Tiny Buddha

Tag: skinny

  • How I Am Learning to Trust My Body More and Control It Less

    How I Am Learning to Trust My Body More and Control It Less

    “I’m a beautiful mess of contradiction, a chaotic display of imperfection.” ~Sai Marie Johnson

    I don’t identify as having an eating disorder. I don’t struggle with anorexia, bulimia, or binge eating.  Yet I exercise precise control of my weight, down to the pound. If I gain a mere two pounds, I can feel it. First in my stomach. Then in my face.

    That’s when the self-loathing kicks in.

    I beat myself up for gaining those two pounds.

    I wear a shirt to sleep at night, instead of being naked like I am when I am two pounds lighter.

    I leave the towel wrapped around me when I get out of the shower, to avoid having to look at my naked body in the mirror.

    I eat only a smoothie for breakfast.

    I go to bed hungry.

    I don’t want to have sex because I don’t feel good in my body.

    I restrict myself from food and pleasure until I lose those two pounds.

    What’s worse is that I desire to lose even more weight.

    Sometimes I google “BMI calculator” and enter my height and weight in the tool. The tool tells me I am a normal weight. I enter a weight several pounds below my actual weight to see what weight I would need to be to be underweight. That weight is 133 pounds.

    I secretly crave to be underweight. Which is why I was so happy when I got food poisoning a few weeks ago and weighed 133 pounds for four days.

    I am disgusted with myself for being happy about this. I was throwing up for two days, was only eating toast, and was extremely weak. Yet I felt happy because I was smaller.

    I didn’t want to return to my normal weight. I wanted to remain small.

    I did slowly regain that weight. I hopped on the scale at the gym yesterday and I weigh 136.8 pounds. “Shit,” I thought. I want to be down to 135 before my wedding in three weeks. I quickly started calculating and felt relieved, knowing it would be easy to lose less than two pounds in three weeks. No problem.

    I’m also disgusted with myself about the amount of time I spend thinking about food and my weight. What did I eat today? Did I have too many pretzels? What will I eat for dinner? Today was my rest day, so I have to eat less. 

    I am slowly becoming aware of how much brain space food and weight take up. I wonder what creativity I could unleash if I devoted less time to thinking about food and more time to brainstorming, dreaming, and problem-solving.

    In addition to all this thinking, I also snack incessantly. Yesterday I counted and I went to the kitchen twelve times to get a tiny snack. A couple of pretzels, a mandarin, a handful of granola, a bite of chocolate, a few blueberries.

    I’m not sure if my constant snacking is due to actual hunger or if it’s connected to a more general anxiety and inability to relax.

    I think it’s both. When I eat a bigger breakfast, I have less desire to snack throughout the day. But I also think there’s an element of anxiety, because I find a moment of calm through the action of putting a bite of something in my mouth. For me this doesn’t show up as over-eating when I’m stressed, it’s more of a daily anxious habit. Perhaps some sort of desire for oral fixation.

    I could go even deeper to say that perhaps I feel like I am missing something in my life and, therefore, try to fill that void with snacks. I’m not sure if that’s the case, because mostly I am pretty happy and content. Yet my snacking behavior could suggest otherwise. Perhaps both things can be true. I can be happy in some ways and still yearn for more.

    I am also assessing my other eating habits. I don’t severely restrict myself from treats. I eat cake when I want to. I eat McDonald’s at the end of a long backpacking trip. I treat myself to an occasional burger. But I don’t enjoy these less healthy foods guilt-free. If I have cake one night, I’ll work out extra hard the next morning. It’s almost like I punish myself for indulging in a treat.

    I’m not sure what’s under my desire to be small. I know some of it comes from messages from society that thin is beautiful, and the insidious design of our culture to distract women with matters of physical appearance, so we have less brain capacity to think about things that really matter. I think it also comes from the positive feedback I receive about how fit I am. As if I’m a better person because I’m thin. I’m not.

    To this last point, I’m making an effort to give more non-appearance compliments to other people. My favorite one to give (and to receive) is: “I love your energy.” Let’s attune more to people’s energy than the size of their waist or definition of their brows or shape of their butt.

    I also know I have perpetuated these unfair beauty standards. I do it under the guise of: “I want people to be healthy.” But I know that thin does not necessarily mean healthy. I know that bigger does not necessarily mean unhealthy. Also, who decided that being healthy is something to strive for?

    Sure, we have a survival instinct, and being strong, mobile, and able to endure will help us survive. But I’m not sure that being healthy is some kind of moral standard. I strive for it for myself, but just like anything else, it’s an individual person’s decision if they want to be healthy, and what healthy means to them.

    Yes, I’m seeing the contradiction here, because I say I strive to be healthy, yet my desire to be underweight doesn’t seem mentally (or physically) healthy. The amount of time I spend thinking about food doesn’t seem healthy either. Which means I am going along with the lie that has been shoved down my throat my entire life: the lie that thin and small is beautiful.

    Of course I know that is not true. Of course I know that a person’s soul is what makes them beautiful. Of course I know that being weak and underweight is not healthy. Yet in some areas of my life, I act as if I don’t know these things.

    I would like to get to a place of trusting and listening to my body. Trusting it when it wants to eat a big burger after a long hike. Trusting it when it wants a piece of cake on a random night. Trusting it when it craves fruits and vegetables. Trusting it when my stomach feels jittery and empty and wants more fuel.

    I would also like to get to a place of not beating myself up if I gain two, three, four, or more pounds. I want to actually believe that I am still beautiful and worthy, no matter what my weight is.

    Wow. It’s weird to write this. Normally I write about my challenges once I’m on the other side of them. After I have unpacked them. But this time I am writing about a challenge right as I am becoming aware of it. Which means I don’t yet have much wisdom for you. But here’s what I do know:

    1. Exercise should be something we do because we love our bodies, not because we want to control them and keep them small.

    Sometimes I do have this relationship with exercise.

    I love being alive, and I do strength and cardio training because I want to be strong and mobile when I’m old. I want to be on this journey of life as long as possible. I do lunges because I want to be able to climb up a mountain and be stopped in my tracks at the beauty of our planet. I run because those endorphins make me feel good.

    Other times, I crank up the incline on the treadmill to punish myself for eating too much popcorn at the movies the night before. Or I try to do all the squats and deadlifts to make my butt rounder. My goal is to release those latter motivations, because those are grounded in control and inadequacy, not love.

    2. Your worth is not connected to your weight.  

    Read that one again. You are talented, strong, and beautiful no matter what your weight is. You can desire to lose weight or gain muscle or strengthen your heart, but doing so gets to be an act of love.

    3. We should stop thinking of indulging as a bad thing.

    To indulge is to allow oneself to enjoy the pleasures of life—eating a sweet fig in June, eating a chocolate croissant just because it tastes good, hugging your partner after being apart for a few days, driving through your neighborhood listening to your favorite song, sitting outside in the sun on a summer day, and sipping your coffee in the morning.

    Life should be pleasurable, and I want us all to indulge more, without guilt.

    4. Get to know your body.

    What I mean by that is not just getting to know how your body looks, but how your body functions.

    One of the most empowering and transformative things for me in the last few years has been learning about my menstrual cycle. Through reading, coaching, talking to my doctor, and being aware of my own body, I know what is happening hormonally each day of my cycle. I am able to pinpoint the day, how I will feel, and what my body will need. And then I (try to) honor what she needs.

    For example, on day seventeen of my cycle I am usually cranky, tired, and hungry. I clear my schedule, sleep more, and eat what I want.

    5. Your relationship with your body might not be black and white.  

    In some ways, I have a healthy relationship with my body. In other ways (as described above), I do not. Both things can be true. I think the goal is to shift toward a place of love and acceptance, and to spend less time thinking about what you look like and more time being aware of how you feel, how you live in alignment with your values, and how you show up for others.

    6. People’s struggles with confidence and self-esteem manifest in many different ways.

    Some people close to me might be surprised to hear about my inner dialogue and complex relationship with food because I look healthy. (And mostly, I think I am healthy.) But it doesn’t mean I don’t fall prey to the social pressures to look a certain way. We all do in some way or another.

    So let’s have grace, empathy, and understanding for each other, and know that we’re all going through stuff, whether it’s visible or not.

  • Being Skinny Doesn’t Make You Fit or Healthy

    Being Skinny Doesn’t Make You Fit or Healthy

    “Your body is precious. It is your vehicle for awakening. Treat it with care.” ~Buddha

    As a 5’4″ petite, half-Asian, people have always assumed that I’m fit. However, my slender figure hid the sins of a poor diet and exercise routine for a decade.

    The truth is, being skinny doesn’t make you healthy. There are many hidden dangers of being so-called “skinny fat.” (Though this is a commonly used term for unhealthy skinny people, it’s worth noting that bigger doesn’t always mean unhealthy. So perhaps a more accurate term would be “skinny unhealthy.”)

    Skinny fat, also known as “normal weight obesity,” affects both men and women who have seemingly healthy weights and Body Mass Indexes (BMI). However, a 2008 study by the University of Michigan found that nearly one-fourth of Americans of normal weight had high blood pressure or high cholesterol.

    I spent all of my twenties as a skinny fat woman. I haphazardly worked out without any routine or strategy, mainly copying what my friends did or running on a treadmill. I drank too much alcohol and never followed any diet consistently. My idea of a healthy dinner was frozen potstickers over a bed of lettuce.

    This thinking changed after my then-fiancé, now-husband, Ryan, proposed. I kicked it into high gear and used my engineering background to dive into the research. With six months to go before the wedding, I started experimenting with my body, diet, and exercise to have a toned body for my dream wedding.

    How Do You Know If You’re Skinny Fat?

    Dr. Ishwarlal Jialal, director of the Laboratory for Atherosclerosis and Metabolic Research at UC Davis Health says, “They look healthy, but when we check them out, they have high levels of body fat and inflammation. They’re at high risk for diabetes and cardiovascular problems, but you wouldn’t know it from their appearance.”

    Whether or not you’re capable of eating Taco Bell every day for lunch without gaining a pound, don’t be fooled. Bad diets will catch up with you. Here are other descriptions to see if you’re skinny fat:

    • You wake up skinny, but by the end of the day, your stomach has bloated as if you’ve gained twenty pound
    • You have a muffin top yet are slender everywhere else but your midriff.
    • You tend to reduce food intake during the day if you plan to fit into a tight shirt in the evening.
    • People dismiss your weight fluctuations and concerns due to your small or slender size.
    • Despite a sometimes-poor diet, you don’t seem to gain weight.
    • No matter how much cardio you do, your weight also seems to stay the same.
    • You’ve never seen muscle definition.
    • You can’t do a pull up to save your life and have “jelly arms.”

    According to InBody, a body composition device manufacturer, recommended body fat ranges for healthy men are between 10-20%, while for women 18-28%. If your weight is normal or low, yet you have a higher percentage of body fat, then you may be skinny fat.

    The same as being overweight, a bevy of health problems can afflict those men and women who are skinny fat, including higher risks of cardiovascular diseases.

    It took me years to understand that while I was skinny, I wasn’t healthy. Since then, I began taking intentional and systemic steps to get my health back on track.

    Now that we’re all housebound, it would be all too easy to indulge poor eating habits, and it’s understandable and okay if we splurge every now and then. But this could be a great time to develop new habits that can improve our overall health—which is crucial to maintaining a healthy immune system.

    If you’re ready to go from skinny fat to fit, here’s what you need to keep in mind:

    1. Know that it takes time.

    The problem with being skinny fat is that it takes a lot of effort to shift your body composition, a lot more than it often does for others. I can see my husband’s defined muscles after a week of workouts and healthy eating. For me and others who are skinny fat, it may feel like your body simply stays the same. However, you’ll undoubtedly start feeling better, even if you can’t see the results.

    Eating well and working out provides a whole spectrum of benefits, from better sleep to more energy. I felt better within a week although didn’t see any physical results for about two months. Don’t fear. Stay consistent and follow the plan. Good things are happening.

    2. Forget the scale.

    Many men and women are obsessed with the number on the scale. The truth is, the scale can’t tell you if it measures water weight, fat, or muscle. In fact, the scale can be downright misleading for skinny fat people. You may think that you don’t need to change your unhealthy habits because you’re a normal, or even low, weight.

    So, instead of focusing on the weight when you’re improving your diet and fitness, focus on tracking inches or taking photos as the primary data benchmark for success.

    Document your “before” stats by measuring the size of your chest, arms, waist, hips, and thighs. Next, take photos of yourself from the front, side, and back. Date them and store them somewhere safe. Don’t worry. No one ever has to see them. The important thing is creating a benchmark to see your health and body composition improve over time.

    Once you start focusing on eating better and working out regularly, you’ll likely become leaner in some areas, but more muscular and bigger in others. Either way, you’re on track to becoming healthier.

    3. Focus on five or six small meals a day.

    If you’re only going to do one thing, hone in on healthy eating. Eat fiber-rich foods like leafy vegetables and beans while reducing simple carbohydrates and sugars. While someone who is skinny fat may not see the adverse affects of a poor diet, consider this: a single chocolate milkshake is only burned off after sixty minutes running on a treadmill. Be thankful of your body’s metabolism, but don’t take it for granted.

    For all skinny fat men and women, I recommend eating smaller meals more frequently. While it’s a big scientific debate as to whether three or six meals a day are better, studies support that smaller meals help stave off hunger and reduces the potential to overeat or binge.

    As someone who has intermittent fasted, ate a traditional three large meals daily, and also experimented with small, frequent meals, I found that the small, frequent meals were most effective at keeping me the same size throughout the day. It also required advanced meal prepping, which meant extra thought was put into my food and nutrition.

    For me, moving to five small meals wasn’t as hard as I thought. Here was a typical day of vegetarian eating for me:

    8:30 AM – Breakfast smoothie loaded with frozen spinach and peanut butter

    10:30 AM – A snack of pumpkin or sunflower seeds, plus a banana

    12:30 PM – Homemade cup of vegetable soup with a strawberry and goat cheese salad

    3:00 PM – A half-cup of Greek yogurt with low-sugar, high-fiber granola

    6:00 PM – Asian vegetable stir-fry with quinoa

    This plan was enough food to keep me satiated and never hungry—although my colleagues joked that whenever they came into my office, I was always eating! This diet plan along with my workouts helped me move past my skinny fat phase.

    Remember, no matter your size, women should never consume less than 1,200 calories, and men should never consume less than 1,600 calories a day. If your goal is to increase muscle mass, then you might even have to eat more!

    4. Stop the cardio and grab the free weights.

    Hands down, the fastest way to leaving your skinny fat behind is through weightlifting—and you can even use DIY weights, like packages of rice or beans or paint cans.

    Weightlifting is something I would never have tried without my husband first suggesting it. With six months to go before the wedding, I knew my current cardio and running routines wouldn’t get me there! So, I acquiesced and started an online weightlifting program in our home gym.

    Unlike with cardio and aerobic exercise, weightlifting and other anaerobic exercises (like sprints and HIIT) build lean muscle mass. Instead of burning fat and oxygen, your muscles burn stored sugar called glycogen. Then, as you grow more muscle, new benefits follow including more calories burned, faster metabolism, increased bone density, and lowered blood sugar.

    For the first couple of months, I was skeptical that the weightlifting was doing anything. For years my mantra was “the more you sweat, the better the workout.” There were some days when after forty-five minutes of lifting, I didn’t even break a sweat! Before I wrote it off, however, I consulted my “before” stats and photos.

    When I saw the results, my jaw dropped. As someone who kept a never-changing figure since high school, I had put on muscle and looked more vibrant and healthier than ever. Outside of feeling sexier and stronger, the photos revealed that I hid all of my excess fat in my back. To top it off, my small Asian hips grew by four inches.

    As our wedding loomed closer, I realized that my perspective had changed about what my “dream body” looked like. Instead, it was now apparent that being skinny should never have been my goal. My body physique had become even bigger in some places, yet I had never felt so strong, confident, and healthy. I remember leaving my dress fitting the weekend before our wedding giddy, feeling more beautiful than I had ever felt before.

    It’s been an eye-opening journey, but it’s been rewarding to share that yes, men and women can go from skinny fat to fit with a few small dietary and exercise steps.

  • Loving Yourself When You’re Too Fat, Too Skinny, Too Tall, or Too Short

    Loving Yourself When You’re Too Fat, Too Skinny, Too Tall, or Too Short

    “It’s not what you look at that matters, it’s what you see.” ~Henry David Thoreau

    Living in NYC, I have seen some crazy and outrageous things. So, I shouldn’t have been surprised to see an ad in the subway that read, “Overcome Your Bikini Fears. Breast Augmentation Made In NY: $3,900,” or another ad from the same plastic surgery office that showed a picture of a woman looking sad, holding a pair of small tangerines in front of her breasts, and the same woman looking happy holding grapefruits, with the same caption, “Breast Augmentation Made in NY: $3,900.”

    Still, I was surprised to see that this plastic surgery office would so overtly play into the insecurities of some women, basically implying, “You’re not good enough as you are; let me make you better.”

    I understand that this office is simply trying to make a buck—a big buck, that is—but I couldn’t help but be aghast that this sort of message is allowed to be out there, to be seen on the train by many women, especially young women who might be wracked with a poor self-image already.

    The truth is, I get it. I grew up wanting plastic surgery pretty much from third grade into my early twenties.

    I was obsessed with looking in the mirror, poking around with my fingers trying to see the “better version” of my face, when it would be somehow reconstructed magically or surgically.

    My nose was too flat, my eyes were not big enough or deep-set enough, and my jaw was not defined enough. To top it off, my legs were too short and my torso too long. I was not a girl on a magazine cover.

    It broke my heart that I felt ugly and plain, and that I wanted something different from what I was. I actually felt beautiful sometimes, but when I looked at myself in the mirror, it wasn’t a vision of beauty, as I understood it.

    The vision of beauty was the girl in a Hollywood movie. The vision of beauty was the girl in a commercial. The vision of beauty had features that I didn’t possess.

    I kept wishing that my facial and body features would magically change as I grew up, or that I would one day be able to have plastic surgery. But deep down, I knew that I didn’t want to change my physical appearance in order to feel good about myself.

    Over time, through the transformational work I did in the past decade, I was able to dissolve self-hatred and the desire for plastic surgery, and give myself total acceptance for who I am.

    Now I feel good in my own skin. I’ve learned that the old adage is true: “Beauty is in the eye of the beholder.” I had appreciated it as a concept for a long time, but now I get it and know that it’s true.

    I used to wish that my face and body would change somehow, but in truth, what needed to change was the way I saw myself and how I felt about myself.

    My hope is that every person feels beautiful and good in his or her own skin.

    Beauty is not a monopoly that only belongs to Miss Universe and the like. We are all beautiful in our own unique ways.

    If you’re struggling with a poor self-image like I did, these tips may help.

    1. Stop comparing.

    My old boyfriend used to tell me that I was beautiful over and over like a broken record, though I didn’t believe him. He said this to me one time and it stayed with me: You can’t compare a rose to a lily; they’re both beautiful and they’re different.

    I was constantly comparing myself to others, and I felt inferior because I didn’t measure up to the conventional ideas of beauty.

    Since I stopped comparing, I realize that no part of my body is any less beautiful than someone else’s just because it’s shorter, longer, flatter, or bigger. When I stopped seeing with a specific set of beliefs and ideas, my “short” and “crooked” legs stopped being inferior.

    You will always be too fat, too skinny, too tall, too this and that, when you compare yourself to others. You will always be “too something” when you play the comparison game. Know that you are exactly what you’re supposed to be—one of a kind and beautiful.

    2. Ideas of beauty differ and change all the time.

    If you looked into different cultures at different times, you would see that people had (and still have) different ideas of beauty. Some like curvy, some like skinny, some like tall, and some like short.

    A lot of times (or maybe all the time), the definition of beauty as we know it is just the opinion of one person or group of people. It’s just so happened that this opinion got popularized.

    If you don’t fit their definition of beauty, does it mean you’re any less beautiful? Absolutely not. Don’t let the ever-changing opinions of others affect how you feel about yourself.

    Take Sarah Jessica Parker, for example. Some people think she’s the most gorgeous woman on the whole planet, and some quite the opposite. So, who’s right?

    The better question to ask would be: Does it really matter? It really doesn’t matter what other people say or think. What matters is how you see yourself and how you feel about yourself.

    3. Change the way you see.

    Have you had experiences where people you thought were attractive became unattractive in your eyes, and people you thought were unattractive became attractive? I have many times.

    When I was nineteen, I met a guy who I thought was “ugly” at first sight. Then I fell madly in love with him two weeks later, and he became the most handsome guy in the whole wide world to me.

    Conversely, I met another guy a few years later that I thought had the most gorgeous face. A few interactions later, his face lost all its appeal to me, as I found him to be rather obnoxious.

    I’ve had so many of these experiences over the years, and I’ve realized that beauty entails more than just “pretty” features. Whenever I find something lovely about a person, whether it’s their kindness, generosity, or thoughtfulness, their external features seem to start to sparkle with radiance. It’s not that the person changed—my perception did.

    Dr. Wayne Dyer often said, “When you change the way you look at things, things you look at change.” I know this to be true because I often experience this in my life.

    When I go on my nature walks, I try to observe things without preconceived notions or ideas. I sometimes stop and look at a fly perched on a leaf of a plant, and when I look at it without my preconceived notion (that it’s ugly or disgusting), I can see the exquisite beauty that it is.

    Now, I know that you’re not a fly, but the same principle applies. When you remove the gunk—the gunk of beliefs and ideas—from your eyes, you start to see the magnificent beauty of who you are.

    4. Change your thoughts.

    Recently, when I was video recording myself, I felt rather disturbed by my appearance. I didn’t want to feel this way, but a barrage of negative self-talk dominated my head, and I wanted to just give up on the whole project.

    I went for a walk, and when I came back—with a little more space within myself—I realized I had allowed myself to be taken over by the negative voices in my head. I had been totally immersed in them.

    Time, space, and a little bit of deep breathing helped me step back from my own drowning thoughts. Then I was able to embrace the other voices that also existed in my head, which were more affirming and kind. And I continued with my project.

    How sad it would be if I allowed those negative voices to stop me from offering what I have to give: my knowledge, ideas, voice, gifts, my love, and more. I would be withholding all of those things from people who might need and benefit from them.

    If you find yourself in a similar situation where you’re feeling bad about how you look, take a moment to notice what you’re thinking. Step back and take a few deep breaths so you can observe your thoughts instead of being immersed in them.

    And remember, you’re more than your skin. You, too, have so much to give (even if you feel like you don’t): your unique gifts, your experience, courage, ingenuity, creativity, and so much more. Don’t let the negative voices stop you from sharing what you have. The world (your neighbors, your friends, your grandma, or whatever your world may be) needs it.

    5. Give yourself total acceptance.

    I admit, even with all the realizations I’ve had, there are times when I look at myself in the mirror with dismay.

    Some of the old, familiar thoughts crop up in my head, telling me I’m plain and ugly. The difference now is that I catch myself falling into my old belief—that looking a certain way makes me undesirable and unlovable.

    For most of us, this is the core of the issue: We believe that we would not be desirable, that we would not be loved, if we didn’t look “good.”

    The truth is, there will always be someone or some people who will find me undesirable or unlovable, but the world is also full of people who will feel the opposite.

    Ultimately, the deeper truth I had to find within myself was this: If no one loves me, will I love myself?

    The answer was yes, I will love myself. I will not forsake me. I will not take my love away from me.

    That’s the truth I needed for myself, and what I truly needed in order to feel beautiful and good in my own skin.

    In those moments when I don’t like what I see in the mirror, I make a choice. I make a choice to give myself total acceptance and love for all that I am: good, ugly, bad, and all.

    And that’s how I love myself when I’m too short, too tall, too fat, and too skinny.

    Woman at beach image via Shutterstock