Dressing clean? How what you wear can drastically improve your health

I've always been skeptical of "fitness."

Health, I understand. When I was single, I never ate out and generally avoided processed foods. And now that I am married, I make our meals from scratch with wholesome ingredients. We walk a lot.

I have friends who believed they were intolerant to gluten until they stopped wearing polyester. Now they can enjoy bread without issues.

In other words, we try to maintain our health — the fundamental well-being of our bodies, minds, and souls.

But to me the word "fitness" often points to just another way to objectify the human body — to see it as a tool. Fit for what? For being a model? For being more attractive as a wife and more efficient as a mother?

We should eat less and exercise more, the books and videos tell us.

Doing so will regulate our hormones and make everybody love us more. We'll get a slimmer waistline and stronger arms. We'll be "sexier" and "healthier," and we'll feel good about it. We'll eat more protein. We'll invest in gym equipment. We'll start taking supplements and maybe selling them — as long as we're achieving peak health, we might as well make a little money off our friends!

And we'll go through diet after diet. The average woman will try around 126 over the course of her life. Why? Because many women just can't make diets work for them. They find that those last few pounds are impossible to lose, or they realize that their obsession with what they can't eat makes them anything but sexy or attentive. Their bodies are stressed, and their hormones suffer for it.

But all this focus on what we put in our bodies leads us to ignore something just as important — what we put on our bodies.

Diet culture is too neurotic to figure out that it needs a simpler, more holistic approach. After the chapter on "The Waist-Friendly Pantry" should come the chapter on "The Hormone Stabilizer Wardrobe."

How you dress affects how you feel perhaps just as much as what you eat. I have friends who believed they were intolerant to gluten until they stopped wearing polyester. Now they can enjoy bread without issues.

Unpleasant, sour body odor is also often the result of wearing synthetic fabrics, which keep your pores from breathing and trap moisture against your skin. Dressing in natural fibers can be a big improvement.

How you dress affects how you feel about yourself -- but it goes well beyond taking pride in your appearance. Wearing synthetic clothes is like eating McDonald's, packaging and all — it's just that it enters your body via your skin instead of your stomach.

The quality of your clothing will influence your hormones, emotions, and overall health. Not only can changing your wardrobe eliminate gluten intolerance and body odor, you might also find yourself having fewer migraines, rashes, and food sensitivities, as well as less bloating.

A wardrobe overhaul doesn't have to be expensive. With a little planning, it can end up costing you less than any prospective diet. Even if you can't sew your own garments, you can find plenty of wool, linen, and cotton clothing at thrift stores and on Facebook marketplace.

And you don't have to do it all at once. You can start with one or two linen dresses — try them for a week and just see how much better you feel. Once you understand the impact a few inexpensive, natural-fiber garments can have on your health and happiness, you'll never look back.