The person I was my senior year in high school looks very different from the person I am now. In high school, I hated my body. I worked out religiously 4-6 hours a day and my diet consisted mostly of salads and low-calorie snacks. My world focused on how low I could make that number on the scale.
Today I look very different. My weight is much heavier, I exercise when it feels good, and I eat based on my body’s cravings. I couldn’t love my body more.
It’s really easy to fall into the trap of thinking that losing the weight will make you happier with your body. In my experience, it was never enough. The more weight I lost the less satisfied I was with my appearance. I didn’t look thin enough, fit enough, or have curves in the right places.
Trying to change my body opened a pandora’s box of body image concerns and self hatred. I realized that the more I tried to change my body, the less I liked my body.
It wasn’t until the inevitable weight rebound when my views about my body began to change. This is a point when many people feel discouraged, weak, and out of control. I felt relief. I realized that I liked how my body looked when I wasn’t trying to force it to be something it wasn’t meant to be.
Letting go of the dream of having the “perfect” body freed my mind to focus on other things. I decided to travel, do the exercises I enjoyed, and eat good foods. My body changed a lot, but I wasn’t unhealthy. In fact, during my time compulsively exercising and under eating, my iron count had dropped and I had become very anemic.
Learning to love my body was a healing process. It was a time to make amends and apologize to my body. As I began to feel better in my own skin, other areas of my life improved. Exercising was more fun when I wasn’t fixated on how many calories I could burn that day. Eating out with friends became more pleasurable because I could eat what sounded good, instead of what sounded the least fattening. Shopping for clothing became less about the smallest size that could fit me and more about what clothes made me feel beautiful.
The journey of self love and body acceptance looks different for everyone. But the first step is realizing that how you feel about your body is based off of your perception of your body, rather than what it actually physically looks like. You can try every diet and workout routine that exists, but until you become comfortable in your own skin, it will never be enough.
I’d like to end here with a quote by body acceptance activist, Isabel Foxen Duke: “Your weight does not determine your body image; your weight does not determine whether or not you ‘feel good in your body,’ your weight does not determine how sexy you get to feel, your weight is actually irrelevant. It’s your perception of your weight that dictates how you feel about yourself. Not your weight itself.”
And, from a Huffington Post article,
“Loving your body looks good on you.”
Christy Walowit is graduating from her degree in nutrition. She’s from South Lake Tahoe and enjoys cross country skiing and traveling and has even studied abroad in Thailand and India. Christy has enjoyed counseling and connecting with others this semester as a nutrition mentor for FitU.
fituweb.wordpress.com 