DEBUNKING THE REVENGE BODY
Before gyms and fitness magazines jump onto this craze to motivate you to train, we’ll give you a lot more insight to show that it could actually be more harmful than good.
The fact that you are seeing the word ‘revenge’ already means that it’s not coming from a positive space, so while it can create short term motivation, long-term it won’t be maintained.
Your body has a natural healing mechanism called cortisol. It is a hormone that is used to bring everything back into balance. You have 3 main contributors for stress these are, from most important: your visceral (body working systems), emotional & physical. The cortisol will always attend to the most serious first when two or more are at risk.
During a break up your emotional stress will be shattered and in need of fixing, so by going hard in the gym and putting more strain on your physical condition, you will actually be putting yourself at higher risk of injury and over training. This would be due to your cortisol being used first for your emotional stress and secondly to your physical.
Most people take a break up on themselves and feel they need to improve. In most cases if a strong self image through training was installed, you would more likely take a third person perspective of a split and realize that it was actually better for both parties. Obviously this will only be attained through wisdom, experience and self respect, qualities that are only fine tuned through challenges unfortunately.
Being in a vulnerable position, we often want to show ourselves as better off without the person, so actually we end up competing with the person who hurt us. By doing this, you are letting that same person have a control over you. So yes, you might use the motivation to get yourself a few kilos lighter and look more appealing to make that person jealous, however by doing this you are only emphasizing the physical (sexual) side of a relationship and we both know, YOU ARE BETTER THAN THAT.
So generally, people go through a break-up and hit the gym hard. They don’t deal with the emotional stress and get into a cycle of suppressing it by taking it out on the weights or the treadmill. With the body already emotional stressed the extra physical stress exerted places more pressure on your system. It will keep going for a bit and start placing extra stress on the adrenal glands. So from a emotional problem it will actually start effecting the visceral processes of the body. This in turn while demand the majority of the cortisol and leave you in a far worse position than where you started. Depression, unhealthy eating habits, break down, injury and anxiety can result.
These are definitely not appealing to a future mate. So yes, you might look a bit better, however your mind and spirit will be so toxic that even when your Mr or Mrs Perfect is right in front of you, you’ll be blind to see. Also if you return into a relationship, you’ll probably stop the excessive training and become lazy again. Who really loves a lazy person besides a lazier person?
So what we would encourage, is to develop a consistent training regime, be around friends, do activities you enjoy and rebuild your own unique identity. Deal with the emotional stress while rebuilding other areas of yourself, so that when you are getting back into the dating game, you are your beautiful self – mind, body and soul.