female fitness – theshamehealth

“Our doubts are traitors, and make us lose the good we oft might win, by fearing to attempt.”

William Shakespeare

Self-doubt; the biggest obstacle to your own contentment and happiness. The invisible force that prevents you from doing the things you have always wanted to do, that creates a negative energy that sucks the joy out of new challenges. It spawns jealousy in others who have the self-belief to do the things you have only dreamed of.

It is the voice in your head that says ‘you could never do that…’/ ‘you wouldn’t be any good’ ‘……… is better than you at that so why bother?’ or it can be the real voices around you that claim to support, it can also plant the seeds of this doubt, ‘do you really want to do that?’ or ‘that’s a bit odd’ when you want to try something different. It can be almost impossible at times to silence these or balance them with reality. Sometimes it’s easier to take the road that is most known to you, to opt out, not do it, give up – it feels safer. Why risk failure? Self-respect? It would just confirm what you already know, that you weren’t good enough – so just stick with things as they are.

Now I know that most people will at certain points in their lives (even the most confident ones) question whether what we are doing is good enough. We reconcile certain choices with the idea ‘I wouldn’t be good enough for that’. But for some this debilitating feeling can actually have them living a completely different life to the one that they truly want, what if they had more courage and self-belief then they could be reaching potential they never knew they had.

I believe that an element of self-doubt can be useful, it helps you take certain things seriously, your work hard and you think things through – these can be good. I would say that being ‘self-aware’ is vital in relationships with others and can serve well to ensure that we improve ourselves and can reflect, evaluate and move forward. However there is a fine line when this in-depth analysis can paralysis you into doing the things that you have always wanted to do but felt you couldn’t.

I am writing about this fear, as it is one that I battle with daily and I am sure resonantes with many of us. This could manifest itself in the types of jobs we go for, the groups/sports/challenges we may or may not go for, even to the types of people we surround ourselves with. I have written before about how exercise has helped me so much in dealing with my self-doubt, as when you run a bit faster (or even begin to realise you can run at all!), lift a bit more then you begin to start creating a bank of counter evidence to the ingrained belief that you are not able to do certain things. So below are a few ways in which you might want to try to give yourself a well-needed dose of self-belief

Write a journal or have a notebook where you write down all your accomplishments – I don’t mean huge life accomplishments, small every day successes – you ran further, you started running, you ate well, you actually got the kids dressed before midday! You met a deadline at work, anything – no matter how small. Then when you have a feeling of self-doubt and look back through the weeks – you will be surprised about how much you have done. We always tend to focus on the things that have gone wrong, the failures but actually when you weigh it all up, the successes outweigh every time.

Setbacks as opportunities – If something doesn’t go your way, try not to see this as an excuse to give up. For example, I found out about a friend who had been furloughed, he was concerned that once the furlough period was over he would be one of the ones considered for redundancy. Instead of waiting, he went and learnt about all the other aspects of the company, he went in to help and volunteer, he went on a free course and now the company want him to possibly open a franchise in the area he wants. So he turned a potential set-back into an opportunity.

Choose the voices – if you have ‘friends’ or influences in your life that are not rooting for you, not supporting you and are not your champions, it may be time to rethink their role in your life. Positive energy breeds confidence in the ability to change and try new things. This is not to say you want an army sycophants – good friends will question and help you figure things out, but they will support and encourage if it’s what you want to do.

Wait a day – don’t act hastily ( I am super hasty) don’t delete that email, say no/yes, have a day’s thinking time – self-doubt will be an automatic response so give it a day to have a rational debate with yourself and your important people.

Start small – if some of the things that you want to do seem insurmountable, try and complete small challenges that will help create a sense of achievement and therefore build your confidence. Complete a free online course (I highly recommend the skills network for free courses) try a new exercise or just exercise, the small steps equals big changes in how you view yourself, a person that can.

For me, that voice is still there but I am learning to listen to others that are louder and more positive – it started with exercise but I am starting to realise that the ceiling might not exist.

Love always

Ruby x

“There is no magic cure, no making it all go away forever. There are only small steps upward; an easier day, an unexpected laugh, a mirror that doesn’t matter anymore” Laurie Halse Anderson – Wintergirls

The topic of this blog has been one which I have spent a lot of time debating about whether I should write about. This is down to several reasons: firsty, I am not an expert or professional in matters of nutrition, diets of disordered eating, I am mindful that this is still a current area that I am ‘doing battle’ with and it is intertwined with many other areas of my life that I find challenging.

This blog isn’t intended to be advice or tips or diets that work, it is just simply my history of what would probably be classed as ‘disordered eating’, one that I feel ready to share, and my aim by sharing is to reach out to others and to create help create honest conversations as starting points to help change negative behaviours.

My mum, for as long as I could remember, had a very negative body image and her weight yo-yoed from being bigger when we were younger to her dropping a significant amount of weight when she left my dad and took us to Brighton. My mum always attributed weight to life experiences, nothing to do with diet and nutrition and she never did any exercise – she didn’t believe in ‘diets’ only that weight was due to outside forces over which you have no control. I don’t know whether this has any relation to my eating habits and attitudes – but I do remember ‘weight’ being something that has always been present in my life, as is true for many.

I do have an odd memory of a summer when I was about twelve. I went to stay with my aunty, apple picking in the Kent orchards. My aunty we always joked had the best cupboards, full of treats. I remember everyone going out and my going into those cupboards and I suppose having what would be described as a ‘binge’. I literally ate so much I thought I could burst and after the rush, I felt an enormous sense of shame and guilt, like I just couldn’t believe what I had done. I then went and put on my aunties ‘lizzie’ exercise video and did it three times. I didn’t really think about this again.

During my teenage years who was a late developer, no boyfriends and a huge does of low self confidence – mostly tied up with how I looked, if I was prettier then things would be better, if I remember a boy I liked saying to me one, ‘it’s a shame you aren’t prettier, then you could be my girlfriend’ This wasn’t necessarily a food or weight issue but it was all about the external vessel and how that side of me was always something that needed to be compensated for, be useful to people, be funny, be kind and then the fact that you are ugly can be overlooked. Whenever I felt like this – food was used as a comfort, and that behaviour that I had first demonstrated when I was twelve would come to rear its ugly head time and time again.

This continued through university where my alcohol consumption also increased dramatically. I have always struggled to eat healthy and have a huge sweet tooth, this combined with no knowledge of how to look after myself or nutritional knowledge , meant that my weight ballooned as did my lack of self-esteem. I then returned home and this carried on, I worked at a pub and carried on a very unhealthy lifestyle, late nights, bad food and drinking. I hated my body and hated the way I looked but couldn’t find a way to change – again a bit like mum, I felt that my weight was all to do with outside circumstances and so surrendered myself to assuming that this was normal.

I moved to Norwich a year or two afterwards to make a new start but what came with me was the same old bad habits. It was about a year later when I met my (future) husband that things began to show some improvement. I lost a huge amount of weight – due to the shock of actually allowing someone in and accepting love and being in my first and only relationship. I also learnt to cook and for the first time managed to find a balance of controlling my eating and eating (fairly well), looking back it may have been papering over the cracks but I do remember feeling a certain peace with how I looked and how I felt about food.

Pregnancy would be the next trigger, again this is unsurprising and common. With all three children I gained huge amounts of weight and more so in the postnatal months, eating to survive, no sleep, PND meant that I stopped caring about myself, again – blamed outside forces on how it was.

It was after the birth of my third child that my obsession with dieting and calories began. I started tracking calories just as a way to see what I was consuming. Someone had taken a photo of me with Henry when he was about eight months old and I looked and my arm looked like a thigh, – I didn’t recognize myself and it was then that I decided to do something about it, stop blaming outside forces. I downloaded the app myfitness pal and decided to cut out alcohol and treats. When this wasn’t enough I moved on to shakes and lost a significant amount of weight, I felt great and was able to wear nice clothes, people complimented me or made comments on how much weight I lost – I became hooked.

I know that my personality -as I am sure many can relate too – is highly addictive and obsessive – I display little self -control -its either all or nothing, binge or fast, and this is a cycle of behaviour that I know I need to change. The weight I had lost and the feeling I gained became an obsession. My lowest point was when I was about seven and a half stone and eating about 800 calories a day – I was tired but I had convinced myself – this is brilliant – ‘I am finally thin and I am finally attractive and in control’. Except that I wasn’t, I mean yes I was thin, but I wasn’t attractive, I wasn’t in control – food was incontrol, my warped self image was incontrol.

My obsession with weight loss has been a roller coaster – the binging followed by guilt and shame and then obsessing about starting again the next day, making lists and mental promises to myself to change, and embarking on excessive exercise. I have used slim fast and other shakes, kidney bean extract as a carb blocker, the grapefruit diet, intermittent fasting, fasting, no carbs, skinny sprinkles (don’t ask), green tea extract, the list goes on -I am a makerters dream!

How did things change? What has helped me to regain control of this area of my life is through fitness and exercise. I believe that through running, weights and all forms of exercise – for me made me view my body in a totally different way. Once you can lift a certain weight or run a certain distance that you couldn’t before or believe you ever could you begin to see your body as funcional – see – look what it can do? Once you see your body as functional and not a source of shame or to be viewed you understand that it needs to be nourished to function. The better the nurishment the better the function – you can run faster, lift more and with that comes a sense of pride – your body did that.

The power of exercise has helped me on the path towards gaining control over my obsession with weight and poor body image – it has not gone away and I still use myfitness pal and track calories, I do panic when I eat what I consider too much, I worry when I gain, I still have a inability to control myself and binge, I still feel ashamed, but the gaps between these feelings are getting longer and I know the tools I need to mend. Fitness is not the complete answer but its a step in the right direction, its helping me try and become a positive role model to my children

I would be really interested to hear any stories you have about this – its a common issue and I know my experiences are far from unique – it just helps me to write it down and have others say ‘yes I felt like that’ so that you are not just a voice inside your own head,

Thank you for reading

Love always

Ruby

Tag: female fitness

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