5 years ago and my needle scratch moment

I have very much been enjoying the Memories aspect of Facebook these days.  I guess summer is so full of activity and joy that it has been quite a hoot to relive the last few years.

But talk about a needle scratch yesterday when I came across a former profile pic of myself.  And my flinching reaction to it absolutely defies everything that I now believe and how I live my life.

2010

2015

These are not before and after.  I am not a work in progress, or a project and neither are you!  We are on a journey 

Between these two photos there has been a long journey.  LOOOONG journey, and it has only been 5 years. This first photo was taken in the summer of 2010, about 6 months before I couldn't take my deteriorating health and began my stint with Loseit and losing weight.  Between now and that day, I started using the Loseit app, started walking regularly, ate less, walked a lot more, ate EVEN less, began weight lifting, stopped drinking soda, gave up eating Doritos, became a VEGETARIAN!!  (never regretted that!) started running, hurt my knee and stopped running, began training for a canoe trip, became stronger and ate even less, but upped my protein, canoed and camped, became a gym rat (which I am going back to), starved myself and broke down over eating one morsel more than I thought I should, hit goal weight, did not stay at goal weight.....  so stressed over weight, but still had to eat, began looking for something else.  Found body acceptance bloggers, got a life coach, quit weighing myself, looked for a way to live and not think about food every god damn minute, found it! Did a LOT of work on myself and while I have my days, I am way better off.  In SPITE of the fact that I lost a lot of my strength from the Lymes bout last August and the flipping broken elbows in January.

I HATE that I reacted that way yesterday.  I have not totally accepted myself, apparently, but I am working on it.  I go out in public in shorts, though I do not weight my "goal weight" and I NEVER EVER would have done that 5 years ago. This morning I had a moment with my tummy, but I shrugged and said, eh, I look fine and went on with my day.  But then I remembered that reaction yesterday, so I am blogging about it and working out my feelings today.

My lovely coach has helped me understand that we are subjected to thousands of daily images that tell us that we are not good enough, that these photo-shopped people are how we are "supposed" to look.  Our eyes and psyches are filled with this propaganda and we have a hard time feeling that we are worthy, even though we are the same wonderful people as we were before.  Now from a health standpoint, I can not argue I am not way better off than I was before.  I am not zero medications.  NO high blood pressure, or high cholesterol, or hormones, or sleeping pills or what have you....  I take ibuprofen because I tend to over do it.  :)  I do not have heart palpitations anymore, nor heartburn, nor this weird thing with my stomach, nor any of the other ailments that besieged me.  I can walk 5 miles without thinking about it, I recently biked 30 miles and all of you know how I feel about a good long kayak session!!  These daily joyful activities have helped me maintain the fitness level that I achieved when I was starving myself and over training.  But now I don't freak out if I miss a day, and I don't punish myself with exercise if I have a cookie- or cake- or icecream or whatever.  I treat food as food now.  I don't glorify it nor demonize it.  Even if I do still like to take pictures of it sometimes, but that is me and a camera!

People still try to talk to me about food and diet in the traditional way, but they find that my story has changed.  I try to tell them now to just relax and don't think about it so much.  If you make things illegal or off limits, you KNOW you will be filling  your face with it by weeks' end.  But I don't want to preach.  Taking that power AWAY from the food is the place to start.  And then the hard part comes, figuring out what it is that makes you want to soothe yourself, or stimulate yourself or comfort yourself with the food.  That is the part that causes some major discomfort.  Makes you cry.  Has you filling out notebook after notebook of writings that examine what it is that makes you sad, or lonely or what you are missing in your life.  AND when you rid yourself of constant attention to food and exercise and health and all that, you have so much time to do other things!  This seems simplistic but WOW! You can begin practicing your piano and learn Italian and obsessively kayak or talk about kayaking or planning to kayak....  or insert the word hike there too.  Because all of those things are just vehicles to photography...  ;)

I do not regret my time on Loseit and dieting, because it led to the place that I am in right now. I feel so bad for some of the people I know who worry and worry about what they are eating/ate and over pounds that just don't need to be addressed. Who CARES what other people think, you have to do what is right for you, even if it doesn't fit into society's wish to shrink females down to nothing. #bemorenotless

It just does no good to be upset about the past, as it can be instructive for your future.  But I am SO glad that I do not worry about my "weight" anymore. I want to maintain where I am right now, basically, because I love my clothes!  Haha!  However, if I gained, I would buy some cool new clothes and rock on.  And then maybe try to decipher why I am eating more- what is it that I am trying to avoid or comfort myself about.  The biggest aha for me is truly understanding that my weight will fluctuate through the year and it is OK.  It is not a given that if you gain or lose that you will always do that.  And mostly that I am still ok, no matter what my body does, because it lets me do what I want to do.   Because I remain me.  And I love the adventurous person I have become, a really more authentic me.  I feel right.  Except I want my muscles back.  And I am going to go get them!  Because that is ok too.

And that will be a joy!