Your body was never the problem <3

The “perfect” body has changed every single decade. Yours was never the problem

I was having a clear out recently and came across a box of old magazines

Some of them must have been twenty odd years old. Maybe more

And flicking through them was genuinely startling. Not because of the fashion (although, wow) but because of the bodies. The captions. The tone of it all

The absolute CERTAINTY that this, right here, was what a woman was supposed to look like

Except a decade earlier it had been something else entirely

And a decade before that, something else again

Let me take you on a very quick tour …

1920s. Flat chest. Straight up and down. Boyish. Women were literally binding their busts to get rid of curves

1950s. Complete reversal. Curves were everything. Hourglass, hips, bust. There were adverts in this era selling weight GAIN products to women who were considered too thin

1960s. Reversal again. Twiggy arrives, and suddenly the look is waif thin and adolescent

1970s. Tall, lean, tanned, effortless. Farrah Fawcett hair and long limbs

1980s. Aerobics, leotards, leg warmers. Toned and athletic (but still, always, slim)

1990s. The wheels come off. “Heroin chic”. Pale, gaunt, fragile

2000s. Size zero. Low rise jeans. Visible hip bones treated as an achievement, and tabloids circling women’s bodies in red pen for sport

2010s. Another handbrake turn. Suddenly you needed a tiny waist AND a big bum. The most surgically demanding shape yet

2020s. And now, with weight loss injections everywhere you look, the pendulum is swinging hard back towards thin again

Nine different “ideals” in roughly a hundred years

Nine times women were told, with total confidence, that THIS was the goal

And here’s the thing that gets me …

Not one of those standards was ever about health

They were fashions. That’s it. Fashions in bodies, sold with the same certainty as fashions in trousers

This bit is documented properly, which I find quite something

Researchers went back through decades of Miss America contestants and magazine centrefolds and measured them. Between 1959 and 1978, the “ideal” woman got steadily thinner. And she kept getting thinner through the 1980s

Meanwhile, the actual women in the population were getting slightly heavier

So the gap between the average woman and the “ideal” woman was widening in BOTH directions at once

And over that same period, the number of weight loss articles in women’s magazines shot up

What happens to us when we absorb it?

Here’s the study that I think about most

In 1995, television arrived in a rural part of Fiji. Before that, the culture genuinely valued a robust, strong body. Weight loss was not aimed for. Dieting was rare

Researchers surveyed teenage girls just before TV arrived, and a different group three years later

In three years, the proportion of girls scoring in the disordered eating range on a standard questionnaire went from 12.7% to 29.2%

Harmful weight control behaviours that literally none of the girls reported in 1995 were being reported by around one in nine of them by 1998

And by 1998, 69% said they had dieted to lose weight

Three years. That’s it

Closer to home, the Mental Health Foundation surveyed over 4,500 UK adults. Just over a third said they’d felt anxious because of their body image. Just over a third said they’d felt depressed. One in five had felt shame in the past year alone

And among women specifically, those numbers were higher across the board

That isn’t vanity

That’s a mental health issue affecting millions of people

If chasing the ideal actually worked, we might have something to weigh up…

It doesn’t

There’s research on midlife women looking at WHY they exercise, and comparing that with how much they actually do

The women whose motivation was body shape (toning, shaping, losing weight) were significantly LESS physically active than the women whose motivation was something else. Feeling good. Sleeping better. Energy. Quality of life

Read that again

Doing it for how you look was linked with doing LESS of it

Which honestly matches everything I see in real life. Appearance goals run on shame, and shame is a terrible engine. It gets you through January. It does not get you through a wet Tuesday in November

Whereas “I feel calmer and I sleep better when I’ve moved” … that one just keeps going

And on the mental health side, the numbers are hard to argue with. A study of 1.2 million adults found that people who exercised reported 1.5 fewer days of poor mental health a month than people who didn’t, once you matched them for other factors. That’s a reduction of around 43%

Interestingly, more wasn’t better. The biggest benefit sat around 45 minutes, three to five times a week. Beyond a certain point it started going the other way

Even walking was associated with a meaningful drop

You don’t need to punish yourself. You need to move, regularly, in a way you can keep doing

Habits. Yours. Not the ones on the poster

And there is decent evidence for what “yours” actually needs to look like

The most cited real world study on habit formation followed people adopting one new daily behaviour. The median time to reach the point where it felt automatic was 66 days. But the range was enormous, from 18 days to 254

And for exercise specifically, the median was closer to 91 days

So if you’ve been told 21 days and then felt like a failure at week four … you weren’t failing. You were just at week four

Which is possibly the most useful sentence in the whole field

There’s also a lovely body of work on something called functionality appreciation. Instead of asking women to feel better about how their body LOOKS, these programmes ask them to write about what their body DOES, and why that matters to them personally

In randomised trials, that approach improved body appreciation and appearance satisfaction, and reduced the habit of viewing yourself from the outside. It’s currently one of the best evidenced ways we have of improving body image

Not “learn to love your reflection”

Just … notice what you can DO

Carry the shopping. Get off the floor without using your hands. Keep up on the hill walk. Sleep through the night

That’s the stuff that actually builds a life

This one matters enormously, and the evidence is strikingly clear

Researchers surveyed nearly 3,000 teenagers and over 3,700 parents. Parents who had conversations about WEIGHT had teenagers who were more likely to diet, use unhealthy weight control behaviours, and binge eat

Parents who talked ONLY about healthy eating, and left weight out of it entirely, had teenagers who were LESS likely to do those things

Same intention. Wildly different outcome. Just a different framing

So it’s not “eat your veg or you’ll get chubby”

It’s “eat your veg, it helps your body do what you want it to do”

And it goes further than what we say TO them

It’s what they overhear. Us pinching our own stomachs in the mirror. Us calling a slice of cake naughty. Us announcing we’ve been “so bad” this weekend

They’re taking notes. All of it

Which means changing how you speak about your own body might be one of the most protective things you ever do for theirs

No pressure … but also, that’s quite a powerful thought, isn’t it

What this looks like in practice

There’s no formula, because that’s rather the point

But some questions worth sitting with:

What would I do if nobody could see the result? Start there. That’s usually the honest answer

What fits the life I actually have? Not the life where the kids sleep through and nobody gets ill. THIS one

What can we do together? A walk after tea. A swim on a Sunday. Family habits stick better than solo ones, and nobody has to be told it’s exercise

How do I want to FEEL? Stronger. Steadier. Less wiped out by four o’clock. Those are goals you can measure without a mirror

What am I saying out loud? Because someone’s listening

And then give it longer than you think. Weeks, not days. Months, even. Miss one, carry on

The takeaway

The standard has changed nine times in a century and it will change again. Probably before you’ve finished chasing this one

You cannot build a life around a moving target

But you CAN build habits that make you feel strong, capable, and like yourself. Habits that fit your body, your family, your week, your energy

Those don’t go out of fashion

And they were never really about how you look anyway 

If body image is affecting your day to day life or your relationship with food, please do speak to your GP. In the UK, Beat also offer free, confidential support

And if you’d like help building strength in a way that has absolutely nothing to do with shrinking yourself, I’d love to hear from you. Drop me a line at nicola@rossellfitness.co.uk and we’ll have a proper chat about you, and what you actually want to be able to DO

Nicola 

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The evidence base

The ideal moving away from real women

Garner, Garfinkel, Schwartz & Thompson (1980), *Psychological Reports*, and Wiseman, Gray, Mosimann & Ahrens (1992), *International Journal of Eating Disorders*. Measured Miss America contestants and magazine centrefolds from 1959 to 1988, showing a steady decline in body size alongside a rise in diet articles in women’s magazines, while population weights rose.

The Fiji study

Becker, Burwell, Gilman, Herzog & Hamburg (2002), “Eating behaviours and attitudes following prolonged exposure to television among ethnic Fijian adolescent girls”, *British Journal of Psychiatry*, 180:509-514. 63 girls surveyed in 1995, 65 in 1998. EAT-26 scores over 20 rose from 12.7% to 29.2%; purging behaviours went from 0% to 11.3%; 69% reported dieting by 1998. Caveat worth knowing: two separate samples rather than the same girls followed over time, and it’s a small sample.

UK body image and mental health

Mental Health Foundation with YouGov, March 2019. 4,505 UK adults and 1,118 GB teenagers. 34% had felt anxious and 35% depressed because of body image; 20% had felt shame in the past year. Rates were consistently higher in women than men.

Why we exercise, and how much we actually do

Segar, Spruijt-Metz & Nolen-Hoeksema (2006), “Go Figure? Body-Shape Motives are Associated with Decreased Physical Activity Participation Among Midlife Women”, *Sex Roles*. 59 midlife women. Those with body-shape motives were significantly less active. Caveat: cross-sectional, so it shows an association rather than proving direction. Segar’s later longitudinal work (2008, *Women’s Health Issues*) points the same way.

Exercise and mental health

Chekroud et al. (2018), *The Lancet Psychiatry*, 5:736-746. 1.2 million US adults. Those who exercised reported 1.49 fewer poor mental health days per month (43.2% fewer). Greatest benefit at around 45 minutes, three to five times weekly; more than 90 minute sessions was associated with worse outcomes. Observational, so not proof of cause.

How long habits actually take

Lally, van Jaarsveld, Potts & Wardle (2010), “How are habits formed: Modelling habit formation in the real world”, *European Journal of Social Psychology*, 40:998-1009. Median 66 days to automaticity, range 18 to 254 days, with exercise behaviours taking longer (median around 91 days). Missing a single day did not meaningfully affect habit formation. Note: the “21 days” figure has no research behind it at all, it comes from a 1960 plastic surgery book.

Focusing on what your body does

Alleva, Martijn, van Breukelen, Jansen & Karos (2015), “Expand Your Horizon”, *Body Image*, 15:81-89. Randomised controlled trial, 81 women with negative body image. Improved appearance satisfaction, functionality satisfaction and body appreciation, and reduced self-objectification, with effects holding at follow up. A 2019 systematic review (Guest et al.) identified it as the best evidenced intervention of its kind.

Talking to children about weight

Berge, MacLehose, Loth, Eisenberg, Bucchianeri & Neumark-Sztainer (2013), “Parent conversations about healthful eating and weight”, *JAMA Pediatrics*, 167(8):746-753. 2,793 adolescents and 3,709 parents. Weight-focused conversations were associated with more dieting, unhealthy weight control and binge eating; conversations focused only on healthful eating were associated with less. Also cross-sectional. See too Neumark-Sztainer et al. (2010), *Journal of Adolescent Health*, on family weight talk and dieting.