I was going through the motions of life, hating the way I looked because I only wanted to be perfect. And to be clear, perfection is subjective. It’s also pretty much nonexistent.

RELATED: Tips For Cultivating a Positive Body Image for Your Female Clients

Happiness Is Not a Body Shape

Wanting to look perfect is one of the biggest thieves of joy. It trains your brain to think you’re not what you should be. Day after day, I fell into the trap, thinking I should look a certain way because then and only then would I [fill in the blank with “get a man,” “be loved,” “get a better job,” etc.]. Only when I looked that way would I win my fitness competitions and finally be happy.

Me, figuratively and literally examining my body.

I thought this way for years. I trained myself to think there were flaws in my body because I spent so much time surfing the web, looking at Photoshopped images and thinking they were real.

After years of this torment, I had enough. I knew I was doing this whole “health” thing very wrong. I had taken it so far that I no longer looked at the big picture of health, but instead, I sought out ways to obsess in an unhealthy manner. Being able to obsess gave me a distraction from all the other tiny details in life I didn’t want to think about. Before I knew it, my obsession became a deeply rooted belief in my head.

“I had taken it so far that I no longer looked at the big picture of health, but instead, I sought out ways to obsess in an unhealthy manner.”

After my second fitness show, I took a step back to examine my attitude. After four months of dieting and training, I still wasn’t happy with my body.

“Wait,” you say. “She wasn’t finally satisfied?” No, I had the body I wanted so badly and yet it didn’t lead me to ultimate happiness and satiation. It led me to severe bloating, an upset stomach, an anxiety-filled mind, and a slow metabolism. That’s where it really led me.

This was a huge wake-up call for me. I knew I couldn’t keep waiting for this happiness thing to magically happen because of the shape of my body. I had to look elsewhere.

6 Practices to Create Unconditional Happiness

With diligence and perseverance, I began six practices that helped me to create my own unconditional happiness. These practices unveiled a mental peace I had never before experienced. I no longer stressed about being perfect or meeting made-up standards. Instead, I loved my body for simply existing.

RELATED: Delivering Happiness: The True Job of a Coach

1. Say Goodbye to Social Media (for a Bit)

One of the biggest things I did for myself was reduce time spent on social media. I was basically telling myself to watch the highlight reels of other women, and that’s it. I never saw their tough times or struggles, just their perfect morning abs and perfectly portioned Tupperware dinners. This made me think negatively about my own life and body. I reduced my social media time and began to un-follow accounts that made me think any less of myself.

RELATED: Social Media and Fitness: The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly

2. Get a Pet or a Date

Either one of these helps, and I suggest doing both. Having more interactions with people in a romantic setting is good for many reasons, including your self-awareness. You get to talk about your goals and dreams while listening to the stories of others. You’ll also realize you don’t criticize others for their extra body fat or eating habits, and hopefully this will transfer over to how kind you are to your own body.

Pets help because you can no longer focus completely on yourself. You learn to give and take, and to love unconditionally.

RELATED: Developing Self-Awareness: A Messy, Ugly, Five-Step Process

3. Trade Morning Cardio for a Morning Walk

While this may seem simple, putting away the rushed cardio-filled mornings makes quite a difference in your mindset for the day. Starting your day with an alarm followed by sprints puts your body into a state of fear and anxiety. This can transfer over to how you feel about work, food, relationships, and everything else that follows in your day. Instead, start your morning off with a peaceful walk around the block that will contribute to self-awareness and wholeness.

RELATED: Walking: The Most Underrated Movement of the 21st Century

4. Give Intuitive Eating a Chance

This means eating what sounds good to your body and eating until you’re satisfied. It may not sound too complex, but when you view food as fuel, and only fuel, your intuition gets lost in the midst of all that health knowledge.

“I had stopped trusting myself to know what to eat and when to eat because I was never without a meal plan or diet coach.”

Realigning yourself with your taste buds and hunger signals is a crucial component of building self-trust. I had stopped trusting myself to know what to eat and when to eat because I was never without a meal plan or diet coach. Learning to trust my instincts was scary, but it made an incredible impact on how I view the food on my plate and, as a result, my body.

RELATED: What Are You Really Hungry For? 4 Things You Might Be Craving

5. Dress the Body You Have Now

Do you still have that swimsuit you wore when you were a size four, hoping to fit into it again? Do you have those slim pants you wore back in college hanging on a rack in your closet, thinking maybe, just maybe they’ll be on your body again someday?

If these clothes are hanging around as constant reminders, then it’s time to ditch them. Dress the body you have now, not the body you had then. Keeping clothing around that doesn’t fit you is a subconscious reminder that something “needs to change.” That kind of thinking isn’t healthy and is putting you into a state of stress and self-disrespect.

RELATED: Why Female Athletes Should Toss the Scale and Get a New Perspective

6. Respect and Honor Other Bodies, Too

How can we imagine we’ll be able to respect our bodies unless we also respect others? It’s time we collectively decide to respect every shape and size and honor every physique.

Fat-shaming, skinny-shaming, tall-shaming, short-shaming – all of it needs to end. If you’re pointing out flaw in others, then you’re simply projecting your own inner fears. When you begin to see other women and men as the beautiful people they are, you will have a much easier time loving who you are.

RELATED: Strong Is Still Strong, Skinny Is Still Skinny

Remember How a Healthy and Natural Body Feels

Though all these practices are helpful and will promote body respect, I must also implore you to start thanking your body for its ability to do all it does. We’re only human. We’re made of flesh and bones. We live and we die.

“It’s time we collectively decide to respect every shape and size and honor every physique.”

The media doesn’t present to us natural, healthy bodies as often as we like, so it’s up to us individuals to block out the nonsense and stand by what we know is true. Remember what a healthy and natural body looks and feels like, and aim for that. Don’t aim for the unrealistic or unattainable because doing so will only decrease your respect for your already amazing body, and that’s simply no way to live.

Photos 2 & 3 courtesy of Shutterstock.

The post 6 Daily Practices for Learning to Love Your Body and Your Self appeared first on Breaking Muscle.

These social media outlets allow carefully crafted over-sharing that leaves us comparing our “behind-the-scenes” with everyone else’s “highlight reel.” Couple all that with the awful “real women” memes (i.e. real women have muscle, real women have curves, real women do pull ups, etc.) that have been floating around, and no wonder we have issues! Everywhere that we look, we are being told that we are only a “real” woman if we do “x” or look like “y.”

As fitness professionals, how can we combat this? We work with clients on a daily basis, and we are the first line of defense against perpetuating unrealistic expectations for our female clients. At the same time, we are often forced to market “extreme fat loss” or “drop a dress size in 21 days” to even get clients in our door. Quite the conundrum.

To be honest, this is a difficult topic for me. Are you a sellout if you focus on fat loss just to get clients in the door or sell them your program, even if your program is extremely well balanced with many benefits that will give them exactly what they need to be successful? I’m not sure, and it’s definitely not my place to answer that for other trainers and business owners. However, I do know that first and foremost it’s important to recognize what our clients want so we can help them achieve their goals while cultivating positive body image.

Clients generally come to us with the following requests:

• “I want to lose weight.”
• “I want to tone up.”
• “I want to run my first half-marathon.”

When you get to the core of what they are looking for, the overwhelming majority of people simply want to look better and feel better. They want their clothing to fit better, they want to feel confident in themselves and their bodies, and they want to do it in a sane, manageable way.

But one thing a lot of them don’t realize is that reaching a certain body fat, size, or weight goal, won’t make them happy. They need to love themselves and appreciate all of the glorious aspects of their body right now, even if they want to make some physical changes. Those are not mutually exclusive.

So how do we do this? How can we help these people set realistic goals, achieve these goals, and then feel good about achieving them? How can we help women recognize how amazing their bodies are even if they aren’t exactly where they want to be aesthetically? I have three tips below that can help:

1. Education

Educating your clients is crucial in helping them set realistic goals and expectations for themselves and their bodies. If a woman strolls into your gym to participate in your “drop a dress size in 21 days” program, and she is incredibly fit and muscular with veins in her abs, well, it’s probably not possible (or healthy) for her to drop a size, and certainly not in 21 days. In this case, educating this woman on the possible repercussions of having extremely low body fat levels or on the extreme measures she used to achieve these body fat levels is critical. Otherwise, this woman will not be happy with the results of your program, and she will think that your methods don’t work.

On the other hand, if someone comes in to your gym and she’s been sedentary for the past ten years and she wants to participate in one of your advanced training programs, you must educate her on the importance of building a foundation, using the minimal effective dose of training to improve, and teach her that consistency is the key to long-term success. You also must educate her on taking care of herself outside of the gym (i.e. nutrition, sleep, stress management) so she can earn the right to push herself inside the gym.

Finally, it’s important to educate your clients on the difference in fat loss versus weight loss, the difference in training purely for aesthetics versus performance versus health, and how to set up their training to help them reach their end goals.

2. Emphasize Positive Goals

One of the many reasons I strongly encourage women to strength train, is because it gives them goals beyond just fat loss. It allows them to set positive goals for their training and have positive associations for going to the gym, beyond “feeling fat.” One of our core mantras at Girls Gone Strong is, “Train because you love your body, not because you hate your body.”

And it’s so true.

So often women go to the gym because they feel fat or gross, instead of going to the gym because they’re thinking, “Yay! I get to go heavier on squats today!” or “I think today is the day I’ll finally be able to do my first pull-up!” As a trainer, it’s up to you to point out the positive goals your clients should be setting for themselves, both in and out of the gym. A few of my favorite goals to help clients set are as follows:

Performance goals:

• Increasing weight or reps on an exercise
• Perfecting your exercise form
• Decreasing the time required to complete a task

Life goals:

• Changing the water jug at work
• Carrying multiple heavy bags of pet food
• Move furniture without assistance

Health goals:

• Reducing your blood pressure
• Improving your fasting glucose levels
• Decreasing your dosage or usage of certain medications (under doctor supervision, of course)

Movement goals:

• Making it to the gym three days per week
• Walking on your lunch break for twenty minutes twice a week
• Taking ten diaphragmatic breaths first thing in the morning and at night before bed

Feel-good goals:

• Going to bed at a consistent time every night
• Cultivating a more positive attitude throughout the day
• Decreasing your cravings for junk food

Of course these goals should be goals that your clients actually want to achieve, and not set just for the sake of setting them. Have them choose one or two goals they would like to achieve, and show them how working with you can help them get there.

3. Facilitate Healthy Competition Amongst Members

A little healthy competition is a fantastic thing to get people excited about training and motivate them to be consistent. However, instead of weight loss goals, which can lead to dangerous and unhealthy behavior, figure out action- or performance-based competitions.

A few good examples are as follows:

1. Create a “leaderboard” at your gym keeping track of members and how they rank in certain categories. A few ideas are deadlift-to-bodyweight ratio, number of strict pull ups performed, or number of repetitions of barbell back squat performed using your bodyweight as the external load.

2. Have a club that clients can join once they’ve achieved a certain feat, like the, “twenty perfect push ups club,” or the, “1.5 bodyweight squat club.” You can have multiple clubs so that clients with different strengths will still have a chance to achieve a particular feat. Once they achieve it, their names can go on a plaque, they can get a t-shirt, or you can recognize new achievers with a feature in your email newsletter. This serves two purposes: it highlights the client’s achievements while simultaneously making you look good for getting your clients results.

3. Have a “consistency contest” where clients who don’t miss a single training session within a given time period, say eight to twelve weeks, are all entered into a contest to win a prize. The prize could be fifty dollars cash, a massage, a foam roller and t-shirt combo, or whatever you think will encourage clients to participate. You can do the same with creating good habits at home. Each month give clients a form where they can track things like eating protein with every meal, getting a minimum of seven hours of sleep, or drinking enough water for the day. At the end of the month, every client who has achieved a certain level of consistency, say 90-95%, is entered in to win a prize.

Teaching clients to focus on habits that will create their desired outcomes (looking better and feeling better) is much more motivating for most people than simply focusing on the outcome itself. Like I said above, you are the first line of defense in helping women achieve a healthy and realistic body image as they move towards their health and physique goals. Hopefully the tips above will help you help them!

Oh, and if you’re so inclined, you can have your clients participate in my 28 Day Love Your Body Challenge. It’s free, self-guided, and only takes ten minutes a day. Have them start with this blog post and then this blog post if they want to participate.

Photos 1,3, and 4 courtesy of Shutterstock.

The post Tips For Cultivating a Positive Body Image for Your Female Clients appeared first on Breaking Muscle.

It was summertime and we both had shorts on. This was in 1985 and shorts were short then. I looked down at our legs. I looked at hers, to the right of me. Even sitting, they were long and lean. I looked down at my own as they spread across the prickling fabric, as they expanded while at rest.

I pushed the balls of my feet into the floorboard of the car. It helped a little. Then I pressed all the way up onto my toes and flexed my calves. Magically, my thighs were thinner. They rose up off the seat enough to reduce their dreaded expansion. I looked over to Lisa’s thighs again. Then back at mine. They still weren’t good, but they were better than before.

From then on I never set my heels down in the car again.

When I Was Eight, I Wanted a Barbie Doll

When I was about to turn eight years old, I asked for a Barbie doll for my birthday. My father asked me what else I wanted. I wanted a Barbie, I said.

“Not anything else?” he asked again.

“No, I want a Barbie doll,” I said. All the cool girls had Barbie dolls and they were sick of loaning me even their less-coveted dolls at recess time. Why didn’t I have a Barbie, they always wanted to know. And so, I wanted a Barbie doll to make things right in the world.

For some reason my father didn’t like Barbies. He maybe even hated them. He didn’t deem it right that my stubby little dark-haired, dark-eyed self should worship this buxom blonde inhuman creation. And so while he did grant me my one-and-only birthday wish, he did also insert his own heart into the matter.

On my birthday my mother handed me the all-too-familiarly-shaped package. I knew it was she who I’d fawned over in the store. It had tortured me for weeks waiting to hold that oblong box in my hands. I had such faith that my parents would come through. I ripped through the packaging and there she was…

Rosa.

What?

My father couldn’t lower himself to buy me a real Barbie. Instead he found the only one that looked even a little like me. She had olive skin, dark hair, and dark eyes. Rosa, Barbie’s Hispanic friend. My father had to explain to me what Hispanic meant.

I brought her to school and took her out at recess.

“What’s that?” my friends asked.

“My Barbie,” I replied, and they looked at me with big, dubious, Barbie-like eyes.

Since I’ve Been 39, I’ve Been Unsettlingly Content, or Contently Unsettled

I’ve struggled a bit of late, deciding if I’m lazy or if I’m content. It’s a fine line.

I don’t wish I was blonde anymore, but I do wish I were less gray. I work out a lot less than I used to. My life is fuller, and perhaps one would argue healthier. And yet I sometimes still daydream about the never-achieved deadlift record, the never-had muscle-up, and even the never-fought muay Thai fight.

Is it just that I’m too lazy to have the body I used to have, or maybe never had, but now in retrospect thought I had as it’s better than today’s? Or am I content finally that my body is my body and it’s beautiful no matter what size and shape. This is what I tell myself when I eat an extra muffin.

But that’s an outright lie – this whole loving-myself-just-as-I-am business. I can’t even go on with a straight face from there. Could you?

But then I think I like my nose the way it is. I think I like the choice I made to stop getting punched in the face. I wasn’t a coward; I was being smart. I wasn’t lazy; I was choosing a bigger, more whole healthiness that I’d never had before. I was choosing to do less because it hurt less, because I got to sleep a little more, expect a little less, enjoy a little more. And it’s not that I was choosing those things, it’s that I am choosing those things even still.

But is that okay? Is that contentment? Or is it an excuse to sleep in.

Because all along it’s as if the less I care, the happier I get, and that’s where things keep getting muddled. Back then I cared an awful lot about an awful lot of things. But when I stopped caring about how I looked and focused instead on how much weight I could lift, it felt good.

Until the day it didn’t. Until the day I realized I’d replaced expectations with expectations. That demanding I lift a certain amount was no different than demanding I weigh a certain amount. That my brain would always find a parameter that my body couldn’t fit, and thus perhaps parameters of any sort were just not a good thing, and perhaps goals of any sort were just a dangerous business.

If it wasn’t the size of my pants, it was the size of my overhead squat, and really, they’re both equally damn silly in the end.

And yet, there’s who I am – the ever-seeking perfectionist, the optimistic achiever, the dreamer, the doer, the industrious enthusiast. Would she really be carrying around an extra five pounds? Would she really concede to her deadlift going down?

Maybe if it meant her elbow hurt less. Maybe if it meant she could put her socks on in something less than a ten-minute-long debacle that sent the cat under the bed and made her hope her husband wasn’t going to walk in the room anytime soon. Maybe if the floor would just stop getting further away.

Today, I Am Enough

Today as I sit in my dining room, sipping my coffee with heavy cream I am overwhelmed by one thought:

I love myself.

Okay, two thoughts, because I’m also glad I’m not her. I’m terribly glad I was her, but I’m even more terribly grateful that I am me, now, today. She’s like a distant relative who was a bit like me, but isn’t me, but I knew her once before.

I’m less muscular than I was.

I’m thinner than I was.

I’m older than I was.

I’m wiser than I was.

I was unfit, then fit, then less fit again, yet fitter still than most.

I was shallow, then enlightened, and yet shallow still sometimes again.

And by this I mean I have been insecure, independent, and influenced all at once.

I was a dancer, a nerd, or a jock.

I was an athlete, and then I was old(er).

(Sometimes the incredible importance and simple message of the -er escapes me.)

And then, somehow through it all I was me. Or, I became me.

And still today when I sit in the front seat of my car, I look down. I press my toes into the floor and lift my thighs. But instead of condemning myself – my little eight-year-old, sixty-pound self who could never have ever actually had thick thighs– instead of condemning her, I smile and shake my head. I love her, and I’ve come to love me.

Photos courtesy of Shutterstock.

The post Since I Was Nine, I’ve Hated My Thighs appeared first on Breaking Muscle.

Open any magazine and you will see what we all preach against. Airbrushed, too-thin models, who represent the so-called ideal that is in reality, mainly because of the Photoshopping techniques, unattainable. These are women who starve themselves and yet despite having nearly zero fat not a hint of an abdominal muscle can be seen.

We don’t do skinny. We’re CrossFit. We post our pictures to Facebook of the side-by-side butt-shots – one muscular, rounded well-developed set of glutes, the other an emaciated, flat derrière with the words “Women! Take Notice! Squats – No Squats!”

We tell our girls that strong has replaced skinny as the ideal, and that strength and performance trump aesthetics every time. We post our My Butt Is Big motivational posters, celebrating the curves, the muscles, and the very antithesis of skinny.

Why then, is there a subculture of skinny-hawking bikini-body programming starting to creep up at CrossFit boxes around the country? I happened upon a box’s website the other day and found this:

2013 BIKINI CHALLENGE:

Spring is here and summer is right around the corner. Though our training ideology has always been to train for function and allow form to follow, let’s be honest – We’re all still motivated by the way we look with our clothes off.

Introducing our second annual CrossFit Bikini Challenge.

CrossFit. Bikini. Challenge. You read that right. The instructions directed interested parties to first pony up the entry fee and a before photo, and then get ready for eight week’s worth of workouts designed to leave them in beach-ready shape.

Don’t get me wrong, I am well aware that every person trains for his or her own reasons, and there is no question many people who walk through the front door do so with the wish to end up with a rockin’ body. Our egos and collective self-esteem are, after all, only human. Of course we want to look good, feel good, have our clothes fit us well, and so on. But the CrossFit generation, especially the box owners, the ones with the voice, should be above all of that. We shouldn’t be selling aesthetic – we should be selling health.

The side effect of CrossFit is that you will look better. The primary goal has always been, and should remain, that you need to be fit for life. Greg Glassman drew the analogy himself in the early days of CrossFit when he talked about an old woman picking up a bag of groceries – a deadlift – and this has been reinforced through the years, that CrossFit keeps you vital into your golden years, keeps you out of a nursing home, keeps firefighters charging into the fire, Rangers charging into battle, and police charging into a riot zone, all while at the peak of our personal fitness.

After all, “We don’t do abs. We do midline stabilization.”

But a bikini challenge? What this does, in my humble opinion, is simply reinforce the Photoshop aesthetic-as-ideal, and asserts that fitness is not about health, but about how good you can look in a swimsuit.

Most boxes have a melting pot of body types, from athletic to overweight, from young to masters. All body types are represented, and most likely include women who may be dealing with body issues enough as it is. One would think that women have finally landed in a CrossFit box because of our historical trumpeting of function over fad, strong over skinny, and above all, healthy, in both mind and body.

How then does a “CrossFit Bikini Challenge” serve those women?

It’s a slippery slope, to be sure. As affiliates proliferate and competition among boxes becomes fiercer, boxes are looking for ways to attract more members. New programs that serve a wider variety of clientele are, frankly, a good idea.

At my gym, we offer Olympic and strongman training as supplemental tracks along with traditional CrossFit programming, and many boxes now offer a CrossFit Games track for those wishing to excel beyond everyday fitness and compete. In addition, things like Krav Maga, MMA, and the like are offered at many gyms. Between individualized programming and nutritional counseling, a person can almost design a program to meet his or her own needs.

BUT: (and it’s a very big but, pun most definitely intended) The slope gets the iciest when we begin to appeal to the masses through programs seeking not to broaden their fitness, but to appeal to their dollars. Yeah, I know those may be fighting words. But read on.

CrossFit boxes are a business. As a business, they need to turn a profit in order to remain a business. Most CrossFit boxes, I would posit, have a business model that starts with offering excellence, and from there, the money flows. But, there are those whose business model starts with making money.

Case in point: the first box I worked for had a strong AdvoCare presence. A huge AdvoCare banner hung right by the front door and a big product display greeted people when they walked in the door, and the products were hawked rather aggressively.

I was always curious how after an on-ramp class graduated nearly every member of that class was suddenly doing the AdvoCare 24-day challenge. I soon became convinced the nutrition portion of this gym’s on-ramp curriculum was simply a ploy to push the products. When I would try to start a conversation with many of these new members about paleo, they would respond, “That’s okay, I am doing that AdvoCare 24 day thing. I’ll probably start paleo after that.”

It seemed instead of teaching people how to eat food, the box owners were simply plying these people with supplements. They didn’t give two shits about teaching their clients to eat right. They cared about growing the AdvoCare pyramid.

Enter “SkinnyFit”

Now, we see one particular program starting to gain a foothold: classes with the word “skinny” attached. I know of at least two boxes in the Midwest that offer “SkinnyFit” classes, and another that offers “CrossFit Skinny.” It’s described as “CrossFit without the barbell.” Another box describes itthis way, “We created a fat blasting program designed to sculpt lean muscle while constantly burning calories long after you leave the class!”

Oh, I didn’t know that fat blasting and burning calories were among the cornerstones of the CrossFit ideology. This is sounding suspiciously like the Tracy Anderson Method.

Many more are beginning to offer programs that fall into the bootcamp mold, or have names like “CrossFit Core.” I follow a lot of boxes of Facebook and it seems every week there is a new CrossFit alternative being offered – a high cardio, metcon heavy, barbell-free 9:30 a.m. class, targeting the bootcamp crowd.

Trust me – I get this. I understand there is a demographic who simply doesn’t want to go full-CrossFit. Better to have them in our boxes where we can at least help them, rather than have them slogging away in a globo gym somewhere on a treadmill.

Yes, a need is being served here, a vital fitness service that is much better than the alternative. It’s just the way it’s being packaged that I am concerned about. Bootcamp all day under the banner of getting fit, and I am your biggest ally. Bootcamp under the banner of getting skinny, and now we’re in dangerous water.

Perhaps we’re on the precipice of a movement that is going to take off – the CrossFit-alternative bootcamp offerings. How the community at large decides to market those offerings will determine whether we remain true to the core ideals of CrossFit – constantly varied functional movements done at high intensity – or whether we’re going to sell a fat-blasting, calorie-burning swimsuit package.

But skinny? For the love of all humanity, avoid that word at all costs. Skinny girls are not strong. Skinny may be a genetic inheritance for a small minority of people who can’t gain muscle no matter how they try, but it should never be the goal.

My 23-year-old daughter, Chelsea, (pictured) just cleaned and jerked #195, then cleaned #200. TWO HUNDRED POUNDS. The look of elation on her face in the photo reveals a lot. She is strong, confident, and happy. She has zero interest in being skinny or posing for before and after pictures in a bikini. She can clean, snatch, muscle-up, chest-to-bar, deadlift, squat heavy, and is one of the strongest, if not the strongest, females at Cincinnati Strength and Conditioning.

And she is fit. Very fit. If “strong is the new skinny,” then stop pushing the old skinny.

Photos 2&3 courtesy of CrossFit LA.

The post SkinnyFit: CrossFit’s Other Dirty Little Secret appeared first on Breaking Muscle.

When I first heard the saying “strong is the new skinny” I loved it, but since then, I’ve kind of grown to hate it. Let me explain.

Strong is strong. According to the Oxford dictionary, strong is “having the power to move heavy weights or perform other physically demanding tasks.” It describes a physical ability. Incidentally, it’s also a word I like to use interchangeably with awesome, but that’s another story altogether.

Skinny is skinny. According to the Oxford dictionary, skinny is “unattractively thin,” which is at odds with the Urban Dictionary definition of “something a lot of girls want to be. Otherwise known as perfection.” Either way, I think we can agree that skinny is used to describe a body composition or aesthetics, not that body’s physical abilities.

When I first heard the saying “strong is the new skinny,” I was pretty excited. I was thrilled that we were finally going to start celebrating bodies, and particularly women’s bodies, for what they could do rather than how they matched up against whatever ideal they were supposed to look like. Appreciating physical feats of strength rather than purely aesthetics seemed like such a healthy, and long overdue, approach. I had visions of women admiring one another for how many chin-ups they could do, or how much they could squat, rather than what size jeans they could squeeze their skinny-fat butt into (oops…did I say that?!). And perhaps finally the capabilities of our bodies would rein supreme, and we’d all start exercising, resting, and fuelling appropriately to support our amazing bodies.

But how wrong I was

Someone in the Facebook marketing department (I figure that’s where all these motivational posters originate) got things a little confused and perhaps read it to be “muscles are the new skinny,” because they started attaching the slogan to a bunch of photos of fitness models who were probably too dehydrated and calorie deprived to lift much more than their own body weight at the time the photos were taken. Now, I’m not saying that some of the women that this slogan has been used to describe are not incredible athletes, possessing both determination and amazing bodies, nor am I saying they are not strong. But, I’ve never come across a photo of four-time world Strongwoman winner Aneta Florczyk (pictured below) or powerlifting world record holder Becca Swanson with the slogan superimposed, so what gives?

Instead of attaching the slogan to pictures of women accomplishing genuinely impressive feats of strength, most of the time the slogan is attached to a model with little body fat and showing more muscle than your average woman, as a way to represent strength. But in doing so we’ve simply replaced one aesthetic ideal of “skinny” with another of “lean and muscular,” and come up with a new reason to obsess over instead of celebrate our bodies.

So while I’m definitely happy that we’ve shifted the focus away from everyone trying to be skinny, because that usually translates to women trying to survive on as little food as possible and spending hours doing cardio when they could be using their body for fun stuff like practicing handstands or dancing. I’m less than impressed that we’ve simply replaced skinny with another ideal. I think we missed the point!

Skinny is okay. Some women naturally have low body fat and little muscle mass (while doing little cardio, eating plenty, doing handstands, and dancing to their heart’s content). Some of these women are also pretty amazing athletes.

Chubby is okay. Just because someone doesn’t have a rippling six-pack doesn’t make her unhealthy or unfit. Some women feel and perform better with a little bit of extra fat on their bodies. Some of these women are also pretty amazing athletes.

Muscular is okay, too. Some women put on muscle easily and naturally have low body fat. It doesn’t make them manly, or fitness fanatics, or any better or worse than the skinny girl on her right who can run laps around her on the track or the chubby girl who can back squat the both of them. No surprise here, but some of the muscular women are pretty amazing athletes, too.

And while I personally use the word strong interchangeably with “awesome,” I also think flexibility, endurance, and balance are also pretty cool too (although I was endowed with a little less of these of these variants of awesome, so I’m a little biased towards strength) – and this is what we should all be celebrating! Of course our body composition is important, both from an aesthetic and performance perspective. We all want to look as amazing and healthy as we feel, but “amazing and healthy” comes in many shapes and sizes.

My wish for everyone is that we focus on movement and celebrating the amazing capabilities of our bodies, and that we get out there and lift, run, jump, swim, handstand, dance, and enjoy. Strong is still strong, and skinny is still skinny.

Aneta Florczyk photo by Artur Andrzej (Own work) [CC-BY-SA-3.0 or GFDL], via Wikimedia Commons.

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Growing up, I was an actor and not an athlete. In high school, I would do my theatrical productions and my best friends – Brandon, an all-state basketball player, and Brent, a stand out wide receiver – would come to my shows to cheer me on. While I was happy for the support of my friends, I couldn’t help but be a little envious of their athleticism and the bodies that went along with it. I enjoyed working on my craft as an actor and my slight frame wasn’t a hindrance, still I couldn’t help notice all the attention those athletes seemed to garner.

As for me, the peak of my athletic prowess probably came in sixth grade when I was a decent little league baseball player. Not decent enough to make Babe Ruth Baseball in seventh grade, mind you, but I was a serviceable second baseman. My talents were in entertaining and artistry. Rather than having a tall or muscular body the way athletes tended to have, I was the skinny guy. Skinny is defined as follows by Mirriam-Webster: lacking sufficient flesh: very thin: emaciated. I was so thin that you could see my ribs with my shirt off. It seemed I was destined to be skinny, until I met one of my first loves – fitness.

During my sophomore year in college I had a roommate who was a weight room junkie. I looked upon this guy not so with much envy as curiosity. He was a surfer, not necessarily an athlete, but he was built like a brick and he sure had the body of a Joe athlete. Still, I couldn’t figure out for the life of me why he would spend so much time in the weight room when there was all of that college fun to be had. That was until he challenged me to try it before judging it. Now, one thing I love is a challenge, so I went along with him to check it out. That decision to go along with him to the weight room changed my life.

I absolutely loved it in the weight room and everything that went along with it, pure and simple. I fell in love with many aspects of fitness but one aspect stood out above all of the others – a sense of control. That is, I felt I had the control to get the body I had always wanted. I wasn’t stuck with being a skinny guy after all. I might not have been born an all-state basketball player or with the speed of a sprinter and hands of a wide receiver, but one thing I was born with was stubborn willpower, and plenty of it. I realized that if I wanted to be strong and get big muscles, no one could stop me but me.

So my life-long relationship and sometimes obsession with fitness began in college, and to me, I felt like I had rounded a corner forever. By the time I turned 25, I went from being a scrawny 135-pound weakling to a bulky 172-pounder who could bench 275lbs. I filled out my shirts like a linebacker (or maybe at least a cornerback) and I never saw a protein shake I didn’t like. It was all good, and it seemed I was to be one of those athletes after all – or at least I would look like one.

Then, I tore my rotator cuff. Turns out all that bulk on my frame didn’t allow for my shoulder to move in its natural range of motion. The problem with me getting beefy and bulking up is that I am not naturally a beefy or bulky guy. I am just not made that way and my body gave me the message the hard way. After my injury, I was out for the better part of a year and my bulk diminished back down to my more natural state.

I have a theory that we are all naturally a certain type of dog breed. Our job is to be true to our breed and be our best version of that breed – to have our best body rather than coveting someone else’s or a body that isn’t made like ours. There are a lot of great dog breeds out there. Some are big and strong, while others are tenacious, fast, and small. In my experience, both personally and as a trainer, aspiring and trying to be a different breed than we are is a recipe for disaster. It’s also a good way to tear your rotator cuff! Furthermore, it puts our mental focus on the wrong things – like wishing and wanting to be something we’re not (like being a star athlete when we aren’t one or coveting a body – we cannot naturally sustain). Longing and wishing for such things makes for an unhappy disposition, whereas acceptance and being our best within that accepted place provides a sense of peace and contentment.

So, it turns out I am a Jack Russell terrier and a pretty scrappy one. I am stubborn, feisty, lean, and wiry. I am a welterweight boxer, and for me that’s a good thing. In the novel The Power Of One, the lead character is especially proud that he is a welterweight boxer, exclaiming it to be the best weight class, having the perfect blend of speed and power. I kind of feel that way for me. I’m not as fast as the lightweight guys and I don’t pack as much power in my punch as the heavyweight guys. However, I too am proud to be a welter, because that is the way I was made.

I’ve come to relish and accept my slight frame and yet I never stop trying to be the best with what I’ve got. As a trainer and coach, I try to help others see the same joy in the process of self-discovery and growth. Like many things in life, the key in how we see ourselves (and our bodies) is found in a sense of balance – accepting the hand we were dealt and yet never stopping from striving to be the best with what we’ve got.

The post The Scrawny Male: The Journey of an Ectomorph appeared first on Breaking Muscle.

My co-worker Michael came into my office and said, “You’re going to want to put on your jacket for this one.” It was a sunny afternoon in Los Angeles, and as one of the head coaches at CrossFit LA, it was part of my job to meet with prospective students and conduct an introductory session. Despite the fact that it was warm out, Michael felt I ought to wear my jacket.

Michael suggested my jacket because he figured I would scare off the prospect otherwise. You see, as it turns out, the state of your womanhood is directly related to the size of your biceps. At least that’s what I’ve discovered. Or rather, I’ve discovered that’s what other people decide when they meet me. And I know I’m not the only one dealing with this issue. In fact, it’s only called an “issue” because women at all locations on the masculine-feminine spectrum are struggling to identify themselves and muscle size seems to be one criterion.

Michael had met my prospective female client at the front door and after a brief conversation surmised that she was not interested in “bulking up.” I, on the other hand, was blessed with a genetic predisposition for packing on muscle and sometimes inadvertently frightening female prospects. So, my general approach was to wear my jacket, get to know the person, and if it seemed appropriate I would remove layers of clothing later in the intro session – like when I was demonstrating proper pull up form for the assessment workout.

Some women were inspired by seeing me do a pull up. They really wanted something like that for themselves and it seemed unfathomable. “I love your arms,” they would say. “They’re so toned.” Other times I would keep my jacket on through the whole intro, stifling as it might be. I could tell when a particular woman wanted to be fit and needed healthy influences in her life, but maybe wouldn’t understand that no matter what she did her genetics wouldn’t allow her to look like me.

Some women just have this fear of “bulking up.” A fear of looking like a man. A fear that growing muscles will slide them down to the wrong end of the masculine-feminine spectrum. And no matter how cute I looked in my lululemon gear, if I wore make-up and a ponytail, too, my bulbous biceps always led these women to believe I was somehow less female and they backed away from me.

This particular day I ended up taking the jacket off on purpose. After talking with the visiting woman about her goals I realized that our gym just wasn’t a good fit for her. She wanted to do cardio and Pilates. She was curious about weight lifting, but it wasn’t for her. Her friend told her to check out CrossFit, and I think she had scheduled an intro out of obligation. Suspecting it was also possible the woman had shown up because of ego, because she didn’t want her friend to outdo her or think she wasn’t good enough for CrossFit, I didn’t want to straight out tell her that she shouldn’t join our gym. I feared she might join out of spite, which would be no good for either of us. So, I decided to let her come to the obvious conclusion on her own.

“It’s hot in here,” I said, and took off my jacket.

And then she actually said it out loud, which I have to say I respected. “No offense,” she said, “but I don’t want to look like you.” And in her mind all women who did CrossFit ended up looking like me. Muscly. Manly. “I get it,” I replied. “It’s not for everyone.” And I let her believe what she believed so she could move on, guilt free, and find the right place to fit her mind and her goals.

Were I more stuck on myself and less interested in her finding the right home, I might have said, “No offense, but you couldn’t look like me if you wanted to.” And I wouldn’t have said it out of ego, but based on the truth that I’d look like I look no matter what gym I belonged to. It’s how I am. Like many other men and women, I come from a long line of strong, blocky people. Only it’s cool if you’re a man, not so much if you’re a woman. Truth is, I couldn’t be waifish if I tried (and in my younger years I did indeed try). Just as this woman I met that day could never really be bulky, but the fear of manliness kept her from ever dipping her toes in that water, the murky water of lifting weights.

And that’s why I wore my jacket. My passion was to share the confidence and freedom that strength training brought to me – the love for my body and what it could do that grew in me as my muscles grew. I knew I wasn’t alone in this struggle with my body, and I knew other women could benefit, mentally and physically, from lifting up heavy stuff. The last thing I ever wanted was to frighten a woman – of any size of body type – away from her possibilities and potential simply because I have short limbs and maybe more testosterone than the average girl. So I continued to make that strategic choice, to wear the jacket or not to wear the jacket, to inspire with demonstrations or to carefully lead to the edge of the stream.

Photo 1 courtesy of CrossFit LA.

Photo 2 courtesy of Karen Leah Photography.

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I stepped on the scale and waited for the fancy digital numbers to pop up.

“103”

It was the summer of 1987. I was twelve, we had just moved to a new town, and I was about to start eighth grade. I was babysitting for a new neighbor and they had a scale in their bathroom. We never had a scale at home. The only time I weighed myself was when the teachers weighed us each quarter in school, and then we all ran out to the playground after to compare numbers and brag about who weighed the least.

I stepped on the scale and waited for the fancy digital numbers to pop up.

“103”

I was crushed. It was the first time I’d ever weighed over a hundred pounds. That was it. I was fat, ugly, and I’d never be considered cool at my new school. There was no way the popular girls weighed over a hundred pounds. No way.

Recently I was working out at the gym with my fiancé and a friend of ours. We were watching my fiancé do some warm-up glute bridges and he was using 135lbs. My friend said, “You should just sit on him.” I looked at the bar and said, “Well, it’s almost about right.” He said, “135? Really?” And I replied, “Well, 144 as of this morning.”

“Nice!” he replied and put up his hand to high-five me.

I’ve never had someone high-five me for weighing over 140lbs before. I just had to smile. To me this was a validating moment. A moment that confirmed I’m hanging out with the right people. People who think it’s awesome to weigh more, because weighing more means having more muscle.

“You wouldn’t ever guess it,” he continued. “It’s all in the legs. Yeah!”

So how did I get from being horrified at weighing 103 to being unafraid to tell other people I weigh 144? Those 41lbs – and 26 years – have not been an easy or a short journey, but I have athletics to thank for the transformation.

As an adolescent I thought I had inherited, and was therefore cursed with, my family’s thunder thighs. Now as an adult, and an athlete, I think, “You wish you had these quads, bitch.” (Okay, maybe not quite like that. Not quite. (Maybe a little.) And that’s a non-gender specific “bitch,” by the way.)

But one of the biggest things about this transformation, for me and the people around me – both clients and friends – is not so much that working out makes you confident or that training changes your body – it’s that people don’t even know what 135lbs looks like anyway.

Since I first got heavily involved in martial arts and CrossFit, any time my weight has come up in conversation, which of course it does in competitive sports, no one has ever believed me. People consistently think I weigh about 10lbs less than I actually do.

“I’m really dense,” I tell them.

And I am, ‘cause I’m mostly muscle. And all the little charts you’ve ever seen your whole life and all the junk you’ve ever read in a magazine don’t give a crap about muscle. The chart in your doctor’s office doesn’t care what you can clean and jerk.

The BMI calculator doesn’t care how many kettlebell snatches you can do in ten minutes. The women’s mag monthly diatribe about finding your ideal weight doesn’t care how quickly you can row a 2K.

This is a picture of me in 2011 when I rowed the fastest 2K of my life. I weighed 133lbs that morning. I spent weeks cutting weight from 142 down to 133 so I could compete in the lighter weight class.

It was a challenging experience and one that I shared with my students at CrossFit LA. I actually cried over the thought of ice cream at one point, I trained with a genuine focus, and I saw on my own body for the first time why quads are called quads.

I got second in that damn competition and made myself so proud. But better yet – I had a student come to me and tell me I’d changed her perspective, because when she realized what I weighed she realized the numbers didn’t mean what she thought they did.

Hallelujah.

This was me at around 134lbs during my muay Thai and Brazilian jiu jitsu hey-day. To be authentic, this was pre-breast augmentation. So adjusted for boob inflation, I’d weigh about 136lbs in this shape today.

This was me at the 2009 CrossFit Games. I weighed 143lbs in this photo. And by the way, I’m 5’5” – clearly I was a good twenty pounds overweight, right? Does that look like what you think 143lbs looks like?

And this was me at the 2010 CrossFit Games SoCal Regionals. Complete with cellulite even, and weighing around 144lbs.

So, what does 144 look like?

What does 125 look like?

What does 185 look like?

Do you actually know? And does it even matter?

Photos courtesy of CrossFit Impulse.

The post 144lbs: Why Female Athletes Should Toss the Scale and Get a New Perspective appeared first on Breaking Muscle.

The issue begins when people set their sights on achieving a preconceived notion of perfection that usually equates to being super lean and having zero cellulite, eight-visible abs, and a gap between their thighs. Let’s be honest – how often have you said to yourself, “I hate my *insert body part here*” or “I want to get rid of the fat on my *insert small part of body here*?” It never ceases to amaze me how many women (and men) harbor so much hatred for their bodies.

With the media constantly bombarding us with images of genetic mutants who appear perfect, it is no surprise we are seeing more and more of this obsession with the perfect physique. And it is not just Hollywood perpetuating this. We now see this within the fitness community too, with rock-solid CrossFit bodies being featured everywhere. As Tina Fey so eloquently put in her book Bossypants: “Now every girl is expected to have: Caucasian blue eyes, full Spanish lips, a classic button nose, hairless Asian skin with a California tan, a Jamaican dance hall ass, long Swedish legs, small Japanese feet, the abs of a lesbian gym owner, the hips of a nine-year-old boy, the arms of Michelle Obama and doll tits.” Our ideals have become out of control.

People assume if you have the perfect diet, training program, get eight or nine hours of sleep every night, and have zero stress (lucky you!), that you will automatically be able to achieve the body worthy of a “fitspiration” ad. I am sorry to tell you this is not everyone’s destiny and these unrealistic expectations are likely holding you back from being the best and healthiest version of yourself.

Holding onto unrealistic body composition goals may actually be hindering your progress because they are a stressor on your body and can disrupt levels of cortisol, the stress hormone, which can wreak havoc on your health. This can manifest into various behaviors such as micromanaging your food and supplement intake (“maybe I just need to eat more kelp?”), becoming guilt-ridden if you miss a workout, and being obsessed with measures such as body fat percentage and weight. These habits put a mental strain on your body and leave you in a stressed and saddened state. They can also push you towards disordered habits such as overtraining and under eating, further adding stress to the body. In the end, you are doing more damage than good. Accepting yourself by letting go of unrealistic expectations and preconceived notions about what your ‘ideal’ body should be are often the missing link to achieving optimal health – and sanity.

Women especially need to realize there are many factors that come into play when we talk about body composition. Of course things like diet, exercise, sleep, and stress management play an important role, and there are people who naturally achieve a ‘perfect’ physique by optimizing these factors. But, this is only in a small percentage of the population. Things you cannot control like genetics, lifestyle history, and age will also dictate what your best body will look like. You may never be able to get your body fat below a certain level because this is the way you were meant to be. We are all built to look different – we are not Labrador Retrievers meant to look identical to one another. We are supposed to be unique and this is what makes us beautiful. Lastly, healthy women are meant to carry some additional body fat because we are programmed to be fertile and in order to be fertile, we need some additional fat mass, especially in the buttocks and hip area – which is sexy!

This is not to say you cannot change your body composition. Rather, you need to set realistic expectations for yourself and what your body is capable of within the structure of a healthy lifestyle. Rather than trying to fit into a cookie-cutter appearance, start working towards being the healthiest version of yourself.

Here are some ways to free yourself of this epidemic and start living your life with acceptance and compassion:

• Ditch any goal that includes a number (weight, dress size, body fat – it’s a good idea to destroy your scale), looking a certain way, or improving a certain body part. Rather, set goals around your performance, being consistent with your eating habits, getting sleep, and enjoying life. If you are working towards these goals, your body will naturally fall into its healthiest appearance.
• Make love to yourself. Spend five minutes every day looking at yourself in the mirror and telling yourself you are beautiful. If you have a body part you really dislike, start telling yourself how gorgeous it is (for example, “My thighs are slammin’”). Research has shown positive affirmations can reprogram your thought processes.
• Keep a gratitude journal. Often when you take the time to appreciate what you have in your life, you are less likely to pour the hatorade on yourself.
• Write down your negative thoughts, analyze them, and put a positive spin on them. Often when you see your thoughts on paper, you realize how inconsequential they are and are able to turn them into something positive.
• Loosen up! If you miss the gym one day or eat some cake, acknowledge that it is okay and likely a healthy disruption in your routine.
• In the social media world, un-follow anyone who posts ‘fitspiration’ pictures. Also anyone posting photos of their abs, the number of calories they ate that day, anyone who uses hashtag #lean and people who post pictures of their scale.

Now. Go. Work it! Own the body you have and rock it like the gift it is meant to be. Buy clothes that make you feel sexy and don’t stress about what size they are. Let’s break free of this epidemic and start living a life with complete acceptance for our unique selves.

Photos courtesy of Shutterstock.

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I’m older now, and more informed. I know to flip off mainstream ideals when it comes to women’s shapes and sizes. More importantly, I stopped letting the scale dictate my self worth and for a very long time that meant not stepping on it at all. For the last couple years, as I’ve allowed myself to be and think like an athlete again, I’ve come to realize that tools to measure my fitness progress are in fact useful if only to mark where I am at a particular time. I also know to use a wide range of techniques to track progress – the scale being the least informative. Even though I’m as healthy mentally as I’ve ever been about my body, I still need to tread lightly on how I let any measurement define me.

Last week, I took a hydrostatic body fat test, which, for now, is considered the gold standard for comparing one’s body fat to lean muscle mass. This was my third hydrostatic test in two and a half years. I like this type of measurement because even if the scale is not moving, I can clearly see my lean muscle mass climbing as my body fat lowers. The second time I took the test, one year after starting CrossFit, I had only lost a pound according to the scale, but I’d lost six pounds of fat and gained five pounds of muscle. I was ecstatic to see that statistic, though many years ago I would have beat myself up for only losing a pound after a year of rigorous exercise no matter how I felt or how my clothes fit.

This last test, I measured at 16.2% body fat, down over nine total percentage points in two and a half years. I was stoked over this impressive improvement, but it was hard to not get caught up in the number for a second. I love the changes, but I can’t hang my hat on one component of my fitness or it will turn as toxic as the scale number used to be. For a nanosecond, I felt a little panicked. Would I be able to keep the number low? Should it be lower? Before the test, I was happy training regularly and eating cleanly without feeling too restricted, but as soon as a number was attached to the progress, I felt a twinge of pressure. I sometimes feel the same when I hit a personal best in weight lifting. Will I be able to lift that much again? When will I be able to improve that? When should I? Breaking this old way of thinking sometimes takes as much practice as the training itself, but the ability to keep joy in the forefront is as much part of my fitness as anything else.

Two days ago, during a teen CrossFit class that I coach, I conducted a goal setting session with students after the workout. I only had two girls in class, which provided an honest atmosphere for dialogue where I learned how important the number on the scale was already for these girls. They heard it from their families, too, about their weight and how they should look – that they should be thinner, that they shouldn’t be too bulky or muscular. Their only measurement of progress had to do with looks and weight. And my heart broke. I knew I had an opportunity to help stop the perpetuation of this way of thinking and I gave them a heart-felt talk about how health starts with accepting ourselves exactly as we are in this moment. Though there may be areas we’d like to improve, whether physically or performance-wise, we are still perfectly fine how we are. In that perfection and acceptance we are more freely able to go after any goal we want. If reaching goals comes from that place – a positive and kind place – we will mostly likely sustain the results.

Looking at these girls and seeing how they were starved for the words I said to them was a powerful reminder to myself. Just because the scale no longer has a hold of me doesn’t mean I should swap out the weight number for any other number that also does not shape my worth. I am not my deadlift. I am not my slow-progressing front squat. What I am is consistency. I am my willingness to give it a go another day whether the previous results were good or bad. I am my excitement to train. I am how great I feel. I am my ability to help others improve their own strength and overall health even if they then pass me with better numbers. This is how I measure my fitness. These things define me more honestly than any graph or charted data.

Scale number, body fat tests, improved workouts, and weights lifted are simply markers. I celebrate any noted progress forward, but these numbers only mark where I am for now and nothing more. Regardless of any number, I feel fantastic, better than I ever have. It’s hard to find empirical data to track feelings, but for me everything else comes in a very distant second.

Photos courtesy of Shutterstock and CrossFit LA.

The post I Am Not My Deadlift, and Other Ways I Don’t Measure My Fitness appeared first on Breaking Muscle.