A Woman's Relationship with Food

Society expects women to uphold impossible standards, especially in regards to our bodies. Although our expectations are currently shifting away from the idea that women need to be impossibly thin, women still feel pressure to be just thin enough while also being curvy in the right places. Being a gymnast for nine years, I never really thought about what I ate since I worked out for four hours a day. Even though some of my friends would fret about what they consumed, I never concerned myself with the idea for too long since I would soon be back in the gym. However, this changed once I quit after ninth grade. 

After I quit, I regularly heard the saying that gymnasts are the athletes that always gain the most weight after they finish their careers. Not only did my mom constantly remind me to be careful what I ate, but also I suddenly became aware of how much my friends would eat during lunch at school or when we would go out to dinner. This sudden shift in my life finally made my cognizant of what the rest of the non-gymnast women population thinks and feels in regards to food. I finally understood the hate part of a woman’s love-hate relationship with food.