Lucy Davis is a woman of many talents. She’s constantly throwing herself at new challenges, taking on new sports, and finding new ways to push herself and move her body.
Lucy relies on her body and her strength, whether it be in competitive swimming, ultramarathon running, strength training, or powerlifting, to perform at a high level. She loves her body, for its functionality as much as how it looks. But it hasn’t always been that way.
Body Image Struggle
Growing up a competitive swimmer, Lucy was in search of a new way to move her body. And that’s where fitness came in. She’d seen the girls on her feed working out and lifting weights to make their bodies look a certain way. And one thing in particular stood out about these fitness influencers and models — they all had thigh gaps.
To put it as bluntly as possible for anyone who might not be familiar with the bizarre beauty “ideal” — a thigh gap is exactly what it sounds like. It’s a gap between your thighs.
It’s easy to compare yourself to others online and become so fixated on features of their bodies that you won’t be happy until you have them yourself. And that’s what a thigh gap was for Lucy. She'd do inner-thigh workouts thinking it would spot-reduce fat so she could get the look.
Here's the truth...
The thing is, no workout can give you a thigh gap. Hip width is what determines how far apart or close together legs are to each other. Take a minute to look at the human bone structure and it’ll make sense. At the middle of your body you have your hips. Your hips are where your legs start. It’s clear that by having wider hips, your legs are further apart, and you’re more likely to have a thigh gap. It’s just common sense.
Consider for a minute the idea of a thigh workout somehow making the thighs further apart. A workout will build muscle, meaning they’ll get bigger. So how could a thigh workout give you a thigh gap? It doesn’t make sense.
And finally, you can’t spot reduce fat. Or in other words, you can’t select a body part that you would like to be smaller and work out to remove fat in that particular area.
Generations of people fall into the trap of trying to look like the people they see online. And it can dictate their lives. If they don’t look a certain way, they won’t wear certain things, they won’t go to certain places, and they won’t eat certain things. These unhealthy body image obsessions can take over.
Lucy took matters into her own hands. Despite not wanting to wear shorts because she didn’t have a thigh gap, one day she chose to wear the shorts and to move her body in a way that made her feel good rather than how it would make her look. And look where she is now.
Take home message
Moral of the story: don’t chase impossible body ideals. Work out because it makes you feel good, not because you want to look a certain way. And if you want to, wear the damn shorts.
Take it from Lucy - ‘you are beautiful, you are strong, you are amazing’.
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