Prevent needless anxiety and simply DON’T wear a bikini if this troubles you or puts you on edge. There’s no shame in wearing one-piece swimwear.
There’s an entire army of women who have needlessly subjected themselves to ongoing anxiety over whether or not they should wear a bikini as summer rolls in.
Why not apply this mental energy to important things such as maintaining good blood pressure, teaching your child life skills, sticking to a strength training regimen and spending less time on Instagram and TikTok?
What inspired me to write this is a comment on an Instagram account in which the 295 lb., 5’10 influencer is posing in a bikini.
Her plus-size follower stated that she had finally worked up the nerve to buy a bikini, but then chickened out from wearing it and returned it.
“Work up the nerve”? If the idea of doing something makes you feel like you must work up the nerve — and it’s not an essential undertaking such as visiting the dentist or asking your boss for a raise — then why not just abandon the idea of doing whatever that something is and set yourself free?
It’s anyone’s guess just how many overweight and even straight-size women are in this follower’s boat.
But for sure, the number is very large because there’s just so many women posting their anxieties about wearing a bikini.
Solution to the Anxiety of Wearing a Bikini
It’s really simple. Make the decision not to wear one. Whether you want to go into the water or just lie in the sun, there’s no golden rule that bans women from wearing a one-piece suit.
If the idea of wearing a two-piece swimsuit makes your heart race, then end this madness now: Make the decision not to buy clothes that you wouldn’t feel comfortable in.
You should never have to “work up the nerve” to wear a particular type of attire. That’s not what clothes are for.
If you want to work up the courage to do something, then take a public speaking class or learn to inline skate down a hill.
Nobody should be telling you to wear a bikini in order to love yourself or feel worthy. Nobody.
There are definitely many body positive influencers with massive followings who keep pushing the idea that the ultimate show of self-love is to wear a bikini, or that wearing a bikini will cure body insecurity.
Can we end this nonsense already? A bikini is just a prop and is absolutely NO match for the ability to pick up a heavy barbell.
Stop working up a sweat worrying about wearing revealing clothes, and instead, work up a sweat working out hard at your local gym.
Your heart shouldn’t race at the thought of slipping into two-piece swimwear. It should race after you’ve just completed an 8 RM deadlift or leg press.
What is this world coming to when women are defining their confidence by whether or not they “have the courage” to go out in public with a lot of skin showing?
Their young daughters will be dreaming of one day posing practically naked for 100,000 strangers instead of landing a job with NASA.
Unfortunately, we now live in a world where an inspirational woman is one who has posted 50 images of herself on Instagram with hardly any clothes on.
As for the rush that some women claim they’ve experienced, upon “finally” wearing the doggone thing to a public pool or beach, this rush is fleeting, short-lived, and has no carryover to the ability to deflect life’s curveballs.
No women has ever had the courage to stand up in a board meeting full of men and authoritatively disagree with all of them just because the previous week she had donned a bikini for the first time since age 12.
Bikinis vs. Barbells
Want to gain self-confidence and feel worthy? Learn to throw around heavy weight.
Shutterstock/DisobeyArt
The ability to press a heavy barbell over your head will be with you every single moment of the day, even in the dead of winter, while a bikini — the over-rated prop it is — provides only a false sense of worthiness.
Once you take it off and get back to the real world, that sense of achievement is instantly gone, up in smoke. Poof!
But when your body is trained to be strong, this is an achievement that’s with you all the time, even if you’re buried under a sweater and thick coat.
It’s impossible to feel disgust or hatred towards your body when you can lift heavy things.
If you’ve been struggling to work up the “bravery” to wear a bikini — then stop putting yourself through this mental meat grinder. A power walk will do your mind so much better.
The Beauty of Strength Training
When a woman starts lifting weights, she can set goals — and there’s no end to those goals. The sky’s the limit.
- There’s an insane sense of accomplishment when you just did something in the gym that was impossible to do 30 days ago.
- There’s unparalleled excitement when you realize that the warmup you just did was something that drained you just a few months ago.
It won’t be fleeting. It’ll be a change in your body, right down to the cellular level, as you continue to work out with increasingly heavier weights.
Getting stronger through strength training will have serious transfer over to the activities of daily living.
Physical tasks such as loading up your car for a move will no longer be daunting.
Shoveling your car out of a foot of heavy wet snow will no longer be intimidating.
Setting new weightlifting goals as you continue to get stronger will be accompanied by lower blood pressure and resting heart rate, more efficient glucose metabolism, stronger bones, and elimination of having to ask men to lift or carry things for you.
Let’s see a bikini do all that!
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