Is our body a never-ending project, or are we living in it?

Fitness influencers offer a seductive promise: that with enough discipline, protein, time, knowledge, and consistency, we can become the best version of ourselves. That can be partially true, but, to quote Patrick Bateman, «You can always look thinner, look better».  That promise can quickly become a life sentence.

I’m always inspired by a friend who has worked out all her life, and I consider that she has an excellent relationship with her body and exercise. She always says she works out to eat whatever she wants, and she only does exercises she likes. Of course, she is a very measured person, and eating whatever she wants doesn’t mean eating an entire cake every day, but you get the gist.

I found this revealing because I used to take a very different approach to exercise. I restricted food a lot and pushed myself way too hard on every workout. This approach took me to the point of exhaustion often, and I’d let it all go; then I’d start from scratch.

This wasn’t a good technique, really, and I had to understand that pushing myself harder wasn’t the answer, and enjoying myself enough to want to repeat it the next day was. Also, nourishing my body properly helped me build energy for my workouts, and by properly, I mean enjoying treats every so often.

It gets to the point where taking care of your body becomes a way of managing your relationship with yourself. If you notice you are becoming too obsessed, to the point that you don’t enjoy going out for pizza with your friends because you won’t hit your protein goals, you might want to check what you so desperately need to control.

Sometimes the body becomes a place where we attempt to manage uncertainty that might be taking place elsewhere. We become attached to the image of an idealized body that would grant us every fantasy we project onto it. We imagine that if we achieve said body, we will finally be (you name it) happy, confident, free.

The goalpost keeps moving away, and we keep running after it. It would be beautiful to achieve a state in which we exercise because we like it and because it makes us healthier and happier. We’re not really living if we’re only living to hit our macros.

Maybe we could try to be as happy, confident, and free as we can in the body we were given, and exercise to explore its energy, and not to constrict it.

This knowledge will become especially relevant when all brands become about wellness (this is already happening) and fitness becomes moralized. Fitness culture is not only about how a body looks, but it also teaches us that how a body looks is evidence of who a person is (and it does, but not in the way the industry wants to sell us).

Should we live our lives only for self-actualization? Can’t we dedicate our energy to projects beyond ourselves?