BONUS - Body Shame
Hey, hey ladies. I just wanted to drop a bonus episode in here just to follow up on this past Wednesday's vulnerability and shame episode. I realized as I was listening back and editing that episode that I didn't touch on body shame and self shaming. And this is I think a really big part of when most of us feel shame. So I wanted to just take a minute and let's talk about it a little bit. I want to talk about my personal experience with body shame and what I've seen with athletes and clients as well as. What I've done to really, really learn to love my body hard, no matter what it's looking like, no matter how much time I've spent in the gym. And doesn't even when I'm in my PJ's, with no makeup on, in a top knot.
So let's talk a little bit about my body and my journey with my body. So growing up, I was kind of, you know, a normal kid that didn't really think about it that ate all of the food and, you know, wore terrible clothing. I was back on the photos of me when I was little, you guys, I wore like striped pants and poke it out shirts that did the colors were different and tied dye, you know, I was, I grew up in the 80’s, 90’s. We had a weird fashion sense back then. I would say I had no fashion sense. Anyway, into my pre-teens, I definitely got a little chubby. I hadn't really embraced sports yet, and I definitely embraced food and I was self-conscious about my size in terms of, I was a tall kid and I was soft. I was bigger than most of the people around me. I also went to a school in downtown Vancouver that was mostly Asian. I'm going to say about 85% to 90% Asian. So I was the odd out in school. And I was giant compared to most of the kids that I went to school with. So I was very self-conscious about the amount of space that I took up. And even to this day, you guys, when I go home and see my family. I have five little brothers that are all over six feet tall, they've ranged from six feet to six foot seven and they're big guys, they got big shoulders and they're built big like me and I feel so at home there, I feel so small and petite, but that is very rare for me. So okay on a tangent, back to my story. So going into elementary school, especially those last few years, I was always the tallest girl in the class and I wasn't overly athletic. Right? If you guys have listened to episode one, you know that I won a scholarship when I was 13 for bowling. That was my athletic endeavors back then. And then into my high school years, I embraced volleyball. I started walking, I was hanging out more with friends. I started, you know, giving up my lunch money to buy cigarettes. And I was much more aware of my body and the size I was and when I looked back at photos, I was a pretty fit teenager. But there was constantly this level of insecurity, this level of self judgment and comparison and I never felt good enough. When my mom got me my first gym membership and hired me, my first trainer, I was 14. And I fell in love with it pretty quick. I loved moving my body. I loved, I love the vanity of working out, you guys. I don't understand CrossFitters, I really don't, they don't use mirrors. And part of, one of the things I love about working out is watching my body move, watching my muscles move and looking at my shape change as I go through the movements of the workout. And I don't know how CrossFitters do it. Reach might go to a CrossFit gym. I'm like, where are the mirrors? Me and even my husband, you guys, I like all the mirrors in my house and he does not care for mirrors in every room. He thinks that I'm very vain. I'm like, you're handsome, you should love looking in the mirror. All right. So I want to really say that like mostly through my teens and preteens, I was just very insecure. I don't think that I am body shamed hard. Body shaming for me, came more into play, I'd say into my twenties and thirties, and this might be very different for our youth nowadays. I feel like there's so much more pressure on our, especially women but guys too, at a younger age to look a very certain way. And that's so unfortunate. But. for me, when I got my first personal training certification at 17 and started working with clients and started working on my own physique. And I feel like that is when the pressure started. I started having thoughts. Like I should look better. I should know better. I should eat differently. And should is a dangerous word, you guys, I call it, my clients know this. I call it shitting all over yourself. When we are constantly having thoughts of, we should be doing something, it makes us feel ashamed immediately because we're not doing what we should be doing. Right. So I really try and watch my brain now for shooting. We should avoid the shitting. Watch your brain for the shitting. And I catch my clients doing it without even knowing they're doing it. So when you're having conversations with people, watch their narrative, watch what they're shitting on themselves for. And watch yourself when you're like, I should be eating better. I should be ordering a salad. I shouldn't be having this beer. I should be out running more. I should, you know, all of it. It sounds very innocent but the underlying feeling is shame. I should look better. I shouldn't have gained that extra weight. I should have done better on vacation, right? It all boils down to shame. So, once I got my first personal training certs and I started feeling like I should be doing better. That's when I noticed that, I started having really weird thoughts about food and disordered eating thoughts about food, which I'm actually going to get to in one of the future podcasts in vulnerability series. But the shame and the body shame that came along with that. And I think that so many trainers and coaches, especially in the aesthetic industry that we're in, will feel me on this. That there's this pressure of leading by example and practicing what you preach. And I think it's really important as a coach and a trainer to lead by example and practice what you preach. But I think that we should also lead by the example of loving ourselves and lead by the example of practicing and preaching body love and body embracement. And teaching our clients that it's okay to take rest and take time off. I brought my body fat up from 16% up to 24% when my husband and I were trying to get pregnant. And it was really difficult for me to watch my body shift like that and deal with the thoughts that came along with that. But I'm so glad I did it because of the mindset that I had to do to embrace that new body for the reasons that I had it, led me down a road of completely embracing self love and learning to love my body at any size. I want to share with you guys a little bit about how I did that.
So last year after we got pregnant and then we had a miscarriage. I was at my heaviest, I had been in a long time and I was really uncomfortable in my own skin. And I'd look in the mirror and immediately feel shame. And I'd look at photos of the body that I had let go of the body that was in there somewhere that was buried under what I call dirty laundry which basically means I just had to clean the house. Right. What I did was I started moving from those feelings of insecurity and shame and self judgment to gratitude. I started thinking about my body for what it was capable of. I was amazed at my body's way of starting to create a human and then how it released the human and how it still worked and functioned properly. You know how strong it was underneath it all. And I started just really focusing on my capabilities and my strength. And I started treating my body better from a place of love. I said, you know, I'm sorry I put you through all this. I'm sorry that we've experienced this and it was hard and there was loss and now I'm going to focus on treating you better, and I did. I started eating better. I started feeding myself more nutrient dense foods that made my body more energetic. I started moving more. I started focusing on working out. For those of you who are in the Transformation House, my Facebook group, we started doing 10 minute workouts every damn day. Right. Those workouts are still available and they're you guys, there are three hundred and sixty five, ten minute long workouts in my Facebook group that you can go to each month. We did a specific focus, specific topic. It was a lot of fun actually. And through COVID too. So it was kind of like a group hangout through COVID, it was good.
It was good for the mental health. I talked a lot about it actually in that Facebook group about learning to love myself at the size. I was because I was going live in video every day and having to look at my body and work out and, you know, there's that opinion in the back of your brain of I should look differently. How am I going to motivate people? How's this body going to motivate people? And what I've learned is when you have an insecurity like that, opening up and talking about it is one of the best ways to become less insecure about it, because it's amazing the support the out cry of women that show up and cheer for you, when you are open to being a little bit vulnerable about your insecurities and about how you're feeling. I remember when we miscarried. I remember telling that group and the amount of stories and support, and I went through that too, and I've never told anybody. Those kinds of things that came out of that were so encompassing and so overwhelmingly supportive, that it actually helped me deal with that miscarriage so much better than I think I would have had I not had that group. And like I said, I am planning to do a whole nother episode on that topic as well. You guys, I'm giving you guys some sneak peaks here in this bonus episode. But coming out of that time in my life and really embracing my body for what it was capable of and the power and the transformation capabilities and that, you know, I'm almost 40 and I feel like my body is doing amazingly well. And those areas like my knees, that you know, scream at me from time to time. And I don't love the way they look and address, but I can really appreciate them for what they've done, they have done so much dancing and stiletto heels, you guys. I lived in Vegas for two years, I danced stiletto heels a lot. I ran an international youth hostel. And we did a lot of pub crawls and clubbing. So it was a lot of fun. Anyway, I danced in heels. I competed in fitness for eight years, which I learned gymnastics at 26, you guys. I was so hard on my body. I've run 10 kilometer races. I run in tough mudders. I've you know, I've done so much. I've hiked mountains. I've rock climbed. All over the world and these knees, these 40 year old knees have carried me through all of that. So, of course they're a little tired, a little sore and they deserve to be loved hard. And when I started looking at my knees from a place of love and compassion and care, rather than judging them for looking the way they look and being sore and feeling like they were my weakness. When I started really loving them and taking care of them and spending extra time physio weighing them and massaging them at night with anti inflammatory lotions. You guys. I started to like them so much more. I started to love them so much more and they don't look any different. They do feel better because I'm taking away better care of them now. But when we can change our body, when we can show up for our body from a place of love and compassion and gratitude and self care. Rather than shaming and hating and judging ourselves. The changes that we make are so much more sustainable and so much more long term. For my ladies out there that are trying to hate themselves, then or trying to compete from a place of insecurity and self judgment. I send you so much love because I've been there and I know how hard that is. And I really want to encourage you to take a step back and focus on learning to love yourself as you are first and then go after that goal of weight loss or go after that goal of competition, but do it from a place of self love for you. Not in spite of you or to change you. All right. When it comes to my comp girls, let's just take a minute and talk about comp prep because it's so easy when you are prepping your body to be judged and to be compared to other bodies, it is so easy to look at your body and judge it. It is so easy to feel shame over the foods that you're choosing to eat, when you're not supposed to or missing a workout, it is so easy to try and add in extra cardio as punishment. And you guys that is not how we enjoy the experience of competition. That is not a path that leads to fulfillment and being proud of yourself at the end of it. For my ladies out there who have competed and have gained weight post-competition or for my ladies out there who are planning to compete post-competition, it's really a very sensitive time, we call it post-competition blues. It's really easy to slip into a little bit of sadness or depression or post comp kind of this. I don't know what to do with myself, kind of state and you do gain weight. A calm body is not necessarily a sustainable body. Right. For some people, for few, I'd say 5% of people, competition prep body is a sustainable long-term body, but for most of us, especially those of us who dial in water load or water deplete especially for those of us who are in figure or fit body or bodybuilding, right? A comp prep body is not a sustainable body. It is totally normal. Even for my bikini girls to gain five or 10 or even 15 pounds post comp, depending on your body size. And it is a little bit hard sometimes to look at our bodies and know what they could look like and not be hard on ourselves and not shit on ourselves. And I want you to remind yourself that there is more to life than what you look like. Right. There is more to this life, there are more enjoyable experiences. I don't know about you guys, but I'm a foodie. Okay. Tonight it's Friday night. I'm recording this episode on Friday night and I am planning on having a small gluten-free pizza tonight with a big glass of nice red wine. And that is a tradition that I do almost every Friday night, right. I enjoy going out and experiencing restaurants. I enjoy it. And I've learned that that is part of the sculpted lifestyle that I want to build. I want to have those things and abs too. So what do I need to do? Where do I need to draw the line with food and how much working out do I need to do to compensate and to balance my lifestyle. And that's exactly what I teach in Lady Sculpt Lifestyle, it's about creating a purposeful, conscious lifestyle and making decisions for yourself so you can live a purposeful life in a body you love all of the time, right, that is the biggest thing. If you are out there listening to this episode and you are struggling with some body shame. I want you to get in touch with me. I want you to send me an email and I want you to tell me all the things and then I'm going to send you an email back.
Okay. All right. You guys, that is your bonus episode on body shame. I just want to remind you all that you are all uniquely beautiful. Everybody on this planet is uniquely beautiful. You are meant to look exactly how you look and you can choose to change the shape of your body and how you feed your body and how you move your body but it is really important to love yourself from the inside out. Love who you are as a person and your body for what it is capable of and make changes to it from that place for you. All right my friends, have a beautiful weekend. Bye for now.
