14 Mar Desperately Seeking Normal – The Search For Real Women
Beauty in the good old days
In 1986 Morrissey wisely professed “some girls are bigger than others, some girls mothers are bigger than other girls mothers”. Sounds obvious but we seem to have forgotten this fact. You may have noticed I’m interested by society stereotyping of how women (and men) “should” be. This is mostly because I (like millions of others) will never fit the parameters of what is considered “gorgeous” by the media. At my healthiest I am a size 14, but for the majority of my life I was a 16/18 or sometimes even a 20.
This exclusion has caused me serious pain throughout my life and the journey to loving myself unconditionally despite societies perceptions has been and will continue to be a long one.
It’s ridiculous that I am judged on the size of my bum or the perkiness of my boobs. I’m a highly intelligent, successful, attractive business woman and mother. But in truth it takes me a huge amount of energy to not be obese anymore, I have to really work at it. I’m okay with that because I know I’m worth the work but if I slip into negativity the constant judging myself by what we think is attractive these days is exhausting. I can see why others can’t be bothered or on the flip side pursue being thin like The Holy Grail crusaders.
It seems that people are either skinny or obese. We celebrate the skinny-minnies until they get too skinny then we criticise them. We also degrade the overweight. Where are the normal people celebrated? We have a totally skewed notion of what is attractive and in the media, normal people seem to be in a minority.
This was highlighted recently by an Ann Summers campaign. They wanted a ” real” woman to become the face of their Valentines range. The model chosen wasn’t normal she was quite overweight. I’m not judging anyone by their weight (people in glass houses and all that) but why are we celebrating unhealthiness ? The message going out to kids is either a) starve yourself or b) be overweight and eat badly. I want health, in all it’s natural configurations, to be celebrated (my willful hips included) and not just accepting obesity or the anorexic look as the norm which is sadly what is happening.
The work of Charles Poliquin is fascinating with regards to why some people struggle to lose weight. His work has shown that we store weight over areas of hormone imbalance for example storing fat on the bottom is because you aren’t taking in enough plant oestrogens, storing on the thighs is an imbalance of oestrogen made by your body, excess flesh on the triceps is an insulin imbalance due to sugar abuse. It’s interesting because it puts us back in that place where we have the power to change if we really want to.
The only way to lose weight long term is by loving yourself and making food choices that nourish and revitalise you as opposed to food choices that deplete you. If you desperately want a plan to follow we recommend starting with an elimination detox including a herbal detox then following the blood group diet, but Ed Victor once wrote a book called The Obvious Diet – he says we know what foods aren’t good for us we just choose to ignore ourselves.
With Kinesiology we can find what foods are the best for you through food testing. It’s a totally individual process based on how your body reacts to food and we call it Biochemic Individuality. It’s quick and cheap compared to other tests involving blood work or hair.
Food however is only part of the issue. Love yourself deeply and you will eat well. Love yourself deeply and you won’t worry about being heavier than you were at 21. Love yourself deeply and you will choose to exercise in a way you enjoy. Let’s teach kids THAT message and get the media interested in normal again. Let’s celebrate the normal beautiful myriad shapes of the healthy human body. They are truly bootilicious.