One of the reasons that people feel stressed out before they even start a fitness routine is that they feel pressured by societal expectations of what their body should look like. The truth is, average-looking bodies can be healthy or unhealthy, and bodies that conform to narrow standards such as very low BMIs can also be healthy or unhealthy. If you drop the unrealistic expectations and just engage in health activities because you want to feel good, that’s all that matters.
People who are going to judge others based on how they look often have such ridiculous standards that most people couldn’t live up to those standards anyway. I experienced this years ago, I was working with a body-builder in a private yoga session. I was helping him modify a particularly challenging stretch that I had easily showed him. At that point, I had not yet been diagnosed with Hashimoto’s disease, but my clothing size had gone from a size 4 to a size 6 (my BMI was 21.6) which is still very small in the scheme of things.
When the client had trouble with the pose, instead of focusing on himself, he lashed out at me and said, “How can you be a yoga teacher when you’re so fat?!”
It was such a bizarre thing to say that I laughed out loud. At the end of the session, I showed this client some photos in Light on Yoga so he could see that an older guy who didn’t have the same physique as he had could still do some remarkable things that many people are never able to achieve.
The way to be happy in life is to stick as closely as you can to what is true, and when it comes to feeling good physically and emotionally, the truth is that daily movement is much more important than what your body looks like. If you have trouble accepting this idea, think about the people you feel closest to in your life and ask yourself how many of them look like they stepped out of a fashion magazine? Do you care what they look like or do you care how you feel in their presence? If you care more about how you feel around them, could it be true that that is also how they relate to you?