The Machine

Like most girls, I had a lot of body image issues growing up. Most my friends were average to skinny sized gals and I wasn't. I was a bit chubby as a kid, but more than that, my body just didn't look like theirs. This perplexed me for the longest time. I didn't overeat, I got way more exercise than most of them, and I was naturally athletic so it ate at me every single day that my thighs were bigger than theirs, my shoulders broader and, eventually, my chest flatter. Sure, I was pleased that I could beat them at arm wrestling and outrun them (for the most part anyway, especially in a dead sprint for a short distance), but why did I look so weird? My parents were little help; my dad actually tried to bribe me into losing weight when I was 7 or 8. Looking back on it, this really wasn't their fault (though the reaction still strikes me as a touch harsh), as things like body types and nutritional needs were not yet common knowledge. No, this was still the age of aerobics. 

So I took all this with me, grew up, gained and lost weight several times over, had a few different athletic pursuits, mostly successful, and still felt like there was something utterly wrong with me. It wasn't really until I started my Judo/BJJ journey that my thought pattern changed.

At the time I resumed my martial arts training, I was very, very heavy. I had worked too much and slept and exercised too little my last year of college, and in the year or so that followed, I had yet to find a way to shed the weight. When I started Judo and subsequently BJJ, I began to change the way I did things. I started being more cognizant of what I ate, I began running, cycling and sometimes swimming to augment my training. By the time I prepared for my second tournament, I was ready to commit to the diet and lifestyle completely. Once I had done that, a funny thing happened. I began to see myself differently. Sure, I had lost most the weight (it would all come off eventually) but more than that, I began to see myself not as a collection of flaws and rebellions against the notion of beauty, but instead I finally saw my body as something distinctly mine; my machine. My shoulders were no longer too broad and my super muscular (for a girl, anyway) upper body was no longer bulky and in need of sleeve cover. My legs, which I'd taken to calling the tree trunks, weren't ugly and stumpy, they were powerful. They could bridge my opponents and help me shrimp down the mat in less time than people much taller than I. Nearly every bodily quirk I had grown up trying to hide or fix suddenly had purpose in my game and my art and I was finding myself lucky to have a body that could do a pull up. Even more, the more I cared for that body by feeding it correctly and training and supporting it, the more it gave me back. The more hell I put it through on the mats and in my outside workouts, the more it gave me the next session. 

So, I guess the moral of my story is this: teach your kids that their bodies do not necessarily define them, but rather facilitate what they want to do with their lives. Remind them (and yourselves, for that matter) that food is delicious, delicious fuel that helps the machine run. Practice helps refine the machine's precision. Sleep helps charge the machine's batteries. Most importantly, while their machine might not look exactly like anyone else's, if they put the time into building and maintaining it, it will work beautifully for exactly what they need it to do.