Regular exercise can improve your health, and everyone who has the ability to go for a short walk should make it part of their daily routine. Everyone has different reasons for starting a fitness routine, and I exercise because it makes my life as a physically disabled person easier. Nowadays, people start exercising for the wrong reasons and do it because they are unhappy with their bodies and want to be the most toned person in the room. Exercise can give you a more toned body, and there is nothing wrong with wanting to look good, because I think we all want that. You can always improve your fitness, but it can be harmful when your main reason for starting a fitness journey is to look a certain way and achieve a specific body type. Exercise should be about improving your health, but it’s not about that when you use fitness as a form of self-hatred and exercise for vanity reasons. Exercise should not be all about looks because there are so many benefits that go beyond your physical appearance but for many, it’s all about looking better. Why shouldn’t you exercise for vanity reasons? In this post, I am going to talk about the dangers of exercising for vanity reasons.
It fuels your body image issues and you won’t recover from them- If you are struggling with body dysmorphia or any kind of body issue and want to recover, the worst thing you can do for yourself is to exercise because you hate your body and want to change it. You will never recover from these struggles and feel confident in your body if you continue to exercise to get abs, because exercising for vanity reasons fuels these struggles, and nothing will ever feel like it’s enough. When I started exercising, I struggled with body image issues that did not get better until I stopped exercising to change my physical appearance and started chasing true health. You may have to exercise less for a short period of time to recover from your body image issues, but recovery is possible when you unlearn diet culture and exercise for the right reasons. There is nothing wrong with wanting to look better, but if you have body image issues, exercising for vanity reasons will only fuel these issues, so you won’t get better.
It ignores true health- Regular exercise has a lot of health benefits that have nothing to do with your physical appearance. There is nothing wrong with wanting to look good, but you aren’t exercising for true health if you are using it as a form of self-hatred, and you are doing it because you want to brag about how fit you are. You should exercise because you love your body, not because you hate it, and sometimes I think people get so obsessed with changing their physical appearance that they forget the real reason for starting a fitness journey. People sometimes want to change their bodies so badly that they take desperate measures and do whatever it takes to achieve that, which is not always healthy. You should be exercising to improve your health, and it’s not about that when your main reason for exercising is to change your body. Exercising for vanity reasons ignores true health, because when people are obsessed with shrinking their body, they don’t care if what they are doing is health-promoting and will do whatever it takes to be the smallest person in the room.
It increases your risk for eating disorders– When exercise is all about body image and changing your physical appearance, sometimes people will put themselves on highly restrictive diets they can’t maintain and over-exercise to try and achieve the body type they think they should have. People who have a disordered relationship with exercise are at a higher risk of developing an eating or body image disorder than someone who has a healthy relationship with exercise. Exercising to change your physical appearance increases your risk of developing an eating disorder because a lot of people who are desperate to change their bodies often undereat calories and exercise too much, which can cause eating disorders.
You can’t always achieve your dream body-type– Diet culture makes people believe that if they ate healthy and exercised more that they would be able to achieve their dream body. When the body you think you should have is not possible to achieve, diet culture immediately blames the individual for not trying hard enough. Regular exercise can sometimes change your body, but how our body looks is not within our complete control because you can’t change genetics. I don’t exercise for vanity reasons because achieving your dream body is not always possible, and sometimes it is impossible. People sometimes believe that if they are consistent with their diet and exercise routine that they can change their body to look the way they want it to, but you can’t always change it because you only have some control over how your body looks.
Summer is here which means there is more pressure to exercise more to achieve that “summer body.” I don’t believe in the whole “summer body” mentality and think it can be harmful because it gets in people’s heads that exercise is all about physical appearance. Regular exercise can change your body, but it should be more about improving your health than achieving a certain physique. When you exercise because you hate yourself, nothing ever is going to feel good enough, because you can always improve your fitness. Exercise for the right reasons because you will be a happier person when you can view exercise as an opportunity for what your body can do instead of a punishment for what you ate. A smaller body does not necessarily mean someone is healthier, and sometimes it can be a sign of an illness or eating disorder. You should never make body comments because you never know if someone’s weight loss is healthy or if they are struggling with an eating disorder that shouldn’t be praised. Why do you exercise? If you liked this post, please leave a comment below and share it with your friends.
Subscribe And Never Miss A Post
My Rockin Disabled Life 