Body Acceptance

and the perimenopause battle

I’m having a reckoning with my body. I’m someone who has worked in fitness for the past 15 years and championed body positivity and acceptance and yet, I seem to really be struggling to accept my own at the moment.

I saw an Instagram post this week by some dude bro, preaching the old, familiar gospel of dude bros, about how if you’re a personal trainer, your body is your calling card, you should be ripped and practice what you preach and how can you ever expect to get any clients if you don’t have the discipline to be in that kind of shape - yada yada yada, you know the drill. We’ve heard it all before.

That prompted me to post this reel, explaining why that is such a reductive take, how people come to training for a variety of different reasons and the trainer’s body fat percentage has little to do with it. Emotional intelligence, empathy, understanding, knowledge and the ability to coach someone are underrated, but far more important qualities in a trainer, in my opinion.

But the opinion of that dude bro is one that is widely held. And as a woman in fitness, on the brink of perimenopause (or knee deep in it, who even knows - everything is a symptom, apparently), the frustration is real. The reality is, my body is changing. And listen, I’m not disillusioning myself here. I am aware that I have an athletic build, that I’m ‘in shape’, but am I ripped? No. I don’t have a 6 pack, the love handles are doing their thing, cellulite dots my thighs. Most days I’m OK with that, but some days, I think I have to get radical with my diet and exercise regime to lean out, muscle up and get ripped. Because that’s what’s expected of me as a trainer, according to dude bro logic, at least.