My body is a battleground.
By: Hannah Hunter-Hill
Tags: Exercise, Body Positive, Wellness, Body Image, Diet Culture

My relationship with my body has been a contentious one. That’s not unique to me, with eight out of ten women feeling uncomfortable in their own skin. I have waged war with my body since I was a teenager, seeing my skin as something alien to myself. I have trained myself to barely look at myself in the mirror, eyes only for my face – the one part of my outward self I can mould and shape into what I want with the help of makeup. For the majority of last year I’d pass any reflective surface with eyes downcast, not willing to let my gaze fall on my skin, to stop the endless assault of vicious words and thoughts against my own body.

If my body was a battle, it would be marked by the times it has saddled up to go to war for me. There would be a war torn battlefield across my skull, where my body fought with Intercranial pressure earlier this year, a disease that has a 1 in 4 chance of making a person go blind. I didn’t. If my body was a battle, there would be remnants of a celebration across the skin for this victory. My body has an endless devotion to keeping me as mentally and physically fit it possibly can, despite my own self-sabotaging attempts to send it to war armed with nothing. I should be recognising this, and I must constantly remind myself to be kinder to the skin I am in. After all, the woman I am, in a body I hated, got me a great job at a company who values my input. The body I have has bounced back from a cancer scare to carcinogen free. The body I have has worked alongside me to take me in seven months from the unhealthiest I have ever been, with bad eating habits and non existent exercise routine making the six flights of stairs at work a trial, to running a 10k in under an hour. The body I have reacts to whatever I give it with endless enthusiasm, due to its endless love it has for keeping me alive. I need to start paying that attitude forward.

I also need to recognise the sabotaging that comes not only from myself, but from the workings of diet culture. Diet culture is triggering, before and after shots designed to assault the mind with guilt, designed to make woman who may look like the before feel unworthy and unloved by this society that views shredded abs as success rather than symbolic of the unhealthy practices it requires to get there. Dehydration and starvation tactics are well known and pervasive throughout Hollywood to get that “perfect shirtless” shot of your favourite Hollywood star. “Why can’t I look like that” you might think to yourself, not knowing that nobody does.

This includes wellness culture also, a wolf dressed in sheep’s clothing, posting smoothie bowls and yoga retreats with photos of woman’s bodies that are unachievable and photoshopped. 40% of women who participate in “shock” diets or diet plans under 90 days long are likely to regain the weight they lost. Why? It’s unsustainable, and it doesn’t take into account the unpredictability of life. The idea that you must ‘cheat’ your body when you wish to eat something considered naughty feeds in to this never ending cycle of guilt and shame we perpetuate against any food that isn’t an avocado. Spending a week drinking protein shakes dying to get to the weekend so you can order a takeaway is not a healthy mental state to live in, yet neither is buying nothing but fast food. My relationship with food has often been like that of a toxic boyfriend, one full of guilt and shame, but an overarching inevitably around the sense that I will never get better than what exists in front of me. Like the shitty boyfriend who tells you not to wear heels cause it’ll make you taller than him, we need to learn to leave these toxic behaviours behind in all aspects of our life.

I will never again post “before” and “after” photos, because I think they inherently contribute to this wickedly unhealthy idea society has of woman in “before” being ‘less than’, which is simply not the case. But equally I am not ashamed, despite what society might try to tell me. Adele, appears to “flaunt” her weight loss according to the Daily Mail, apparently “shows off” her incredible effort to lose seven stone. These kind of words belittle her achievement whilst also telling us women can’t have it either way. We can’t be curvy and proud of our body because that “promotes obesity”, but equally can’t make long term changes to healthier living without being told we are “flaunting” our bodies instead of merely living in them.

I have been unkind to my body for years now, the indoctrination coming from the media in the form of “health”. I recognise now that the girl I am in photos of six months ago is as mentally strong as the girl I am today. I was worthy then, I am worthy now. I will continue to always be worthy of wearing my skin in whatever shape I chose. And that’s my motivation to drive to be the best version of myself, not magic diet or beach body or project skinny hashtags. I may not be airbrushed, or walk around with a permanent Instagram filter. But my smile is wide and my heart is full and my mind is clear. That’s enough.