If you grow up fat and hating your body - really hating it, you’re horribly aware of how it looks in motion. You don’t need to worry about sex, because the possibility seems hilariously unlikely, but you do worry about running for a bus, because you know you’ll look like Matron in Carrying On Humiliating Yourself and there’s a good chance you’ll step on and the driver will say ‘What’s the hurry, love? Did you think we had buns?’
Swimming and the beach is bust. Every night, before a holiday, you pray that the old timey swimming hut will become fashionable once again, and you can be lowered into the water without revealing so much as a wobbly arm. Essentially you can’t do anything in which your bum goes in the air, which excludes everything but the odd brisk walk. Even air hockey fills you with fear in case you get overexcited and crack the glass.
When I was 8, 10, 12, 21, 23, and the summer I was 28, this is how I felt about my flesh. I was too self conscious to do anything other than stay very still, lest I was seen by a bully or a Jurassic Park dinosaur. (In dark moments I’d imagine the Diplodocus looking me up and down and announcing ‘See, this is why I’m a vegetarian.’
The British Social Attitudes survey recently revealed that over 16 million people feel depressed because they hate their bodies so much. Unsurprisingly, we all fear motion. 18 million people don’t exercise, due to body anxiety. The extra two million exercise avoiders show that you don’t have to be overwhelmed by body anxiety for it to be a problem. You just have to be worried enough to refuse to put it in lycra and move around in public.
Regular exercise is one of the very best things we can do for our physical and mental health. I had to escape my metaphorical swimming hut to realise this. But it’s hard to get out of the vicious circle. The longer you let your body, and the way you feel about it, hold you back, the more cagelike it becomes. Sitting still gives you too much time to nurture that hate and fear. And one day, it’s not going to the gym that’s scary - it’s walking to the shops for milk, or going out dancing, or bending over to pick up your phone when you drop it in the street.
My friend Anita, 26, explains that the fear crept up on her gradually. ‘I was quite sporty at school, but I got out of the habit at uni. I was either too busy - or too lazy. I gained a little weight, then more, and more. When I was asked if I wanted to join the work netball team, I realised how long it had been since I did any proper exercise, and nearly seized up with fright. The idea of humiliating myself in front of regular players terrified me. I got out of it by pretending I’d just signed up to a non existent yoga class on the same night. And then continued to do no exercise, feeling horribly self conscious about it.’
Anita got over by using a method not recommended by health professionals. She got drunk. ‘I had some friends over and we put some music on, and after a few wines we started doing some ridiculous dancing - hands in the air, leaping over furniture, being wildly uncoordinated. We were having the best time, and I had a small, drunk cry. I confessed that it has been a long time since I’d felt so happy and unselfconscious. We all wished there was some exercise we could do where we didn’t have to follow steps and rules and risk feeling foolish, and after a bit of Googling, we found it. We started going to Dance Dance Party Party, a weekly night that started in New York and has come to London. It’s women only, anyone can DJ and you just throw yourself around for a solid hour.’
According to Anita, it was her brain, not her body, where she felt the difference. ‘It reminded me of how good it feels to move, and reconfigured the way I feel about exercise. It stopped being the ‘horrible chore I had to do in order to be thin and sexy’ and started being about what my body could do. After a few DDPPs, I felt confident enough to sign up to the gym, and now I go around three times a week. Exercise makes me feel calmer and sleep better. Also when I moved house recently, getting the furniture up the stairs was much less of an issue. I know I don’t have to do it, but I also know I’m happier when I make time for it, and I’m much less focused the way my body looks. My jeans have got a bit baggy, because I’ve lost some weight, but for a long time I was convinced that I’d put them in a weird wash!’
Body image and fitness coach Sarah Doretsky agrees us Brits need to get on board with exercise. ‘I grew up just outside Sydney, and when I came to the UK I was overwhelmed by the different way Brits approach fitness. Everyone was so miserable about it, and the way people approached it was extreme. Some people in cities went to the gym daily and ran everywhere, and almost everyone else just feared physical activity. At home, you grow up knowing exercise makes you feel good. You do it with your family,' she tells The Debrief.
‘I usually have to spend a couple of sessions with my client just working out why they feel bad about their bodies, and explaining why they need to work on their mindset as they work out. A few of them have told me that they’ve tried and failed many times, and learning to become body positive is what has kept them going with my programme.’
So how do you learn? Here are Sarah’s basics. ‘People fear exercise because they think it’s going to involve dramatic changes, so the best way to start is to think about the way you move, and the function it has. When you get up to make a cup of tea, that counts. The more you get up, the easier it becomes. Your goal doesn’t have to be total transformation, it can be as basic as trying a sandwich from the shop on the other side of town.'
‘The other thing to do is to challenge the voice that tells you mean things, while you’re moving. Most of my clients are incredibly self conscious at first, but I soon tell them that no-one is even looking at them. Their meanest and most horrible critic is themselves. Almost everyone else at the gym is as insecure as they are.’
READ MORE: Why Positive Reinforcement Like 'You Look Dangerously Skinny' Only Fuels Anorexia
If we’re going to feel better about our bodies and challenge the statistics, we need to see major cultural change. We’re surrounded by images and signs that make us feel self conscious, or that we need to be skinnier and sexier. However it’s worth remembering that anything that seems to be going out of its way to make you feel insecure is probably trying to sell you something. We can be the change. Channel Anita, lock your bedroom door, throw yourself around to your favourite song, and tell me you don’t feel better. I’ve learned that my body is beautiful, because it is clever. It’s smart enough to run and jump and throw, and take me all over London - and all over the world. I have friends who suffer from various mobility problems, and this shames me into getting off my arse. If I’m capable of moving, I have a duty to enjoy and appreciate that capability. Looking a bit daft is the least of it.
We have a long way to go, figuratively and literally. More exercise might make us love our bodies, and be confident in them. But if we’re going to attempt to live more healthily, we need to start by trying to like our bodies a little bit more.
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Picture: Getty
This article originally appeared on The Debrief.