You may be thinking you need to get in shape for an upcoming holiday. You want to stop your jiggly bits jiggling before you have to get in your swim wear. Look in your best shape before you start uploading your pictures to Instagram.
You may be desperately trying to google how to lose weight fast, you’re hitting the gym every day at least once (if not twice) and you’re eating more salad than you’ve ever eaten before.
Stop.
You don’t need to start drastically losing weight before the summer comes. You don’t need a ‘beach-ready body’. Your body is already ready to hit the beach now!
You don’t need to be stick thin, toned or tanned to be proud of your body. Your body represents you and all you’ve been through.
The recent ‘I weigh’ trend that’s been hitting social media over the last few weeks was started by English presenter turned actress Jameela Jamil. She uploaded a picture to Instagram after she got fed up of an account posting about how much each member of the Kardashian family really weighs.
She described the post as ‘toxic’ and was disturbed at how girls were now valuing themselves in kilograms, rather than what they’re actually worth. She decided to do her own version of the post, but rather than using kilograms to describe her weight, she made up her weight of the all the things that she valued in life that made her who she was today.
Her list included her lovely relationship, her great friends, laughing, enjoying her job, being financially independent and even loving her bingo wings! In a blog post that followed her Instagram post, she said:
“I couldn’t believe what I was seeing. A group shot of grown women with their respective weights posted across each of their bodies, and the post asking what we think of their weights and then asking its followers, ‘What do you weigh?’ WHO CARES? What kind of crazed toxic nonsense is this? What is this post trying to achieve other than to induce anxiety into young women about something so entirely irrelevant? What are we teaching women about our value? Can it be measured using a metric system?”
After receiving hundreds of images from women around the world, she opened up an Instagram account, called @i_weigh, where she could share the scores of inspiring images she was receiving, a place to celebrate women for all the accomplishments, achievements and characteristics that make them who they are, rather than the number they see on a weighing scale.
So before you start worrying about your body, remember not everything can be weighed in pounds and stone! I’m not saying that you don’t need to exercise or you can eat junk food for every meal because it’s still common sense to get a balanced diet and to get your daily exercise, however I am saying it shouldn’t become the focus of the value of yourself.
