You are Fantastic and Fabulous

I recently had a conversation with one of my really good friends.  We were discussing not liking our bodies and the feelings that we carry around daily.  As you all know, I have spent years feeling like this. I have also spent years working to change those feelings. 

I decided to work on helping her realize that she is still beautiful and amazing regardless of how her body looks.  That she is still worthy and deserving regardless of what society says.  That you can be stick thin and be unhealthy.  I say this because it has become a perfectly normal thing, in our society, for women to hate what they look like or believe the negative self-talk.  Being healthy does not simply come from what we look like, it also comes from how we think and feel about ourselves.

Regardless of your pant size or your blood pressure, I want you all to look in the mirror and say to yourselves I AM FREAKING AMAZING! I also want you to believe those words.  You are wonderful just the way you are.  I am not saying you can never change yourself or work to be a better version of yourself.  I am saying that you should love yourself at all of the stages of your life.  Love yourself now, love yourself through the changes, love yourself when you meet your goal.  There is zero reason to not love who we are at this exact moment. 

I can honestly say that feeling bad about how I look never inspired me to look differently.  The only thing it did was create a constant battle with myself and make me dread waking up in the morning, having to pick out clothes to wear, and it created an unhealthy relationship with food.  Not in the sense that I ate all the time but more in the sense that I no longer cared about food at all.  Learning to love myself has changed so many of these things for me. 

Yes, it takes work to learn to love yourself exactly how you are.  I have days where I don't like how I look, but when I go to bed at night I still love who I am.  I spend less time worrying what other people think about how I look and more time enjoying my life.  If I want fries, I eat fries.  Life is about balance and some days that means I drink a whole bottle of wine and have fries.  Some days that means I work out and have salad.  It is all allowed.  You dictate what your life is, no one else.