Loving Your Body Looks Different for Members of the Elon Community

When entertainers experience stage fright for the first time, there is nothing that quite compares to the feeling of straight terror as all eyes are on them… 

Except if you are a girl in a weight room that is dominated by men. 

For senior group fitness leader of Elon’s Love Your Body Week (LYBW) Justine Hurst, that exact feeling is one of the main reasons why she was so excited for the ladies lifting class last Tuesday. 

Campus Recreation and Wellness SPARKS (Students Promoting Awareness Responsibility Knowledge and Success) offered a variety of special group exercise classes and hosted multiple speakers who specialize in different areas of wellness to educate the Elon community on a holistic body image perspective for Love Your Body Week (LYBW) last week.

Let’s define holistic.

Christine Borzumato-Gainey, a counselor and professor here at Elon, defined a holistic perspective as thinking of all the different parts of oneself. 

This looks different for everyone, as each individual views themselves in a unique way. 

For Hurst, this means coming to terms with all that her body is capable of rather than what it can’t do or doesn’t look like. 

“It’s kind of like reframing my mind and trying to see it as my body allows me to get up everyday and hug my friends and go on a hike,” Hurst said. “I feel like we’re so hard on our bodies, but we wouldn’t be anything without them.” 

Hurst became interested in wellness from a young age since she was an athlete most of her life. From competing in Irish dance competitions to running up and down the soccer field, she spent much of her developmental years in athletic training. 

After high school graduation, her competitive career ended, but she wanted to continue working out once she arrived on Elon’s campus. As a freshman, Hurst oftentimes found herself being the only female in the weight room.

“I didn’t always like being the only girl in the weight room because I didn’t want all eyes on me,” she said. 

This is precisely the reason that Hurst wanted to implement the ladies lifting workout classes this LYBW. It is an all-female weight lifting class that is designed to teach girls certain exercises, how to use certain machines and allow them to feel more comfortable in the weight room. 

To continually inspire women to take a more positive outlook on exercising, the Campus Recreation and Wellness Team is going to have regular ladies lifting classes starting next school year!

Another area of the body image discussion that the SPARKS team addressed during LYBW was diet culture through the keynote speaker Megan Hadley.  

Hadley is a registered dietitian nutritionist that opened Simple Nutrition in January of 2015. She specializes in nutrition therapy for adults for non-diet nutrition counseling, food and body image concerns, disordered and emotional eating, eating disorders and Christian-informed nutrition counseling. 

Last Wednesday, she told the students that showed up to her discussion that dieting is the number one risk factor for eating disorders and has serious impacts on both the mental and physical state. 

“Dieting often results in negative body image and lower metabolism, and that 90 percent of diets result in weight regain,” Hadley said. 

She urged the listeners of the Elon community to practice intuitive eating. According to the National Eating Disorders Association (NEDA), intuitive eating is about trusting your inner body wisdom to make choices around food that feel good in your body, without judgment and without influence from diet culture.  

This practice, Hadley said, was a major step to focusing on the overall wellness of the body rather than how it looks. 

The Assistant Professor of Psychology here at Elon, Ilyssa Salomon, is familiar with this practice and focuses much of her work on pushing back against diet culture. 

Growing up in Southern Florida, Salomon noticed that her hometown was somewhat of an appearance-focused place to live. She also grew up with the rise of different social media platforms and was constantly reminded of the importance of appearance.

One narrative that Salomon hopes people adapt is body neutrality rather than body positivity. 

“There is research that examined body positivity and found that body positive content greatly focuses on physical appearance,” she said. 

She found that a body-neutral approach takes the emphasis off of common appearance stereotypes and focuses more on overall wellness. Also, it is much more realistic as not everyone loves their bodies 24/7. 

These appearance stereotypes affect both men and women. 

Junior ROTC program member Kyle Carson learned how to overcome this after years of working out. 

“Body image is a huge thing that affects most males,” Carson said. “It is important to realize that everyone is a different person with different personal achievements.” 

As a younger kid, Carson felt insecure about being smaller in height, but after working out consistently he learned to be proud of the little things he noticed in himself. Sticking with it is important. 

The mirror project that the Campus Recreation and Wellness team set up stuck with Carson. “One of the messages on the mirrors in the gym really stuck with me,” he said. “The message said ‘Your first PR is not your last PR,’ and every time I see it I remember how much Elon cares about me being the best I can be.” 

For more information about any of these topics, visit the NEDA website: https://www.nationaleatingdisorders.org/