A BODY TO LOVE

Anyone who has followed amayzine.com a bit knows that I am working with Jet on the project Destination Killerbody. In three months, we wanted to have a body with which we could carefree parade over summer beaches without experiencing a hint of insecurity. Just like every woman, I have a rather ambivalent relationship with my body. I'm glad it works and is healthy and all, but that's about where it ends. I hate my feet, my legs are fairly okay, my hips are miles too wide, I despise that spare tire fat on my belly and hips, and I could go on like this for a while. Of course, all of that is in my head, but still, it’s just there.

Now, as I write this, we are almost at the end of the Destination. For three months, we have trained our butts off three times a week at 07:30 for an hour. Of course, I am fitter than before and I see some muscles here and there that I didn't have before, but the big transformation I had hoped for is not there. I have been saying for years that I want a slimmer body, I torture myself by following dozens of super fit women on Instagram, and I could always hide behind the story “yeah, but I hate exercising, if I ever start exercising, I will surely get a body like that.” But that is not true, as it has now turned out.

Just over a year ago, I saw an episode of the MTV show Made during a lazy afternoon on the couch. The episode was about a really overweight girl who wanted to become a cheerleader, and a man with the physique of a Da Vinci statue had to make that happen. There was also a whole army of dietitians and psychologists ready to get that way too fat teenager back on track. While she stands on the treadmill crying, gasping, and half-vomiting, but after two months, almost nothing has changed, she gets the familiar lecture from her coach. Usually, those talks are full of empty clichés, but something in his story has always stuck with me. “You have to do it yourself. You can have all the help in the world, YOU have to do it.”

And that is also the case for me. I have a personal trainer, a sort of personal dietitian (Jet knows a lot about healthy eating and my friend Esmée has more than enough information available on her site www.workthates.nl ) and if I wanted to, I could run for an hour every day in Vondelpark. But I could have a personal trainer a hundred times, if I then stuff fries in my mouth at lunch, fuel a snack attack with mini Mars bars and Twix, drink a glass (or two) of white wine with my pizza with prosciutto and lots of cheese in the evening, and finish with a sticky toffee cake with a scoop of vanilla ice cream, then there is little left to see from that hour of exercise in the morning.

And that has made me think. Do I really want it? That body? Do I want to forbid myself to eat certain things? Do I want to cut back on the wine? I sometimes jokingly say that I want to be fat and happy later, so it's time for self-acceptance. Something about loving your body as it is, not being ashamed of anything, and embracing and loving that bikini from start to finish. Destination Killerbody is fun, but Destination Killermind, that is actually what it’s really about. And oh, you see, everything is always in your head.