What you weigh should be the least interesting thing about you.
And yet, we have been conditioned to associate our worth with a number on the scales.
As restrictions ease, many people have felt pressure to lose weight in time for summer, despite the fact that we have weathered a pandemic.
Your loved ones won’t care if there is more of you to hug, just that they can hug you in the first place.
Body image, social media, and mental health
You could say that determined duo, Katie Sutherland and Jess Logue, are experts in all of the above, having weathered the storm in recent years – and come out stronger.
Now they are hoping to help as many people across the north-east as possible, having launched Formation Fitness.
Their fun fitness classes, which currently run twice a week at Duthie Park, are already proving popular, but not for the reason you might think.
Katie and Jess, who are both personal trainers with impressive sporting backgrounds, aren’t promising body transformations or rapid weight loss.
For this fierce duo, it’s not what you look like but how you feel.
Feeling good about getting fit
And although they have made it clear that they are not mental health professionals, they hope their classes can help people feel better about themselves.
Katie, 27, previously represented Team GB for synchronised skating, before turning to professional bodybuilding.
But she found the competitive and gruelling sport left her vulnerable to online trolls, and she suffered a mental breakdown in 2017.
Having deleted her bodybuilding Instagram account where she had gained thousands of followers, Katie is now well on the road to recovery and wants to share what she has learnt along the way.
Jess, 25, flitted between office work and personal training, before a breakdown last year saw her experience a “rebirth.”
The two women knew and admired one another professionally, although they had never worked together previously.
But following a meeting in Katie’s garden earlier this year, their vision for empowering fitness classes was born.
Now they are hoping to offer further sessions, and raise awareness about mental health and body image.
Making a change
“I have always been a fitness fanatic,” said Katie, who left school to become an auxiliary nurse, but is now studying adult and mental health nursing at RGU.
“When I started doing competitive body building, my exterior was not healthy or maintainable.
“Inside my soul was dying, and I’ve spoken about my battle with mental health in the past.
“I discovered that leading a balanced lifestyle was my saviour. You don’t need to be sticking to some meal plan of 900 calories a day.
“As a PT, I still enjoy a glass of wine. It’s the same for clients, fitness and food should make you feel good.
“When me and Jess came together, we realised that Aberdeen didn’t really offer a safe space outside a gym where people could come to feel better about themselves through exercise.
“We aren’t claiming to cure people, but our sessions are one hour of fun, madness and hard work which can make you feel so much better mentally.
“We’ve already had people come along who were perhaps having a particularly anxious day, and they leave feeling so much better.
“As a PT, I’m not interested in what you weigh, and my goal this year is not to weigh myself at all.
“There’s not that many female trainers doing something like this. Mental health is our primary focus.
“I’ve discovered for myself that having a certain type of physical exterior will not automatically make my life a big success.”
Looking to the future
Katie and Jess clearly share the same goal, and can also offer one to one training.
Jess previously played for Aberdeen F.C. Women, before discovering long distance running.
“Mental health has dictated a lot of my life, but following a breakdown I experienced what I call a rebirth,” she said.
“It made me look at my life completely differently, and now I’m studying health sciences at The Open University.
“We are not mental health professionals, but we do understand and we want to help alleviate all the day to day pressures in life.
“We want to help educate people about their body, I find the science aspect fascinating.
“To be fully booked within the first week of launching was incredible, and we love what we do.
“Our plan is now to grow Formation Fitness, and to help as many people as possible in the north-east.”
To find out more, visit Formation Fitness on Instagram.
This article originally appeared on the Evening Express website. For more information, read about our new combined website.