Through the looking glass

The first time I can remember really noticing my body as a thing one might like or dislike was in my teens. I was a slim teenager with clear skin, one spot at a time was unusual for me and I will be damned if it wasn't wasted on me because it was only looking back at photos of that time that I realized what I had not then appreciated.

Since then my body and lifestyle choices have changed many times. I have had lots of different feelings about how I look and been a number of dress sizes and learned a lot of hard lessons along the way. I used to idealize slimness. It was this ultimate goal and once I arrived in this beautiful place all my problems would go away. I let myself off the hook too many times in not taking responsibility for my own happiness because I believed it couldn't be achieved without a smaller jean size. I think somewhere in my head I remembered being a size 8 at 16 and being happy and I thought all I needed to do was get back there in jean size at least and everything would be better. The honest truth is that 16 was not that happy a year for me, sure it was probably the last time I comfortable wore a crop top but I had just left a school I liked because of bullying and was struggling to fit in, in the new school and was managing a lot of sad, dark feelings plus a flat stomach.

I'd like to say it's age that has made me wiser but that's probably not completely true. At some point in the last few years I wriggled my way back into the magic size 8 jeans. I had just come out of a troubling relationship, battled some stomach problems ( and spent a bit of time in hospital) which caused me to take a long hard look at my diet and discovered Kettlebells. It is hardly surprising that the weight fell off me in these circumstances but I discovered no pot of gold at the end of this particular rainbow, just smaller jeans. 

I had attained the unattainable and still not found the happiness I craved. This is when I had the very obvious revelation that perhaps getting skinnier wasn't fixing anything because the body confidence I was looking for not on the outside.

These days I'm not that slim and I have my good days and my bad. But I'm learning to celebrate my body a bit more. It's very much a work in progress. I'm focusing more on what I can do than how I look or at least I'm trying.  find the weight training really helps with this and I leave the Crossfit classes for the most part feeling great. In the last few months since moving to a new city and training more frequently I have noticed I look at lot better and I know the key to this improved body confidence is taking better care of myself.

That's not to say I don't have plenty of days where my stomach doesn't horrify me or I feel like a big giant person because it warm out and my thighs are all chafed. And I'm working on that, on how I look on the outside because it feels good to take better care of myself.

But I'm also working harder on how I feel on the inside and trying to get better at taking a compliment and knowing that what I see in the mirror isn't what really matters.