I’ve been a gym fanatic for as long as I can remember, weight training since my freshman year of high school. From volleyball to cross country, fitness has been an instrumental asset in my life.
In the same time that I was introduced to the gym, it became an unhealthy habit that ate at my body dysmorphia. Working out 4-5x / week, I would hyperfixate on my calorie intake, calorie burning, and how much I exercised. I would over analyze my physique in the mirror, sucking in my stomach to emulate a sign of thinness.
I used to believe that my weight was never skinny enough, my body disproportionate to my female peers. I was "bottom heavy", noticeably gaining a butt and thighs before my 16th birthday. What I thought was a gift from God was actually a double edged sword, bringing on compliments but also unwanted confrontations from men and most distraughtly my father telling me to "cover up" or that I was being "too grown."
These incidences plus a raging amount of hormones led me to a compromised relationship with fitness and health, more worried about the number on the scale and calories than the nourishment of my body.
As time passed, I grew to learn that the results in the gym that I wanted would not come about if I did not change the perception of myself. I had to stop desiring the physique of others without acknowledging the body God blessed me with.
In the second quarter of 2024, my goal has been to improve my relationship with the gym, build my physique, and encourage other women to get in the gym. Since my sophomore year of college, I wanted to encourage girls that you can reach those physique goals without rushing or pressuring yourself to appease societies standards of what the female body is supposed to look like.