The Fitness Industry's Obsession with Body Image (Both Negative and Positive) is Boring and You Can Do Better

I’ve always dealt with guilt about playing a part in an industry that warps body image and uses body guilt and shaming in order to sell “health” and “fitness” services. A lot of folks come at you with unique propositions and content, making claims that are actually pretty incongruous, like: “you should care or not care about X in order to look like Y,” “you should feel like B to perform like Q,” or “The REAL secret to lifelong G is actually my incredible discovery of W plus ~$%!”

That type of marketing is intriguing, galvanizing, and it is honestly part of what got me into this industry. Who doesn’t want the professional secrets to being rippedAF, be able to leap tall buildings in a single bound, and to live forever? But the deeper you get into learning, the more you learn about how deceptive and oversimplified most fitness marketing is, from all different sides of the industry.

I’ve gotten to the point where it bothers me when images of bodybuilders are used to promote health and fitness programs. Bodybuilding is not health and fitness. It is a highly intensive sport, impressive in its own right, but let’s not be confused: giant muscles do not equal health.

I’ve also gotten to the point where it bothers me to see folks simply promoting “eating what you feel like” as the secret to emotional and physical freedom. We have evolved to feel like eating fat and sugar, and if we give ourselves too much liberty with these things, we will end up curtailing our own physical and emotional freedom and wellbeing.

I’ve gotten to the point where *most* before and after pictures trigger skepticism instead of inspiration or jealousy. I, too, look and in fact am lighter and more ripped after a fasted morning workout in higher contrast lighting. So, now what?

I’ve even gotten to the point where a vast majority of social media discussions around body image don’t do much for me. I’m bored with the preoccupation with body image, because I think we’re all so much better than that. It’s sad that fitness types and advertisers keep dragging us back into that dark place where body image is allowed to have any effect or bearing on our self worth.

I’m not as much angry as I am disappointed, and above all, bored. I am so, so bored with the warped use of body image in the health and fitness industry.

I don’t think there is any program, whether meant to target my body or my beliefs, that will transform me enough to free myself of insecurity at times, vulnerability at times, pride at times, anxiety at times, or despair at times. Nor do I think that should be the goal.

We are humans, and we have bodies and emotions. We have emotions about our bodies. The goal for us as professionals should not be to promise a program that will help our clients finally attain that body or mindset that is good enough to vanish body image struggles — the best programs and training in the world can’t do that, not on their own. Instead, the goal should be to help our clients learn how to acknowledge the struggle as part of being human, and move on to the real work.

At 5’2, I’ve been under 110 lbs and I’ve been over 150. I’ve had times where I was mostly happy with my body and times when I was mostly unhappy. I can look back at pictures of myself over the years and remember how much I weighed when it was taken. And because my best days don’t correspond to my “fittest” days, and because how much I weighed in a picture has nothing to do with what I was actually doing and the life I was living, or the things I was working towards and accomplishing, or the relationships I was building, or how sick or healthy I was at times, then the salience of my body image thoughts must only have been a distraction to those other endeavors. Those body image preoccupations didn’t deserve all that mental real estate at all. And that means they were, in the long run, insignificant, detrimental, and - let’s face it - boring.

What’s wrong is the amount of impact and volume I gave to those boring body image thoughts that should have been deeper in the background. Not gone, not solved by a “better body,” or magicked away by more self love, but sent back to the milieu of the other self-talk, where my inbuilt resiliency and mental equilibrium could have dealt with them more effectively.

Most fitness marketing, whether preying on poor body image, or claiming to help solve or break free from body image issues through physical work or “empowerment” work, actually does more to bring body image to the foreground of your focus that it does to dismiss it and allow you to free up the space to go figure out what you actually want to do and think about and accomplish with your one wild and precious life.

The fitness industry thrives off of making body image a distraction.

So here’s my unsolicited advice: fuck the focus on body image. It’s boring. It’s basic. You’re so much more, and you’re worth so much more. It also sucks to be manipulated by the blown up version of it that is being sold to us most of the time.

The body image struggle will always exist, but its use as the obstacle or the way in terms of self empowerment is a construct invented and perpetuated by those in the industry who want your attention, your time and your money.

Don’t let marketing make you feel less than. If content makes you feel envious, shameful, or left with a curious sensation that it’s simply too good to be real, unfollow. If someone is promising an exclusive secret or trick to happiness, unfollow. If it doesn’t inspire you, unfollow. If it’s not educational, unfollow. No one should get to make you allocate your precious mental and physical labor obsessing about a mysterious protocol that promises you an image that it can never fulfill, and that has no bearing on the actual quality of your life anyway.

Your considerable, valuable and extraordinary attention and effort can be better spent working on actual goals, actual self-improvement, actual healing, actual habit-building, actual accomplishments, actual living.

Please, just figure out what you need to do in order to live the actual life you want to live, and then do that. Running up that hill, or in that marathon. Jumping off that rock. Playing with that dog. Healing your gut. Healing your trauma. Gaining more energy. Feeling strong all day. Being a leader. Being a person who can deal with their own anxiety on a daily basis.

Because your body AND your self-identity adapt to fit the things you do regularly, figuring out how to consistently do those things is the focus. Where does a changed body image come into it? Often just as a byproduct of a life consistently lived.

Don’t be boring, be direct. Come to your fitness program with goals for the actions you want to take, then do what it takes to act.