Happier Now That I Like Myself Daily

Not too long ago, say right after Christmas, I woke up and I would dread getting dressed because the following would occur. I would be unhappy about how I looked in the mirror and how tightly my clothing was. My closet of clothing contained fewer options I felt I could fit into, liked myself in, or hid me from view correctly. The top shelf jeans were piled high. I dreaded being myself in my body every day. I longed to jut be happier with myself.

If you’ve never felt this way, that is amazing and I’m so glad because feeling bad about your body just sucks. And if you once felt this and are now in a better mental and physical place, high-five and I’d love to hear your story. And if you are there now, we need to talk.

Let me say up front, if you are one of two ladies I know who are currently pregnant and feel large, I feel for you too and here’s the trick ; the weight doesn’t matter. You’ll get as large as you get, the weight isn’t any reflection of you but of your body’s amazing capacity to keep you species healthy and alive. The weight is its way of prepping for the snowstorm. Please do what I did and turn you back to the scale when they weigh you and let the nurse know you’d rather not know. You’ll get as big as you’ll get, and much like the dollars spent for your wedding, it’ll take what it takes to make it perfect. Your baby will be perfect and you’ll recover eventually, physically and emotionally.

For the rest of you who are disgusted with your bodies and feel like you are in a perpetual ring of sabotage and stuck with your eating and health, you are. You are stuck. And this will only change if you realize/admit you are stuck. Owning where you are is your ticket out of anywhere. It got me out of my first marriage and eventually, it took me to Weight Watchers where in a mere two months, I’ve managed to lose a pants size. All this time I could have done this but instead I was bemoaning the never-changing circumstances of my body. Sigh.

“Change nothing and nothing changes” is one of those phrases that always comes up for me around my body. But for all the exercises I would do, I never was willing to actually track and calculate what I put in my face if it meant I couldn’t eat butter, oil, mayo, bread, or pasta when I wanted to.

Choices Vs. Fear

I finally realized that I was clinging to these carbs for fear. For fear that I may starve to death. For fear that when I got upset of nervous, I wouldn’t have something to make me feel better. When I want it, I want it. So I just had it all the time. And my fear never had to worry about stuff, even thought that’s fear’s specialty no matter what. But the body is a machine with a precise equation of calories that it runs on and then the excess gets stored. If you put too much in, it stores those calories. And if you give it less than is required, it takes it away from the fat cells. So I could choose to continue to live ignorantly of this exact point of loss or gain for me and find out by looking in the mirror. Or find the courage and the reason to choose to change my lifestyle up just enough to prove it was not an impossibility after all for me to lose weight. I chose the latter.

I was surprised after I joined Weight Watchers to know that all sorts of people I knew personally had successfully used it at some point in their lives. They would immediately and exuberantly say it worked and then they might wistfully admit they needed to return. We remember when we felt great about ourselves. And I haven’t been this skinny in nearly a decade.

I realize that we are often very attached to our excuses and our stories of failure. Like rosary beads of misery, we go over them and over them exclaiming and retelling our sorrowful excuses why we can’t. So I offer that you have to find a new story that’s so good and noble that you’ll want to see yourself succeed like any friend you’d support through this. My personal is that this year I’m turning 50 years old a tan and there’s no way in Heck that I want to do that feeling daily disdain for my body. My theory is that the only way to fight looking older is to grow your hair longer, whiten your teeth, get a tan, and lose weight. Plus dress nicer and wear make-up.

The number one “tool” for weight loss? Community. And that’s what you have with a program where other people show up and share the same worries and thoughts and set backs as you when you attend a group oriented program like weight watchers. You finding out that you are not the only one feeling these feelings of fear and frustration are exactly what others are feeling. And that somehow makes feeling those feelings a little better. And feeling better about yourself is the point here.

So what has your experience been with losing weight? Or what projects have you taken on where you realized you needed an accountabili-buddy to complete ?

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And, as always, Thanks to you for your visit.