I watched the movie Eat Pray Love the other day and one of the lines Julia Roberts says hit home. She and a girlfriend are chatting at a restaurant before getting ready to dive into a scrumptious real Italian pizza in Italy. Her girlfriend makes a comment about having a "Muffin Top" and feeling a bit guilty about eating and gaining weight. Julia’s response is "I'm tired of saying NO then waking up the next morning, recalling every single thing I ate the day before and counting every calorie I consumed so I know-how much self-loathing to take into the shower. I'm not interested in being obese I'm just through with the guilt."
How familiar does that sound? How many times have we beaten ourselves up because of what we consumed? I can replay all of those negative/hurtful words I said to myself and remember exactly how bad it made me feel. I already felt alienated by society and my environment because of not being in the "normal" category but rather in the lazy "obese" category. Here I am completely degrading myself with negative words and helping demolish any small amount of self-worth/image that I truly needed to be building up.
So the question is - Why are we so hard on ourselves? Why does our natural first reaction immediately focus on the negative? Think about that question for a minute and how would you respond?
For me in the past that was all I really knew and I didn’t know any different. I felt that I lived in a society where physical appearance focused on me fitting into the specific standards/norms and if I didn’t meet that criteria I wasn’t “normal” and being obese automatically kicked me out of “normal standards”. People looked at me as the obese lazy person who just needed to push myself away from the table and go run 5 miles every day. After many years of hearing that I finally gave up and gave in. If this was the way society saw me as a person then maybe that was truly who I was and I needed to accept that.
Looking back now it saddens me to remember how many times I participated in self-loathing and to realize now that there are times my brain still goes there. When I start to veer off my safe path my mind tends to go back to what it knows from the past which is beating me up and the cycle of self-loathing starts again. No one is perfect and we all veer off of our personal path that we consider to be acceptable in our journey.
When those times happen, take a few steps and remind yourself of how far you have come. Reach out to your support system if needed. Do whatever you need to do for YOU. Pick yourself back up and know that one step off your personal path does not have to turn into five more steps and self-loathing.
If the veering started at Breakfast then make the promise to yourself to get back on at lunch, if it started at lunch then make the promise to yourself at dinner to get back on. If the entire day was spent veering off the path then tell yourself tomorrow is a new day!
Be kind to yourself! Give yourself the credit you deserve! Be your own best advocate!
I leave you with this quote: Like a Butterfly, I have been Reborn with Bold Colors and Strong Wings!
How familiar does that sound? How many times have we beaten ourselves up because of what we consumed? I can replay all of those negative/hurtful words I said to myself and remember exactly how bad it made me feel. I already felt alienated by society and my environment because of not being in the "normal" category but rather in the lazy "obese" category. Here I am completely degrading myself with negative words and helping demolish any small amount of self-worth/image that I truly needed to be building up.
So the question is - Why are we so hard on ourselves? Why does our natural first reaction immediately focus on the negative? Think about that question for a minute and how would you respond?
For me in the past that was all I really knew and I didn’t know any different. I felt that I lived in a society where physical appearance focused on me fitting into the specific standards/norms and if I didn’t meet that criteria I wasn’t “normal” and being obese automatically kicked me out of “normal standards”. People looked at me as the obese lazy person who just needed to push myself away from the table and go run 5 miles every day. After many years of hearing that I finally gave up and gave in. If this was the way society saw me as a person then maybe that was truly who I was and I needed to accept that.
Looking back now it saddens me to remember how many times I participated in self-loathing and to realize now that there are times my brain still goes there. When I start to veer off my safe path my mind tends to go back to what it knows from the past which is beating me up and the cycle of self-loathing starts again. No one is perfect and we all veer off of our personal path that we consider to be acceptable in our journey.
When those times happen, take a few steps and remind yourself of how far you have come. Reach out to your support system if needed. Do whatever you need to do for YOU. Pick yourself back up and know that one step off your personal path does not have to turn into five more steps and self-loathing.
If the veering started at Breakfast then make the promise to yourself to get back on at lunch, if it started at lunch then make the promise to yourself at dinner to get back on. If the entire day was spent veering off the path then tell yourself tomorrow is a new day!
Be kind to yourself! Give yourself the credit you deserve! Be your own best advocate!
I leave you with this quote: Like a Butterfly, I have been Reborn with Bold Colors and Strong Wings!
