ate, limiting all toxins.

I was running a thousand bleachers, I couldn’t count how many miles I would run in a day. I lost count after 12. I did a thousand crunches, breaking them up into hundreds. I would eat once a day. Only vegetables and protein but only enough to sustain a toddler for one meal. Because anything more than that would be too much.

In the fast majority of women today we are supposed to be adhering to some kind of social norm that we think is supposed to be for everyone.

I remember that day. How I ran a thousand bleachers, ran an unlimited amount of miles and couldn’t sleep. The next day I was trying to be with my kids and my heart started to fail. I remember playing with them and passing out briefly whilst sitting with them and having fun.

Long story short: I had two non-stemis and ended up in the emergency room.

While I couldn’t recognize my own swollen face in the mirror, busted capillaries, bloodshot eyes struggling to focus; I eventually got in touch with my fitness group who had kicked me out as a member. As after all no one wanted to hear about what exercise and restriction could result in. Members unfriended me. Leaders disqualified me.

When your heart fails it’s not pretty and some people think it’s contagious so they get away, There was never a caution or a warning. I was never enough as I was. I was the one chasing the dream and seemed to be living it. “Killing it” turned into almost killing me.

The people who actually loved me wanted it all to stop. The 5-7 days worth of “gym therapy” the restrictive eating that was considered healthy was actually anorexia….

The well meaning women that were trapped in their own obsession of “fitness” that were all muscle, that were “fit” were in terrible situations and turning to exercise and restricted eating for control.

We can label it whatever we want.

But the relationship we have to it, just like any other addiction is what will be the turning point.

To politely call it restrictive eating, is to really be ignoring the reality that we are using control and starvation to punish ourselves.

Pursuing extreme daily fitness with no real scientific research to how important food and exercise are, but instead pushing ourselves to the max is not a “challenge” it’s unhealthy.

We can’t control what happened in our past.

We can’t control people.

We can’t control how trauma is still hurting us.

We can’t control the future.

And by feeling helpless from all of it, does not justify trying to control the reflection in the mirror, the number on the scale.

It took my heart failing to realize that I was failing.

I had an extreme disconnect, cognitive dissonance. I justified why I was doing it. I knew that it wasn’t okay. I kept telling myself that I just needed to achieve the version of perfection that I was looking for. Even when I was thin, that I was a size small, it still wasn’t “enough”. I looked in the mirror only to find the things that I didn’t like and became even more determined to make them “better”

If I focused on my physical flaws then I didn’t deal with the wounds inside.

If I ignored my pain then it seemed like, the head game I was playing, meant that somehow being physically “healthy” would mean all of the rest would somehow sort itself out.

But it didn’t. At all.

It landed me in the back of an ambulance, into the hospital and thousands in debt.

The cost was more than I could have ever asked to pay.

I had a problem with silence and rest, of sitting still. And knowing that meant that I wouldn’t be able to outrun what I was terrified of facing. That I was trying to starve out the things that made me feel heavy. That I was trying to control all that I couldn’t.

I believed in God but I wasn’t in the head space to talk to Him because I was afraid, like the good father He is, that He would tell me the truth that I wasn’t ready to hear.

See I already felt like a failure as it was. I didn’t want anyone else to say what I was doing wrong at this point, I knew full well that I had almost killed myself trying to be what I thought I needed to be.

But it was never about being thin.

It was but it wasn’t,

It was about being acceptable.

It was about all the wounds that I had never brought healing into. It was about avoidance, fear, anxiety. It was the truth that I wasn’t ok.

I had never had the permission to say that I wasn’t ok.

My childhood consisted of being a causality of war to abuse and domestic issues. There was never the question after I had suffered a great deal of “Are you ok?” My parents had been told to “deal with it” so they forced me to as well.

So while fitness is a great idea. Being healthy is awesome. Doing it the right way really is the only way.

There is nothing to run after or chase if you can’t sit with yourself.

There is nothing to be gained from externally trying to look perfect when your insides look like a bomb went off.

It is okay to heal first.

Being “thin” isn’t the answer.

Starving isn’t the answer.

Our relationship to all of it is what we have to look at.

If we were overweight and made fun of as a kid, which I was, it hurt to be bullied. But it doesn’t mean that extreme exercise and becoming our version of perfect will ever undo those wounds of not being loved or accepted.

Truth be told, we all want to be accepted and love.

But we look for it in all the wrong places sometimes.

We wanted our parents to but they didn’t so we looked somewhere, anywhere.

And then what really was a basic need, being loved and accepted became a morbid determination to become what we were never meant to be.

For some men it is building a ridiculous amount of muscle so they will never be thought of as weak again. So that they will never be ridiculed for being “fat”. So they won’t be a target.

For some women it is to be “perfect” so no one will ever have to tear them down again for the time that they were treated as damaged goods when they were perfect the way they were.

Whatever the relationship is, whatever the reason for the obsession of “fitness” …

Sometimes the healthiest thing we can do for ourselves, is to look at what we were are chasing, why and to whom we are trying to please.

Don’t give up on yourself.

If you are wounded, there is healing.

There is hope.