After a soothing, relaxing and calming scalp massage to start the ball rolling - my attention was stopped as I flicked through the latest edition of a pretty famous mainstream women's magazine.
The magazine had a 6 page spread on body image, self esteem and it titled the section 'Body confidence'. I started reading into it. The first couple of celebrity interviews were women who averaged a 10-12, were active most days of the week and had an 'everything in moderation' attitude to food and healthy living. Great! I do admit, having women's magazines focus on this type of living always brings a smile to my face knowing how subconsciously and 'subtly' hard society and fashion pushes for a tiny, restrictive and rigid body weight and subsequent lifestyle.
As the article moved forward, their were flashes of women who, don't gte me wrong, were quite stunning - but who were bragging about being very restrictive in their eating, running for an hour EACH day followed by an hour of weights and then an evening yoga or Pilates session. These women were very high in the social profile standing of Australia - but how can body confidence be preached to the women of our worldly streets if they are not quite sure HOW to be healthy, and to have an idea in their heads about how hard being healthy is made out to be.
I know that one thing is for sure - being healthy is about having a healthy lifestyle. This means having a lifestyle that you are of course active most days (finding something that you enjoy - be it running, swimming, yoga, pilates, walking, a spin class at the gym), but don't curl up into a little ball and cry when you miss a session. Healthy living is about enjoying a wide variety of foods full of colour, flavour, fruits, vegies, complex carbohydrates, dairy..even a couple of sneaky glasses of wine if you desire. While eating healthy most of the time is incredibly important to maintain health and prevent enormous amounts of lifestyle related diseases and illness', you shouldn't need to have to beat yourself up about having a pizza night, or sneaking in a piece of that decadent dark chocolate ice-cream on a hot day. The key is MODERATION.
With credit to the magazine, it did in parts express this and make an effort to inform it's readers of the benefits of moderation, eating healthy and exercising to a level where it is enjoyable and you are able to include this as a part of your day to day living, without feeling like you're running on a treadmill twenty-four hours a day!!
What I was really taken back by was the fact that ten pages later, this magazine had an article on them road testing detox diets (which basically included three juices a day - equating to a grand total of about 1/20th of our daily energy requirements!!! Hello 'hangry lady'!!). The writer of this concluded by saying how much 'lighter' she felt. Great - what about the hungry, energy-less and anxious woman everyone had to deal with while you were on it???!
The next page had two separate advertisements for diet supplement shakes and a photo of two sisters who were deemed celebrity 'fitness gurus' of our nation; both looked muscly and had a big pearly white smile, but one was so gaunt in the face that she looked like it was hard work to even smile at all (I know she was thinking about her next lamb souvlaki...I could hear her whisper it through the paper!!).
Word of warning to magazines and public forums - a) You cannot advocate for a healthy lifestyle if you are sending out two completely contradicting messages, b) Women's health and body image have gone a long way in the last few years to promote fit and natural looking women as opposed to gaunt, stick figures who in no way shape or form are able to live a happy and pressure free life, PLEASE don't go backwards!!!
It's unbelievable how many women have formed this idea in their heads that eating healthy and being healthy through activity is difficult, totally unsociable and that you will be left unsatisfied with everything because you can't have any freedom to eat or do what you want.
The notion of healthy, as I said above should in no way be restrictive. It should be enjoyable, it should make you feel energetic, happy and shining from the inside out. Food and exercise are the fuel we all need to think, feel, and be at our best. When the notion of being our best becomes a preoccupation with calorie counting, labeling eating healthy as 'dieting' (which quite often will develop into a crazy binge of over-indulging of the foods we never let ourselves eat anyway - here comes the 'diet' roller-coaster!), and not being able to have the time or energy to enjoy the benefits we are 'trying' to give our body.
Lets just pause a moment - bring back our focus (and keep it as a focus, now something we choose to promote, and then in the next sentence contradict what we just said!!) on the beautiful, useful, amazing bodies we have. We are born with one body and leave with the same one. Our bodies can do so many amazing and miraculous things - LOVE it, but don't leave it to fend for itself!
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