I’m Done With Holding in My Stomach

I’ve chased the impossible (for me) beauty standard for 25 uncomfortable years. Finally, I’m done.

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I had such a bad stomach ache late last year, I passed out 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. 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 thing could be doing us more damage than we think, both physically and mentally.

Especially if you, like me, spend your whole day sucking in your belly.

“Stomach in, chest out, girls!”

This was the mantra of my high school teacher who would pull our shoulders back and put her hand on our stomach to push it in if she thought we were protruding too much.

Inappropriate? Absolutely. But her attitude was indicative of what society tells women.

A flat stomach is everything.

You only need to open any fitness app to see how intensely abs are targeted as a “problem” area. There are 30-day ab challenges. There are thousands of YouTube videos on how to crunch, do sit-ups and plank. And the first thing my gym’s online workout plan suggests for me is an ab workout.

This isn’t just my observation. Clinical assistant professor in the physical therapy department at the University of Michigan-Flint Julie Wiebe told the Washington Post that the fitness industry is “overtly focused on the abdominal muscles.”

It’s not surprising. If, like me, you had your formative years in the 90s and early 2000s, you probably remember what it was like to have flat-stomached women beam into your TV every night of the week.

America’s Next Top Model. Sex and the City. Paris Hilton and Nicole Richie. All of them had impossibly flat stomachs — and the low-waisted jeans to show them off.

The effects of this have been insidious and long-lasting. The internet is littered with women talking about how flat stomachs affected their relationship with their own bellies:

Janet Jackson abs, Victoria’s Secret models with the flat bellies were always goals for me and I guess it never left my brain.

Those 90s girls all had the abs, the uber flat tummies, and it absolutely warped me.

I’ve been trying to get my head around my own relationship with my belly my entire life. I know it started young — 10? 12? — and it’s never ended.

And if I tell you I don’t think about the size of my stomach at least every few hours every single day, I would be lying.

Granted, some women have naturally flat stomachs, but many struggle with their convex bellies.

But there are reasons why female stomachs have a roundness to them. For a start, we have more organs than men — those ovaries, fallopian tubes, and uterus need to live somewhere. Studies also show women have more body fat than men and are more likely to store it around their abdomens.

In other words, the flat stomach ideal is far from ideal for many. And it — at least in part — explains why, despite dedicating a sizeable portion of my exercise regime to abs over the years, I’ve always been a rotund-stomached woman.

But still, we try. We try and mask our bellies with everything from corset tops to tummy control underwear, to yes, sucking in our stomach so much it becomes an unconscious habit.

Stomach in, chest out, girls, remember?

I remember. I remember the bruises my corset tops gave me. I remember being in such tightly controlled shapewear to fit into a bridesmaid dress, I visited the toilet every hour just for some relief.

And I remember just three days ago crying in pain with a stomach ache on the airport floor yet still unconsciously sucking in my stomach.

It turns out that “stomach gripping”—that unconscious stomach-sucking thing — does more than make us uncomfortable.

It could also affect our long-term health.

I like breathing

It keeps me alive. But as Anji Gopal, an osteopath and founder of the BackCare Foundation says:

When we hold our tummy in, we affect the abdominal organs (they are held ‘tight’) and we restrict our ability to breathe well … The thoracic diaphragm doesn’t get full range of motion and you don’t use your lungs fully.

It’s not just breathing, stomach gripping can also potentially affect the efficiency of your pelvic floor muscles, as documented by the president-elect of the Academy of Pelvic Health Physical Therapy:

Habitually contracting your oblique abdominal muscles can exert force down on the pelvic floor muscles and potentially cause the pelvic floor to become overwhelmed, which could have consequences such as incontinence and pelvic organ prolapse.

Here’s one more for you —the aforementioned Julie Wiebe notes:

You could develop soreness and stiffness in your lower back and hips

In other words, if we’re not careful, our desire for a flat stomach could make us an inflexible, wheezy, incontinent version of our former selves.

As a self-styled expert in stomach sucking, I have to ask the question:

Is it worth it?

Bearing in mind how uncomfortable it is to stomach grip — just let it out to realise how uncomfortable — I’m not so sure.

Let your vital organs sit where they should

I’m writing this in a coffee shop around a table with eight other people. In such a public space I would ordinarily stomach suck but today I’m trying not to.

It’s hard. I keep sucking in, checking myself, and letting go. Every time I do, I feel a wave of relief ripple through my stomach.

Writer Chloe Laws says it best:

I’d walk through the door of my flat after a long day, and instantly breathe out, letting my vital organs sit where they should naturally; a feeling akin to taking off your bra.

She’s not the only one. Social media may have infinite numbers of flat-stomached women but it’s also a place where women are increasingly documenting what’s really going on behind their sucked-in stomachs. IBS. Bloating. And yes, fat.

It’s an intense, freeing feeling to let your vital organs sit where they should. To let your lungs fill with air and to breathe with abandon.

To forget what you are supposed to do with your stomach and let it just be.

Exactly as it is.

It’s not easy, especially if you’ve been trained to think of your stomach as a “problem” area. Mine is not small — I’ve been mistaken for being pregnant more times than I care to mention. It's also soft so sucking it in is relatively easy and makes a significant difference to my appearance.

When I look down at my unsucked-in belly in all its globe-like glory, I have to unlearn everything I’ve been told my whole life. That this is not how a woman’s stomach should look.

Except, it is how a stomach should look. Because it’s how mine looks.

After 25 years, I’ve got a lot to unlearn. But for the sake of my health — both physical and mental — I’ve got to do it.

And if you’re a stomach gripper, do this for me. Let it go. Now. Wherever you are, whatever you are doing.

If that feels pretty damn nice, perhaps you’d like to join me.