Your Weight Does Not Define Your Worthiness

During the powerball craze, my husband was listening to an interview with the man that counsels the winners and part of his wisdom for them is, " If you were unhappy before you had the money, the money won't make you happy. If you were happy before you won  the money, the money will make you VERY happy!"  It's the same with  fitness. Health is much more complicated than if you are eating the right foods and exercising. Your thoughts and perspectives of things create a positive or negative outlook on life or circumstances and that also affects your health. I was 116 pounds and borderline eating disorder because I had let my appearance be paramount to my happiness. My whole life was spent trying to look like a model ( and I don't!) so I was NEVER happy with who I was or satisfied with what I was given. I was already as thin as I could be. I prided myself on staying just below the lowest healthy weight for my height and I was still constantly picking on the my imperfections and comparing myself to other women. No goal reached was ever good enough, I wasn't good enough. In this society, I won the genetic lottery of being a tall thin woman and it couldn't make me happy. I would see women who were much heavier than me loving their bodies, feeling secure, enjoying their lives and I was envious. 

Yesterday, on Instagram, there was a post by a woman I follow ( yourstruelymelly). She had written an article that talked about ways people fat shame through acting as if they are concerned for the health of obese people. The comments got very lively and honestly unkind. It really got me thinking and what I love about Melissa's perspective on body positivity is that she is inspiring us to be happy with ourselves AS IS. You don't need to lose weight to be worthy or beautiful. You are already those things. You need to understand that deeply and fully. Most weight loss goals are stemming from trying to be worthy or beautiful or accepted by society. Even if you attain that magic number in your head, if you aren't happy with yourself right now, you won't be happy with yourself then. I know.

You are not your body. You have a body. It serves you and is a vessel for achieving all the things you can dream up. It helps you experience the joys of touch, taste,smell and sound It aids you in intimacy and connection with others. But the size of your body doesn't affect any of those things. You can experience all of those things whether you are 9 pounds or 900 pounds.  The reason behind wanting to lose weight is very important. If you are trying to gain happiness because society has told you thin= worthy, happy and beautiful, you are striving for something unattainable and it won't change how you feel about yourself. If you want to lose weight to better love and care for your body and your focus is on fueling it and building it to better serve your dreams and goals than you can set health goals that represent YOU. What do YOU want to weigh? What foods do YOU want to enjoy? I want you to hear this! It's your job to decide what is balance for you. It's ok for you to only walk for exercise and never have a six pack and its ok if you want to be a body builder as long as your choice is being true to who YOU are.

The trouble is most of us don't know what we actually think because we have been accepting the social standard for so long, we think that's what we want. It's ok to look at your own body and appreciate that you're beautiful. You are! Not one of us is perfect and we can't be, so enjoy what you have been given and then decide what healthy means for you and make a plan to achieve YOUR goals. Know yourself. It's harder than it sounds. I know I spent so many years criticizing myself and shaming myself that I was unable to think of myself in a positive light and it took flooding my mind with personal development and choosing to believe truth and acting on what is true and not on how I felt before I was able to gain mental and emotional health. I highly recommend reading the book, " Daring Greatly" by Brene Brown.  After reading that book, I was so liberated from shame. I still have moments but I have tools to fight my own thoughts and I am learning to have a positive mentality about my body, about my purpose, and about my life! You have amazing untapped potential and your view of your body is holding you back from it. My challenge groups aren't just about fitness, they are about physical, emotional and mental health and wellness. I want you guys to know, when I am promoting health, I mean that in the holistic sense.  Healthy looks different on everybody so take inventory of your strengths and weaknesses and sculpt the best version of yourself without comparing against anyone else.  When you are comparing, you are looking to others to set the standard for you and then every outside opinion negatively affects your confidence. Don't look to find your confidence in the approval of those in the stands, you won't find it. Instead, realize that a life that is consumed only with trying to achieve a perfect body is distracting you from reaching your highest potential.  Pursue health so that you can live life to the fullest and have freedom to fulfill your calling with vibrance and energy. 

The final thing I want to leave you with is that thin does not equal healthy necessarily either. Before Beachbody, I was still thin but I paid no attention what I ate, it was all about calorie counting for me. I was starving myself both by not eating enough and by not filling it with nutrients and yet no one was ever concerned for MY health because in our society we think thin equals healthy and if you are thin you can eat whatever you want. The common thing people would say to me when I was eating junk was , " I wish I had your metabolism." So basically, the American dream is to eat junk and stay thin because thin is an idol in our culture. Ridiculous! We should be concerned about promoting consumption of nutrient rich food and being healthy from the inside out as opposed to judging if someone is healthy based on if they are a size 4 or 24. As kindly as I can say it, let's be concerned with ourselves and be an example and not an opinion. 

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