I admit the title of this post may be misleading because my goal weight isn’t 55kg any more. My goal weight is … well, whatever my body chooses.
Now that might be hard for you to take. Especially if you believe the messages that all women should be thin with visible bones and fit into a really small size. Of course, some women are really tiny, but I expect if it comes naturally to you, you don’t spend your time reading health and fitness blogs.
I haven’t dieted for more than a year and today my body looks completely different to what it did before I gave up dieting. But here’s the thing, I am beginning to actually, honestly like the way I look.
Some women LOVE controlling their food and exercise in order to achieve their idea of the perfect body. They enjoy it, they thrive on it, and in their minds the restriction is a small price to pay for the end result. Once again, most of these women don’t really read weight loss blogs because they have their tried and true plan and they simply stick to it. It’s just what they do and I used to envy them. Now I realise that I am no worse or better than them because I choose a different path.
But for those of us who struggle to stay thin, who have to fight the fat, who swing between eating nothing and eating everything in sight, we long for feeling full AND feeling bony.
I’m beginning to think that trying to fit my body into a size 8 without a massive investment of time, discipline, willpower, continuous discomfort, and a disregard for my emotional well-being is not possible.
What is possible is to make peace with food. To eat when I’m hungry and be completely satisfied until the next meal is joyful freedom that I am so grateful for. But I used to feel that I was still paying a price … a heavier body than I’d prefer was what I had to settle for. I developed a begrudging tolerance of how I looked now in the hope that one day the fat would eventually fall off.
Well here’s the thing, and it’s taken me all this time to get to this place, I am happy with how I look right now. I am curvy, lush and womanly the way I was genetically programmed to be. And I am no longer in some temporary holding place until my body figures itself out; this is how my body wants to look today and that’s more than fine with me.
I no longer look in the mirror and see only flaws. I don’t see the cellulite and the soft curve of my belly as ugly, I appreciate the fact that this body has been through so much, does so much for me, gives me so much pleasure *cough* and is the only body I’ll ever have.
I am flawed, I am unique and yet I am ordinary. No-one I love calculates my worth on the size of my jeans so I no longer do that to myself. And the abuse has ended – the mental reprimands, the physical pain and injury and the spiritual and emotional desolation – all have ceased.
I love myself, I take good care of myself, and I love every crease, curve and secret soft place. I have never felt this way, even when I stood on stage in a bikini and flexed my teeny tiny muscles. This is joy, this is my goal weight, this my friends, is healthy living.
→ photo: we♥it.com