For many, we exercise to get stronger and fitter but for women, it is to get thinner. It’s everywhere, they’re nagging ads to join the gym, or buy a product that promises to make us look like a model or just the promise to loose weight if we will do this or that. It’s hard to find a weight loss product that shows a woman who is like us, but instead they always show a [too] skinny girl in the ads and on TV. Even the fitness magazines show a skinny girl and promise you can look just like her or you can get a “flat tummy fast”. No matter where you look, the message is about making [women] weigh less, not about health or enjoyment.

The “get thin” tack hasn’t even worked on the 80% of the UK women who are not doing enough exercise to maintain their health, according to Sue Tibballs from campaign group the Women’s Sport and Fitness Foundation. “It feels like all the negative energy we put into trying to control our bodies with diets, corsetry and surgery is driven by not liking ourselves – we are really undoing ourselves at the moment by battling our bodies.”

Women feel that exercise is a chore that has to be done, while your typical man enjoys the exercise. One poster wrote: “There is an indescribable feeling of power – like a secret I have with myself – knowing that under my clothes there is a strong body, one that can jump, punch, kick, lift, climb, swim, and run really fast.”

Tibballs went on to say, “We ran a project called Sweat in the City with 2,000 women aged 15 to 24. They all joined to lose weight, but as they progressed, the desire to lose weight became far less important, even though they didn’t lose significant amounts. They felt better and the size they were became less important.”

Tags: exercise, weight loss