To the one who is struggling with loving their body -
- TWO DIFFERENT PERSPECTIVES -
WHY— is it that no one ever talks about the
mental struggle
that comes with gaining and losing weight, they just
glorify the before + after pictures, the #TransformationTuesday posts, and the fit photos.
It’s time to speak up and change that. I teamed up with one of my favorite people in the world, who happens to be one of my very best friends. I was wondering if anyone else dealt with the sort of mental break down, anxiety and doubt that comes along with gaining and losing weight. Honestly, its a struggle and sometimes you don’t know how to deal with it and feel like you are alone in all of this. I am here to tell you that you aren’t, and no matter what you are beautiful and not defined by your weight, size, shape, or any of the lies you tell yourself when you look in the mirror.
The SHIT that goes through my head —
I definitely had a mental breakdown last week at the doctors and i’m wondering if anyone else deals with this too?
I was forced to step on the scale due to a doctors appointment, some of y’all know that my goal this year was to AVOID scales all together, because i’ll start to spiral; and when I spiral there is no stopping me it gets pretty bad.
I thought about not looking at first, but how can you NOT when it is RIGHT IN FRONT OF YOU. Then when I looked down and saw that the number had shifted I IMMEDIATELY started to spiral ... like hard core.
FIRST,
I started to panic because i had worked so hard to drop all the weight.
THEN,
I wanted to cry and started to shame myself
LASTLY,
I questioned how i could allow myself to lose control.
but here’s the realization of my initial and rather rapid weight loss.
When I started in august, I was in a deployed location, walking no less than 10 miles a day, working out 3-4x a week, and strict about my dieting and food intake. I did that for a total of 3 1/2 months, and my weight melted off my body, a whole lot quicker than most people because of my atmosphere. Then when I got home I started to maintain the 118 - 120 lbs that I was, and I was tiny, like HELLA tiny. I liked it, but I wanted to start toning up and regaining my shape, you know i wanted my booty back 🍑
So I started lifting heavier, and I ultimately knew that I would have to put on weight and eat more in order to do that. Yet, it’s insane what weight loss actually does to your mental health. That’s not really something I hear a lot of fitness guru’s, instagram baddies and the occasional IFBB bikini pro’s talk about. It’s hard trying to wrap your mind around transforming your body into something completely different after being used to seeing yourself a certain way for so long.
+ I spent most of my 20s watching the number on the scale go up, seeing myself as the chubby girl, who emotionally binge ate, and got depressed about everything.
It got to the point that I was in denial about how much weight I had lost, and having a huge fear of gaining all the weight back, and that’s why I decided to stop stepping on the scale. So getting on the scale now after almost 2 months of not knowing how much i weighed literally shocked my core.
WHAT BLEW MY MIND
was that for the last couple of weeks I had been taking pictures and seeing my progress and loving how i was looking...
THEN NOW all of a sudden I was doubting it all and viewing myself as that chubby girl again, when i am NO WHERE NEAR where i was and realistically only gained 5lbs.
My waist measurements were still the same, I comfortably still fit in a size 2 pair of pants and I’m a small in most tops and dresses.
Isn’t it so fucked up that our mind plays all these games with us, that one simple thing can mess up our views of ourselves.
+ Then I wrote Candice and she was like —
There is this misconception on social media that transformation Tuesday happened rapidly, and it was this sprint to the finish line. For some, that may be the fact of the matter, but from my experience it has been a mental struggle with emotional currents pulling me in different directions.
There is excitement, determination, doubt, self-criticism, pretty much the entire spectrum of emotions comes out in some way shape or form.
We come to this idea that if we lose weight, we will be happy. If we lose some weight, we will be lovable. If we lose some weight, we will love ourselves. Our thought process, our beliefs about ourselves, all of those damaging false concepts need to change.
We are lovable as we are, no more, no less than we are five pounds heavier or five pounds lighter.
We immediately go and follow all kinds of fitness accounts on social media in the hopes that it is going to motivate us, BUT THEN, we get trapped in the comparison cycle.
We wonder why we aren’t there yet. Why we aren’t losing weight the same way they did or as rapidly as they did.
We buy clothes that will be our goal clothes instead of buying clothes that actually fit our body. Instead of loving who we are now we again say when we get to this size, we will be lovable.
When we get to this size, we will be worthwhile.
Here's the deal:
we are lovable. Right now. As we are. In this very moment all X number of pounds that we weigh is absolutely lovable.
Before any amount of change can happen physically, we need to love who we are spiritually.
Acceptance of our body does not come with weight-loss, weight-loss comes with the acceptance of our body.