While an estimated one in five women struggle with an eating disorder, a greater percentage (75%) report having some sort of disordered eating, and 97% of women report having an “I hate my body” moment every day.

Will we ever be satisfied? Not if we have this mindset: “I just want a flat stomach.”

The Curse of the “Trouble Spot”

In fact, of all our body parts, the stomach is the number one “trouble spot” for women—the body part that 69% of women say they want to change. What is the answer to this pesky problem? Let’s take a look at some common tactics to be rid of this stubborn enemy:

• Juice cleanses to banish belly bloat
• Spot training with 7-minute ab blasts
• Intermittent fasting
• More cardio
• Less carbs
• _______ (insert tactic of choice here)

What do you do? Unfortunately, no matter how hard we try, we are always going to come up short when we keep relying on what our body looks like to make us fully happy, confident, and satisfied.

Even if you do reach your goal weight, or see an ab—or four or six—pop out, or if you finally feel confident enough to go swimsuit or jeans shopping, relying on our appearance, weight, and size to “feel good in our own skin” will always leave you unsatisfied. Here’s why:

1. You must keep up your focus and hard work on the diet, workout routine, or rules you created for yourself to “get there,” which leaves you constantly feeling like something is clipping at your heels if you are not on top of your game.
2. There will always be someone “better,” fitter, prettier, healthier, happier, etc. than us in our mind’s eye.
3. Once we “reach” our goal, there will always be something more we want: to lose five more pounds, see two more abs show, see a thigh gap).

The Struggle Never Stops

For 14 years, I woke up most every day with one thought on my mind: “when I weigh X-weight or look like X then life will be so much better.” I thought about reaching these goals every day, and I scripted my to-do list around what I needed to do to “get there.” Things like cutting carbs, spending hours on the Stairmaster, avoiding social food gatherings at all costs, and counting my almonds one by one.

Even in my “weight gain” days, when I wanted so badly to “just gain 10 pounds, and then I’ll be happier,” I filled my self-care to-do list with checkboxes like eating ’til I could barely breathe, more strength training, protein shakes, and eating foods that didn’t always agree with my digestion or gut health.

Every night, without fail, when I laid my head down to rest, I felt completely defeated knowing I hadn’t reached my goals again today. But in the same breath, without fail, I’d tell myself, “You know what? Tomorrow is a brand new day to try again, and I am so close to the body I want.”

Wash. Rinse. Repeat.

Day in and day out, I woke up feeling the same way: hating my body. Then I’d try to “fix it” by focusing more on my body, food, and fitness. I’d go to bed each night, knowing I hadn’t fully achieved my goals, or I fell back into “old ways.” I’d tell myself that I’d try again tomorrow. Although I had another life outside of my diet and fitness routine as well (college, work, grad school, relationships, church, activities), my inner world felt like it revolved around thoughts about my body, food, and fitness.

The Lightbulb Moment

It will come when you least expect it. Complete freedom and happiness with your body, food, and fitness will come, ironically, when you start focusing less on these things and more on just living your life. It didn’t happen for me overnight. I had a rude awakening when my life came to a complete standstill when I was forced to enter eating disorder treatment at age 23. I was on death’s doorstep, at a weight I hadn’t been since I was 10-years-old.

Completely banned from my Stairmasters, low-carb lifestyle, protein shakes, and fitness magazines, I was forced to face my own worst nightmares:

• Lack of control
• Egg McMuffins, Eggo waffles and bagels for breakfast
• Takeout pizza every Friday night and pancakes or pastries every Saturday morning
• A sedentary lifestyle
• Ben & Jerry’s, processed foods, and Snickers Bars for snacks
• Chronic constipation, bloating, gas and discomfort in my own body
• Skin breakouts and pimples
• Growing out of my entire wardrobe
• Feeling lethargic, tired, and not like myself
• Medication prescriptions prescribed by my doctors to help me “recover” and think “more clearly”
• Talking all day, every day, about the past and my eating disorder

Although I am still not sure this extreme exposure therapy was the best approach for helping me heal or recover from my eating disorder, it was helpful for inspiring me to find something different: a happy medium where I felt good in my own skin, regardless of what my body looked like, what I ate, or if I worked out.

Ironically, living for a time in both extremes (extreme eating disorder and diet obsession; and eating disorder treatment, where I felt like a lazy American), helped me have a lightbulb moment I wasn’t looking for. For me it highlighted both extremes: “I never want to go through treatment like this again,” and, “I also never want to go back to my eating disorder again.”

I began to search high and low for the answer to actually feeling good in my own skin—not based on numbers, weight, calories, mirrors, or jeans. Do you know what I discovered? Feeling good in your own skin actually has nothing to do with six packs, popping shoulders, or Kim Kardashian booties. These things are fleeting.

Dangling Carrot Syndrome

When we make the “ideal body,” or “body confidence,” or “feeling good in our own skin” our primary goal and motivation for the things we eat, the way we workout, what we wear, or a million other ways we spend our time, we are always going to come up dry.

I call this “dangling carrot syndrome” because, like a horse that tries to reach the dangling carrot hanging over its nose as it continues to walk forward, we robotically do the same thing when we try to focus on the same things (the scale, our calories, our fat grams, macros, our jean size, how we look in certain pictures, etc.) and try to yield different results.

When has focusing on the scale worked for you—like really worked—to the point that you feel 100% confident? When has focusing on what you look like in pictures, or how you feel in your own skin really, solely, worked for you, so that you feel completely free to be who you are?

Crickets.

Whether you are overweight, underweight, feel too fat, or too skinny, when we wrap our self-esteem and worth in what we look like or how we feel about how we look, we are always going to come up dry.

While I constantly wanted to lose weight in my early eating disorder days, there also came a time when I constantly wanted to gain weight and be “bigger;” not little Lauryn anymore. I’d see pictures of beautiful CrossFit women, Blake Lively, other celebrity idols, even girls at my gym or women on the street and think, “Man. If only I looked like her,” or “If only I was a little more filled out,” or “If only I was a couple sizes bigger…then I’ll be more confident.”

It was exhausting, because I was still chasing dangling carrots.

Start Loving Your Own Skin

To this day, I am still self-conscious about being little Lauryn, and sometimes hate my body for being thinner than I want it to be. But now I know that when my mindset shifts from my body and what it looks like to more internal and external factors that define true health (like my energy, digestion, non-obsessive thinking, living out my purpose, doing things I love, meaningful relationships, having fun in life) I feel more alive and less focused on what my outside shell looks like at all.

Here are eight tips to start loving all of the the skin you’re in (no dangling carrots included):

1. Stop the negative self-talk. Remind yourself that obsessing over what you eat or look like doesn’t make you look any better. Remember, you’ve tried this method a thousand times before.
2. Give thanks. Thank your body for what it does, more than what it looks like. Your big strong legs should be appreciated for squatting 200lb on a barbell.
3. Pick a new health “marker” (or a couple) to focus on. Energy, digestion, and a healthy gut, for example. Your ability to “go with the flow” on vacation or dinner out, and not freak out. Having refreshing sleep and balanced hormones. Pursuing your passions and setting goals in these areas. Feeling spiritual health and connectedness.
4. Work it. Play to your strengths. What are you naturally good at? What are your natural physical and characters strengths you bring to the table? Comparing yourself to others will not get you anywhere other than discontent and chasing those dangling carrots.
5. Smash the scale. Or throw out the FitBit. Delete the fitness or calorie tracker. Delete the Instagram accounts that trigger negative thinking, or unplug from social media altogether. Stop tempting yourself with things that put you down. Ironically, when we stop using these measures as barometers for success, often our body (and metabolism) starts working for us, not against us.
6. Nourish. Eat and work out to nourish your body, not to punish it. Choose foods that nourish not only physically, but sometimes emotionally or mentally. Even though “emotional eating” is often viewed as a negative thing, it’s not bad occasionally.
7. See your body as a whole, and not parts. You and your worth are not your thighs, your stomach, or your underarms. You are a whole person.
8. Stand up for non-weight-bias and “health at every size.” Seriously. If and when you are truly taking care of yourself, your body will go to where its happy place is. For some, this is “bigger boned;” for others, this is “smaller framed” or “smaller chested.” People in larger bodies often experience the effects of weight bias more deeply than those in smaller bodies, but no one is exempt from feeling shame about their body when we rely on society’s ideals. Our culture makes many people of every size feel on guard, critical of their perceived “flaws,” and wanting something other than the body they are in today.

So how do you get there? How do you get to the point you don’t care so much about what you look like without “letting yourself go” or feeling completely unconfident in your own skin?

Join me in a movement (and new attitude) I’m calling the Thrive Life Project, aimed at developing this champion mindset I am talking about. Genuinely learn to love your body—from the inside out.

Find yourself and take some steps toward eating disorder recovery:

Recovering From An Eating Disorder: 10 Things You Need to Know

The post Abs Are Not the Key to Happiness appeared first on Breaking Muscle.

You have competition every day because you set such high standards for yourself that you have to go out every day and live up to that. – Michael Jordan

Are you inspired or deflated by competition? Is it valuable or harmful? This week’s articles explore those questions in different scenarios.

Editor’s Picks

The Life-or-Death Reason Kids Need to Learn to Fail

Should kids really get rewarded for participation alone? Or should value and incentive be placed on the pursuit of victory? Is losing something kids should experience for their own betterment? Coach Eric Stevens explores all these questions.

The Emotions of the CrossFit Games (Video)

The higher the stakes, the higher the emotions involved. Winning and losing comes with a whole array of emotional states and experiences – positive and negative. Here, you can experience for a few minutes what it’s like for the CrossFit Games elite athletes.

How the New CrossFit Certification Levels Will Impact You

Competition doesn’t just happen between athletes, but also among businesses. What happens when CrossFit gyms compete with each other on a financial level? Do the new certification levels play into this? CrossFit gym owner and coach Teddy Kim offers his thoughts.

Should a Weightlifter Watch Other Lifters?

Should a competitive weightlifter watch his opponents when they’re on the platform? Should he watch his teammates? Should he let his teammates or competitors watch him? What are the pitfalls and the benefits? Olympic weightlifting expert Dresdin Archibald weighs in.

Build Competitive Teamwork, Not Just Competition

Yes, CrossFit is competitive. But there are ways to make sure that competition is productive, not destructive, and to use it to build teams instead of divides. CrossFit coach and psychologist Craig Marker offers his thoughts and ideas for workouts.

CrossFit Games 2014: The Good, Bad, and Ugly

Three-time CrossFit Games veteran Patrick McCarty knows a thing or two about competition. Here he reports back from his 2014 experience on what went well, the best part of the competition experience, and how water should not be a scarce commodity.

Why Loving Your Body Is Not Enough

You don’t necessarily have to be in a competition scenario to set off the competitive voices in your head. And those voices can be critical, judging voices. Coach Summer Innanen discusses how those voices can mislead us as to what our real goals should be, and how we can instead learn to love who we are and shut down the internal judges.

Photo 1 courtesy of Shutterstock.

Photo 2 courtesy of CrossFit Empirical and DSLR Lessons.

The post A Look at Our Love-Hate Relationship With Competition appeared first on Breaking Muscle.

Still, over time I forgot to be afraid. Normalcy crept back into my life and I didn’t need jiu jitsu to feel safe anymore. One of the main reasons I tried BJJ was to protect myself but that’s not why I stayed. I stayed because at Titans I feel like I am at home with my brothers. I train with the “Taylor Gang” under Renzo Gracie black belt Kevin Taylor. We all work together in a friendly and positive environment with a sincere desire to help each other to reach our full potential. Because I’ve already told my story to the newspaper, I’ll share what BJJ has done for my teammates.

Hard Work and Perseverance

Brown belt Jon Gale grew up in a part of the city with a lot of negative influences. He was on his way down a difficult path in life before he began training jiu jitsu. He said:

BJJ was a breath of fresh air for me, putting me around amazing coaches, and great people who were overflowing with passion, self-confidence and determination. BJJ showed me that you do not need to have an ounce of natural talent to succeed in something, and that hard work and perseverance are the only qualities you need to climb your way to any goal you wish to accomplish.

I have applied the lessons I have learned from BJJ to all areas of my life, and through the same hard work and determination, I have found great success, including my accomplishments in the academic world, of which I am most proud. I have reflected a great deal on the lessons I have learned, and have invested a lot of effort into putting myself in a position where I can be a positive role model, and share what I have learned with as many people as possible. I now teach BJJ to adults, and have implemented and head a children’s BJJ program at my club.

Calm and Happiness

Purple belt Chris White echoed these sentiments. He shared:

Jiu jitsu has helped me improve my life in innumerable ways. Beyond the obvious benefits of being healthier and getting in better shape, I truly feel that jiu jitsu has motivated me to improve myself outside of my athletic life as a student, professional, and a person. It’s become a framework through which I can learn and understand the world. Finally, training makes me feel a level of calm and happiness that, at the risk of hyperbole, may have truly saved my life on a few occasions. I’m not a religious man, but if I have a faith it’s in jiu jitsu.

Confidence

In his article The Pleasures of Drowning, Sam Harris stressed that BJJ is unique in that it can be practiced safely at full resistance. Purple belt Josh Presley can attest to this. He shared:

Jiu jitsu gave me the confidence to believe I can really accomplish anything I set my mind to. No other sport puts you in positions where at full speed you have to overcome size and strength disadvantages, keep cool under stress, use your brain to constantly be thinking of your next attack, dealing with fatigue, all while having to deal with your emotions.

Blue belt Zach Jones said, “I’ve never felt as able to defend myself as I have since I started BJJ. I used to do karate and kickbox but I was still worried about what would happen if I got hit trying to hit someone. Now that I know about jiu jitsu I can control someone without getting hurt, or having to hurt them. It really boosts my confidence knowing that.”

Health and Weight Loss

I felt very moved and inspired by my teammates’ stories and was surprised to hear that some of them were very overweight before they began training. Blue belt Geoff Smith shared:

It was the summer after first year at university, and my freshman fifteen was more like the freshman 45. I worked out, but never saw any progress. When I left for Vancouver in April, I weighed 225 pounds. A full year of cafeteria food, weekly drinking, and late night pizza left me doughy. When I flew home in April, I was just over 185 pounds and leaner than I’d ever been. Even though I only got to grapple a couple of times a week, and spent the whole time getting beat up, my entire lifestyle changed.

Purple belt Joel Jacquard shared a similar experience. “I used to be overweight with low self-esteem but when I got into Brazilian jiu jitsu it improved my health and self-confidence. It feeds my competitiveness in a good way and I have met some of the best friends I have today through it.”

I was shocked when purple belt Craig Ferguson told me he lost seventy pounds since he began training, “The benefits you can’t see are more important to me,” he said. “I’ve learned to push myself further. I’ve witnessed the power of hard work as I improve bit by bit. I’ve made great friends and adopted a healthy, positive lifestyle. And I’ve learned a skill I can share with my daughters.”

People who begin jiu jitsu rarely do so with the intention of training more than a couple of times a week but there is so much to learn and it’s so much fun that it truly does become a lifestyle. One of the most dedicated and hard-working members of our team, purple belt Pat Carroll summed it up best. He said, “BJJ has improved my life in many ways. Before I started training, I lived a very unhealthy lifestyle. I was unmotivated and depressed. BJJ and kickboxing pretty much reinvented me. I got in great shape, developed confidence and kind of found myself you could say. I wake up every day excited to train, learn and grow as a fighter and a person. I couldn’t picture myself in any other lifestyle.”

If you already train Brazilian jiu jitsu, what benefits have you experienced? Post to comments below.

The post The Life Changing Benefits of Brazilian Jiu Jitsu appeared first on Breaking Muscle.

We couldn’t wait to watch the women’s clean ladder at the 2012 CrossFit Games this last weekend. We were sitting with friends from our gym, but as the excitement of the event grew, my daughters, Maya, aged seventeen, and Mina, aged thirteen, and I huddled together, magnetized to each other by the energy. The grey arena floor was littered with barbells, each heavier than the next. The athletes had to snake their way through them until they couldn’t stand up with the weight on their shoulders any more.

The seats were packed with eight thousand fans getting pummeled by the sun, but when Lindsey Valenzuela stepped to the last bar of the ladder weighing 235 pounds – a weight I can’t even pull off the ground yet – we squealed. We had watched her at Regionals just a couple months before, when she annihilated the snatch ladder. We lost our voices that day when she snatched 175 pounds in front of a screaming crowd, Lindsey herself screaming as she held the bar overhead. This weekend, we couldn’t wait to cheer her on again – our local hero, our now favorite. Saturday she stood over the bar like a warrior in meditation. Her powerful thighs bowed out from her black shorts and her arms were graced with muscle, sweat, and chalk. The girls and I held our breath, willing her to lift the weight with relative ease.

I do not CrossFit for myself. I love it obviously, but as a mother, every action I take, every decision I make is tethered to the well being of my daughters. And added to the laundry list of personal reasons why I CrossFit is the gold-starred, glaring fact that my girls get to experience women’s strength not just encouraged, but celebrated like I’ve never witnessed in my life. I’ve been an athlete my entire life. I was the girl who elbowed her way into all-men’s basketball games even when they groaned, believing they couldn’t go hard against me, and I just had to play through the awkwardness until they were used to me or until a few guys spoke up on my behalf because I made a jump shot in their face too many times. I grew up listening to the never-ending droning on about how women should adhere to a certain weak perception of femininity as defined by some invisible force that drives advertising and fashion. It was all well and good if I wanted to be sporty, but don’t overdo it, and don’t look like this or that, and don’t walk like that. Don’t be a dude for God’s sake, which was perplexing because being a dude was the farthest thing from my mind. I just wanted to play, and get better. Mainly, I just wanted to be myself. I desperately wanted to shake the vice grip of whoever or whatever was trying to put me in a box. It was an uphill battle my entire growing up.

Disappointingly, I still hear a lot of that crap today. And now that I CrossFit, the number of times I hear “Don’t get too bulky!” or “I don’t want to be bulky” is like a skipping record that I want to kick just so it will stop repeating. Honestly none of this matters to me personally now. Nothing can shake my resolve to be stronger, but I’ve been assigned the honor and tricky task of raising well-adjusted athletic daughters and I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t constantly worried about their developing self-perception.

They are treading in the murky waters of being teenagers where my sole influence is not as golden as it was when they were little. For their entire lives they’ve only heard positive body image stuff – I’ve never allowed them to be self-deprecating – but I also know I can no longer block out the outside world or the skewed perceptions put upon women, which means they will most likely go through some self-consciousness about their bodies and have some self-doubt. We all did. But I can continue to prepare them. I can arm them with everything in my power to help keep their own resolve and confidence as unshakeable as possible until hopefully they have solid footing as young adults.

CrossFit is part of this ammunition. Not only so my daughters can feel empowered by their own growing strength and ability, but because the environment and community that CrossFit fosters is so encouraging of strong women. And not just to the women who are conventionally beautiful. Every woman that was strong enough to make the Games varied in look, shape, and size. They all had a fan base regardless. And my daughters see this. They mentally take note and absorb it. The more I can put them in this type of environment where a woman’s ability is what’s up, not just looks, the more I feel I do my job.

They are both coming down the chute into life, on a tight rope, and I have to teach them to stay true to who they naturally are. I have to let them know they are beautiful and that what they like is great no matter how it all manifests, which can be every which way in terms of women as far as I’m concerned. Even when the outside world – and sometimes our inside world – is conflicted and telling us otherwise, if I can give them enough examples of staying true to themselves, I feel it can only be a beacon to help navigate them out of any self-doubt. It’s something they’ll have to sort out for themselves, but it doesn’t stop me from tossing them every tool their way.

When we drove home after the Games on Saturday, we gossiped about our favorite moments of the day. Maya said, “I don’t know why, but I just like watching the women more. I love how everyone cheers for them just as hard as the guys.” I asked Mina who her favorite athlete was. She said, “Kristan Clever.” I nodded. She’s a favorite of mine, too. Maya said Lindsey Valenzuela. I nodded. Maya was wearing a “Strong is the New Skinny” tank top. I was wearing a “Lift Like Lindsey” shirt. And as my girls talked more about feeling inspired and about how much stronger they will soon get and how they will someday make the Games, I couldn’t help but feel a sense of gratitude and relief. My girls are going to be alright – more than alright.

The post Daughters, the CrossFit Games, and Self-Image appeared first on Breaking Muscle.