Alright, so last week’s post stirred up a lot of excitement! Even though I tried to word it really carefully, I still feel like people didn’t quite get it. People are calling me, approaching me at work, to say “Love yourself!”
To be clear: I FREAKING LOVE MYSELF. Sometimes I worry I love myself too much! 🙂 I absolutely love my body’s abilities and all the things that I can do. I think I’m beautiful and overall pretty freaking hot. I wear a small in everything and size 2 jeans. Men notice when I change my hair and often hold doors for me. I have killer arms and even the guys are jealous of my calves. I’ve worked hard for every single thing I love about my body. I’ve molded it from something so far away from what you see now.
99% of people I pass on the street or at my job, wouldn’t even know what I got going on underneath all these clothes. In clothes, I think I feel more confident more often of the time than most women. The days where nothing fits right and I just feel fat, don’t happen that often. (Of course, that makes a difference when you wear yoga pants to work !) I know that I’m beautiful and have noting to be ashamed of or hate about my body.
But that doesn’t mean I don’t.
I spent nearly two and a half decades of my life wishing my body were different and punishing it in all sorts of ways. I over ate, under ate. I starved and binged. I even thought cutting might be the answer, for like a day, because turns out that hurts! (Not funny…..but true) I wasn’t sure how to fix myself or my body so I tried anything I thought would work. And then I just gave up.
Now take that person and give her a ‘new’ body. Stick her inside a body that can run for miles, makes guys turn their heads, can deadlift 205 and gets dirty looks from women if I’m showing any skin at all. But this new body, it’s not something you’ve seen in a magazine. It’s not a body that any one would expect at age 33. It’s not a body anyone would choose. Oh yeah, and make her try to figure it all out in a fraction of the time she spent hating it.
That’s where I am. I’m in the gray area. I changed soooooooo much about my body and life that I hated. I’ve done some many things that I’ve only ever dreamed about! I am freaking incredible. But……7,000,000 sit ups later: I still can’t wear a bikini without stares. I just want to be real for all my peeps out there. Weight loss isn’t going to be everything you’ve ever dreamed. Not only will it be harder than anything you’ve ever done, it doesn’t get easier when you stop losing weight. Maybe it will someday? Maybe I will wear a bikini someday, but right now I still don’t WANT to. I still don’t WANT to let people see me and have to deal with reactions.
I recently got a new client who is an 80 year old female. She is so strong for her age and told me the secret is to never stop moving. She can still do squats and takes the stairs to the gym, never the elevator. Today she was complaining about her ‘old lady saggies’ getting in the way. She pulled up her shirt to reveal some loose skin from age. I quickly pulled mine up too to show her mine was actually way worse. While it comforted her in the moment, and we had a quick joke about it, I couldn’t stop thinking about it later. She had no idea and was shocked.
I know that it’s hard to understand but there’s a huge difference between accepting my body and loving my body. During my transformation, I had to learn to forgive myself for being so overweight and treating myself so poorly. I feel like I’m starting to get to acceptance of what I did to my body by being so morbidly obese. I don’t know that I’ll ever love my body the way that it is. Maybe one day.