This post is probably not what you think.
I have not been honest with myself. And the truth hit me today like a ton of bricks.
I can rationalize with the best of them, believe me! A lot of what I'm thinking and feeling tonight is my own perception. I'm not looking for for people to disagree or coddle and I'm certainly not looking for compliments.
I am not overweight. I am not fat. I am 6 feet tall. I don't want to look like I'm starving. I don't want to starve myself.
But gosh darn it, I am not happy about my body right now.
I have started working out. Not a huge overhaul, just a workout routine or two when I come home from work. I have determined that the best way to not lose momentum and motivation is to work out immediately when I get home from work. Otherwise I sit on the sofa and don't move again for the rest of the night.
I stepped on the scale at work today. I was very disheartened to see the numbers. I will not weigh 145lbs ever again. If I do, somebody come feed me a cheeseburger! And while I know that I am not in danger of becoming obese, I do want to bring that number down a bit. (Heaven help me if I ever get pregnant for it won't take much for me to top 200 on that evil scale!)
I am more concerned with how my clothes fit. I'll admit, my jeans are snug. I couldn't wear a skirt to church on Sunday because I couldn't zip it up. My nicer shirts are snug. I really don't want to go up a size, mainly because I hate shopping and I don't have the money to spend on new clothes anyway!
I want to feel good. Confident. Happy.
So I spent 15 minutes on the elliptical tonight.
And quickly demolished all the good by eating a bowl of Cap'n Crunch Crunchberries for dinner.
Baby steps, right?
2 comments:
Oh Megan, I know this battle all too well. Being a tall girl is not easy in this department. We wear bigger sizes simply because proportionally we are larger to fit our height, our weights are higher than your average girl simply because there's more of us vertically. But its so easy to generalize being tall into just feeling "Big". And I definitely understand the avoidance of the evil 200 when pregnant! Which is why I threw away that wretched scale! It's so easy to get fixated on numbers. But also SOOOO stupid! Sometimes I just have moments when I realize the madness that we put ourselves through. Its just plain ridiculous. We are healthy and beautiful and perfect just the way we are. Exercise is a wonderful thing and I love it SO much more when I choose to do it purely because I want to be healthy and live a long life with my husband and kids and because it makes me FEEL good. As one who has struggled immensely with anxiety and at times depression in my life, exercise has become my saving grace....but only when I approach it with the idea that this is ME time..something I am doing for ME to show love to this body of mine that allows me to do so many of the things that are important to me and has given me three beautiful children. It is my "thank you" to me and my time to really attack my anxiety head on and do something that actually helps to relieve it naturally and leave me feeling proud of myself for accomplishing something hard! I love you Megan and so do so many. I know how hard it can be to love yourself sometimes. Its a battle I fight every day. It's a battle I think most women fight every day whether you think they do or not. But succeeding is just getting up one more time than you fall and determining once again that you will choose to turn off your negative thoughts and replace them with ones that are healthy and good. I think youre awesome. Keeping on keeping on.! :)
Thanks Melaine. It is certainly a battle to be happy with oneself. Anxiety and depression can set in so easily-I've been there myself. I know that I'm not working with horses 3 days a week like I was, I've changed jobs, moved, and been under a lot of stress. My main coping mechanism was to eat. And eat. And eat. While sitting at work, I eat. I eat out of boredom. I eat because I like the flavor of something. Does it make it okay? Nope. I'm not going to go all-out on this workout thing. I love food. I'm not going to diet. But when I was on the elliptical last night, I realized that if I got angry enough with my own body image, that gave me the motivation to keep going. Not everyone can use anger as a motivator. But I guess it might work for me. I'm just tired of being squishy.
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