RE: Your thigh gap isn't good enough

Hello blog readers, merry Christmas to you all - I can't believe I'm blogging about this on Christmas eve (which incidentally is the day I celebrate Christmas because I am Swedish) but  this had to be addressed immediately as this landed in my inbox from Cassie.

You may or may not know that I'm an avid reader of health and fitness blogs, and one of the perfect bloggers I am pretty much obsessed with is Cassie Ho of blogilates from Youtube. Combining the internet and fitness was pretty much a godsend for me as I would probably never have been inspired to do anything about my health or fitness had I not stumbled across fitspo blogs. HOWEVER. This email basically was sent by Cassie to all of her followers following comments made on her instagram about her thigh gap.

The thigh gap is such an exhausted topic that I won't go into my personal opinion on it, apart from to say that I majorly sit on the fence regarding such matters. I will however say, I understand the fascination with the thigh gap. I am from the magical and mysterious place of Tumblr, and I am ready to admit one of the first things I look at when passing other girls is often the thighs. It's instinct to me. As somebody who strove incredibly hard to achieve the thigh gap, and partially succeeded, it did not surprise me that such a debate has arisen surrounding it.

What people, especially young girls, need to understand, is that the thigh gap will not be as easily achieved if you work out like crazy and starve yourself. You are building up your muscles, not losing fat if you are doing resistance training and toning etc. You will achieve that thigh gap if your body is suited towards that body type, which includes your stature and your muscle build as well as your hip placement.

But I also want to point out that achieving the thigh gap is not an achievement at all. I "achieved" the thigh gap through months of misery and incredibly unhappy times limiting myself to less than a quarter of the recommended calorie intake spending the majority of my time miserable. I wasn't happier when I was thin as I didn't see I'd lost weight until someone said something about it negatively i.e friends and family who told me I looked "worse". That hurt. But they were right.
A friend at the time sat beside me and said "You don't look thin. You look ill." And that is not what I wanted to hear. I felt ugly and ashamed of myself, but she was right. I did look unwell. There was nothing beautiful about my grey pudgy skin or my over announced bones, and there was definitely nothing beautiful about the floods of tears that occurred every day at 3am when I felt overwhelmed by it all.

The meaning of this post isn't to be preachy, it's not to say I'm 100% right but from my own experience - the thigh gap shouldn't have a place on your fitness journey. Your hipbones, collarbones, ribs etc are not measurements of your beauty. The undeniable fact is that the picture you have in your head about how you should look is probably the most evil image you will encounter. It is that "should be" that eats away at you bit by bit. The "image" me was photoshopped and more tanned and fitter and happier, but reality me wasn't the same girl in the photos. "Anna's lost a lot of weight" and my friends telling me about things boys had said about me - compliments - merely encouraged me to continue with my struggle.

It scares me that past me probably would have thought the same as these girls - but my message to these girls who posted those comments on Instagram to Cassie is - don't let the thigh gap define you. It won't change your life drastically. You won't feel any more beautiful. Your body is not something that needs drastically changing merely for appearances. Be healthy for the body that you deserve, not the one you want to look like. What matters is that your body functions healthily and well, not that other people appreciate it for image wise.