Healthy Girl Summer

There is always a shift in the media as summer approaches. People start posting workouts and diets, focusing on this "bikini body" complex. Everyone is documenting how to get "summer ready", which should mean stocking up on sunscreen and making sure your cooler is clean and ready to go. Yet instead it means how to become your most attractive self. I have to say I am really sick of hearing "Hot Girl Summer". It is especially unsettling to me that this notion is being pushed that in order to achieve "peak attractiveness" you have to be the smallest version of yourself. Allow me to remind you: food is fuel, calories are energy. You cannot go out and do all of the amazing things summer has to offer (hiking, swimming, soaking up the sun, watching the sunsets, picking flowers, playing, dancing, camping, biking, walking, ocean dips, paddle boarding, surfing, making lemonade, exploring, etc) without nourishing your body with food. Every body is a bikini body. How you look, is the least interesting thing about you. If you took all of the time and energy you spent on thinking about how you look and spent it literally doing anything else, think about how many hobbies you could discover, how many adventures you could plan, how many things you could create. Imagine if instead of paying so much attention to how you look you started noticing how you feel. Do you feel strong? Energized? Motivated? Happy? Inspired? If you don't feel healthy in your body, then by all means do something about it. But do it by eating food that is good for you, do it by moving your body in a way thats fulfilling, do it by loving yourself. It would be incredibly boring if we lived in a world where every single woman hand long thick hair, long eyelashes, clear skin, a tiny waist, a flat stomach, a big butt, big boobs, or whatever else the media is pushing. Every woman is beautiful. Someone else's beauty is NOT the absence of your own. There are people that walk past you on the street and think "Damn I wish I looked like her." There are also people that walk down the street and think "Wow I look really good today". Be that person. Love yourself. We are creating our own food noise and our own body dysmorphia by feeding into the societal beauty standard. Its officially healthy girl summer. A summer where we treat ourselves and our bodies with love and respect, where we go out and have fun and play and enjoy every minute of this season. A summer where we find movement for fulfillment, not for punishment. A summer where we eat and didn't need to do anything to earn it. I understand from experience this is easier said than done, but you can't hate yourself into a version that you love.