I bought a “Love Your Body” shirt during the last year’s Love Your Body day. There were no more small or medium sizes left so I resorted to purchasing an XL, which I then promptly proceeded to cut into a sleeveless shirtdress. After showing off my new creation, one friend pointed out the irony that only the small- and medium-sized students seemed to truly love their bodies.

After a month of being on the acclaimed açaí berry pill, I realize that this message is one that we do not take to heart enough — no matter what size we are. It hit me while we were being instructed in kickboxing to aim at our jabs at our own noses and chins in the mirror. Or maybe it was while the hardcore abs instructor was yelling at us to stare down at our flabby stomachs with shame. It also could have been my helpless longing for certain desserts in the dining hall these past four weeks and telling myself that I didn’t deserve to eat them and that I most certainly couldn’t — not if I wanted to achieve Anne Hathaway’s or Carrie Underwood’s physiques. Maybe the point that we should love ourselves really sank into me while I was watching Glee last week when coach Sue Sylvester decided to marry herself and staged her own ceremony complete with invitations, a tracksuit-wedding gown, and a single tall figurine adorning the cake.

Diet pills are marketed primarily towards a certain group of people — those who want to change themselves. Sure, they are marketed as pills for “self-improvement”, but with elaborate promises that emphasize “losing 20 lbs in 10 weeks,” it doesn’t take a leap of faith to assume that these pills are targeted to those who desperately want an easy way to lose weight and morph into skinnier, not healthier, selves.

During my past month on the açaí berry diet, I have attempted to change up my routine. For my first week, I tried the supplement alone, unable to quash the high expectations that I had for it despite the fact that it didn’t seem to be working at all. The second week, I added a gym workout into my schedule to better test out the alleged energy boosts that the bottle advertised as a side effect. As the third week passed, I decided to seriously put into plan the envirotarian (three to four vegetarian days a week) lifestyle that I’d taken up earlier that month. By the end of week four — which officially ended at the start of Thanksgiving break week, I had indulged too much while out of town in New York. Even though I had been at New York for a business/networking workshop, traveling away from the Harvard bubble put me in vacation mode. The workshop provided continental breakfast for us each day, complete with mini chocolate croissants, sticky buns, and banana nut muffins. They also put out midday snack bars that consisted of palm-shaped mocha-flavored whoopie pies and black-and-white frosted cookie cakes and I didn’t stop myself from filling my plate. Only after the workshop was done did I realize that there might have been the additional element of stress-eating involved in my indulging.

Trying out the açaí berry has made me more aware of my own ability to take care of my body and my (currently poor) attitude towards keeping it healthy. I haven’t always loved my body, which makes me feel like a hypocrite for buying the shirt, but I know that I do want to be able to accept it and treat it better. I guess I should change my perspective towards eating right and visiting the gym. Instead of only trying to keep healthy with the goals of getting skinnier and looking better in mind, I should motivate myself with the long-term beneficial implications they will have for my body. The healthiest that I felt during my month with açaí definitely came after my four hours at the gym spread over the course of three days.

So as I finish up my little purple bottle of açaí supplements, I will look back at this experience as an eye-opening one. Instead of placing my faith on a label, I should place it in the promise that I can make to myself to love my body and work to keep it healthy.

Sanyee Yuan ’12 (syuan@fas.harvard.edu) is glad that the power of her will has bested the power of a pill.

(Provided by Wiki Commons)

“Açaí is a scam!” These four words come to mind as I snap up in bed at 11:30 A.M. and realize that my clock radio alarm has been singing for the past hour. I felt so tired and groggy, deepening my suspicion towards the supposed “energy boost” promoted on my bottle of açaí dietary supplements. But as I brush my teeth in two seconds and throw on clothes, I consider the other factors that could contribute to my extreme exhaustion. Perhaps it’s my five-class, three-job schedule? And the freelance production projects that I’ve taken outside of Harvard? That could be it.

On the first day of my second week on the açaí diet, I have made the executive decision to hit the gym as well for the primary purpose of testing out the supposed energy boost. I skim through the schedules of group classes at the gym and am surprised at the wide range of options that are available and free for students. Adding Hardcore Abs, Cardio Kicks, Balletone (strengthening muscles through ballet footwork), Total Body Conditioning, and Cycling to my Google calendar, I cannot contain my excitement at the thought of dusting my gym sneakers off and working out again.

My first session of Cardio Kicks gets my heart racing with simple combinations of kicking and punching. I guess this class lives up to its name, but I definitely don’t feel like the workout was intense enough. Staying for Hardcore Abs afterwards, I engage in nearly half an hour of crunches and push-ups and soon discover that I have spent my life doing crunches incorrectly (I already knew I did cruddy push-ups). By the end of my first pilgrimage back to the gym, I’m not incredibly drained and I don’t feel like crashing the minute I return to my dorm. Thanks, açaí?

Two days later, I participate in a second session of Cardio Kicks and Hardcore Abs with a new instructor whose upbeat, drill-sergeant-like leadership style immediately gets the class running. There is no stopping, no water breaks, nothing but jabbing, jumping jacks and jogging in place to work off all the Halloween gluttony from the weekend. By the end of the hour, I feel sweaty and sore and the soreness only deepens by the next day. It’s a good feeling though and I begin to think that supplementing the dietary supplement with exercise is a necessary requirement for getting the overall “lowering metabolism” effect to work.

Over dinner, my friend tells me about an energy shot that he tried the previous night that initially gave him the best evening workout of his life, but then kept him wide awake until four in the morning. Shaking his head, he bemoaned how sluggish he felt. I decided that my açaí was at least better than an energy shot, even if it didn’t give me the double boost of energy that my friend’s energy shot did. I felt like I was getting in better shape and I did feel fuller during meals after taking the açaí in the morning, thus preventing the over-eating tendencies of freshman year.

It is halfway through my açaí adventures and although I am doubtful about some of its boastful claims, I am still willing to stick it out. Even if it has not woken me up in time for class, it has at least gotten me to the gym.

Sanyee Yuan ’12 (syuan@fas) hopes to use her energizer berry to keep going, and going…