Why I’m Done With Holding in My Stomach After 25 Uncomfortable Years
I’ve chased the impossible (for me) beauty standard of a flat stomach. Finally, I’m done.
I had such a bad stomach ache this week that I fell asleep on an airport floor.
Yet I still sucked my stomach in.
I only realised I was doing it when my husband looked at it said, “I’m sorry you’re so bloated.” Well, buddy, you weren’t seeing the half of it. At that point, I let it out in all its painful, looks-like-I’m-six-months-pregnant glory.
I’ve always wanted a flat stomach but never had one, even as a slim teenager. My whole family is rotund of belly, it’s in my genetics. Yet despite knowing it will never be mine, I still yearn for one.
So for the last 25 years, I’ve unconsciously sucked my stomach in for most of the day. It’s a habit and I know I am far from alone in being powerless to it.
Because a flat stomach is a pervasive beauty standard. Few (Western) body ideals don’t focus on it. It’s prevalent in everything from the heroin chic of the 90s to today’s slim-thick body type.
But despite all the huffing and puffing at the gym with planks, crunches and exercises that claim to “torch” belly fat, our pursuit of such a…
