Yes, I know, I'm an author. I should be posting about my books only. Psssh is what I say to that! I'm a writer BEFORE an author and so I can write all I want about whatever I want. Those of you who know me, know I sort of ramble and get off track, but I generally have a point. Those of you who are now only realizing this...I'm sorry. Anyway! Today I'm going to talk about an ugly word. No one should ever say this word, nor even think it. It's a despicable singular piece of vocabulary that should be erased from our minds for all eternity! (Did I mention I'm a writer? DRAMA.)
That ugly word is WEIGHT.
I hate scales. I hate that no matter how healthy or unhealthy we are, we're obsessed with those stinking numbers on that stinking square box! I hate that we feel like we're never good enough the way we are. I hate that EVERYTHING around us is based on looks. You could look amazingly perfect and take one look at that scale and think you're shit. It holds too much power over us, and do you know WHY it does? BECAUSE WE LET IT. Gasp! I say we take all those square boxes and chuck them out the window! (Just make sure no one is walking by when you do so.)
We're always comparing ourselves to someone prettier, skinnier, blah blah blah. And the stupid media with all these perfect celebrities prancing around doesn't help either. FYI: Their lifestyle isn't realistic and NONE of us should attempt to look like them. They have personal trainers, chefs, SURGERY to look like they do. Their job IS to look good, so yeah, toss that dream right out the window along with the scale. Our jobs are much more boring and anti-glamorous. You know why? Because we're REAL.
I should probably move on now.
I'm obsessed with my weight, I admit it. I always have been. This obsession most likely stems from a childhood set in an undesirable atmosphere, because honestly, I didn't start to have a problem with eating or not eating until specific incidences occurred. And then I turned to food. I was never obese, but I WAS chubby, and I DID get a lot of flack about it from people around me, which, you know, made me want to eat more. Then I went the other way. I stopped eating. (That's another thing you need to think about when you're on a dieting rampage. I was skinny, yes, but I wasn't healthy. I would go a whole day maybe eating one thing. It isn't worth it. Be aware, but be smart.) I starved myself. I even made myself throw up once or twice when I was in a really smart stage. No matter how skinny I got, I still saw myself as fat. To summarize: I was never happy with the way I looked.
This is not some success story. (Sorry.) I still have issues with my body, and having two sons via C-Sections didn't help in that regard either. But I'm healthy now. And when I regularly monitor my food intake and exercise, I'm okay with how I look.
That being said...
The past few months I've been trying to get back to a healthy weight/healthy body image 'cause I've sort of fallen off the Healthy Weight Wagon this winter. I've always been aware of the weight I am (Yep. The stupid scale has me within its clutches as well! But I'm rebellious and only weigh myself about twice a month instead of DAILY. Take THAT, weight judger!), food I eat, and my need for exercising, but lately I've been slacking on balancing it all. I started T25 ten weeks ago and the first five weeks I didn't see any changes (except for maybe a slight difference in my stomach, but no weight change and nothing significant), so I asked a fitness coach about it and she was like, "Are you monitoring your food intake?" My response, "Well...I'm guesstimating!" Ha ha. Not good enough!
I've been monitoring my calorie intake for the past five weeks as well as doing T25 and I have lost 8 pounds plus my pants are fitting like they should again! T25 is a 25-minute a day exercise program. Even though it kicks my A$$, it's only for 25 minutes. So even though I feel like I'm dying, I tell myself I only have to die for close to half of an hour.
I will be satisfied when I am back within a healthy weight range and my stomach has undergone some further shrinkage. I do have to say that I used to run and that I noticed the most significance as far as the toning of my body and the fit of my clothes during that period. I run sporadically, but haven't committed to it on a daily basis since then. (I got pregnant and there went that. Sigh. Plus my knees began to get sore.) But it is something to think about. This isn't to push T25 or running, this is just me saying what's worked for me. I also love walking, but you have to walk A LOT to see results.
Some things to remember: Finding an exercise YOU like to do is the first step and makes it easier to stick with it. Eating foods that are healthy that YOU like is the way to go too. Don't forget to throw out the scale. Don't give up the foods you love, even if they aren't good for you. Eat them sparingly. Except for the week before your friend comes to visit. Then all bets are off (For me anyway. Ha ha.). Try to remove soda from your diet; diet AND regular. Neither are good for you. You can lose absolutely no weight in pounds, but a good amount of inches, so I would take measurements as well. I sort of suck at that part. I go more by how my clothes fit. It's whatever works for you. You may feel like giving up, but tell yourself you can do it, AND YOU WILL.
Be smart. Be healthy. Be you. LOVE you.
I agree that you are a writer and should be allowed to "write" about whatever you want. This subject is one we can all relate to on different levels at some point in our lives. But I have to applaud you for telling yours because it is similar to my own. I never saw myself in the mirror I saw what others said they say me as. I didn't just have an issue with my weight but with horrible acne. I also was anorexic and that does not help with acne but of course I didn't know that at the time. I found out after I became a mother and had to go through my closets and get rid of my teenage clothes for mother clothes, that I was at one point a size 2. I never felt like a size two and for those horrible people who kept telling a girl that was a size two that she was fat so she refused to eat they can suck it! I hope somewhere that they got fat. No I am not that mean but I do wish that I would have had someone important in my life that would have told me what I really was. This here is where authors feed the facade writing about girls who have a special someone telling them that they are beautiful and amazing. Those boys don't exist in real life but at least we have the dream of what it would have been like had we had a wonderful boy like that in our lives when we were teenagers. So not only did I not do what I needed for my body to be healthy but sitting here as an adult who is now offically overweight and still carrries the horrible scars of acne that no one told me how to treat and take care of my skin, I am forced to face the fact that I was probably not as bad as I was told. Unfortunately as an adult I am not healed enough to stop telling myself that I am not that horrible looking. I still look in the mirrror and don't see a woman, I see scars, and now that I am older, wrinkles and age spots and all that other awesomeness that comes with age. But I still struggle with wanting to stop eating to lose the baby weight, to make my husband happy again, to feel like I can be out in the world as a human and not some freak. I stare at myself but I don't see a person I see flaws. How am I to teach my daughter that she is beautiful no matter what others say when I can't tell myself that? I hear what other people say when I go out with her,"How can such a beautiful little girl come formt hat as a mother?" It hurts so bad that someday my children will realize that I don't fit society's standards and their friends will make fun of me to them and they will start to notice how cruel other adults and teenagers are to me in public. How do I keep them from being hurt when I have not healed either? I am glad you are finding something to get you back on track and wish you all the best in the world! <3
ReplyDeleteAs an author, I've even thought of the covers we put out. Aren't all the people on them beautiful and skinny, for the most part? It's something we all feed into, something we all are affected by. One day I said something about my nose in front of my sons and my oldest one said, "What's wrong with your nose?" And I realized by putting myself down, I was showing him how negative people are (even me) and how much we're influenced by looks. And I wished I could take back those words, but you can't remove things you hear and say from your memories. I'm going to summarize this or I will write a two page reply. You tell your daughter she's beautiful. And since she's beautiful and she came from you, that makes YOU beautiful! When it all comes down to it, no one matters but you and your family and what you all think and feel.
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