7 months in

We're at the tail end of July. Seven months into the year.

I don't know about you, but over the course of 2013, I've had a lot......a lot.....of friends post on FB or Twitter or whatever social networking they are using that they are changing their lifestyle. They want to get healthy and/or lose weight. Most of them posted about it, I'm sure, to attempt some level of accountability. "Hey, if I post it in public then I have to stick to it!"

But now it's July and you probably aren't hearing a lot about those life changes anymore. Your friend who was gonna do the juice cleanse posted about her amazing burger and fries three days into it. And your friend who joined the gym has had "life happen"' and hasn't been in a month. Or maybe it's you.....you made a total commitment to walk 30 minutes every day.....but that kind of hasn't happens in about eleven....and twenty days. 

Of my friends who started some sort of new life journey, about half of them asked me for advice. Advice on what to eat or how to exercise or how to fit it all into being a mom. And honestly I feel like my advice is kind of pointless. Because anyone can say "Ok! I'm gonna eat clean!" but really...what's your plan past that? Where do you want to be? What do you want at the end of it? Where, exactly, is that end anyways?

I'm not judging. I was there once. I have a few wasted gym memberships under my belt. I have work out DVDs I have watched all of one time and I think I've bought five yoga mats that saw maybe two classes each before I thrifted them.

For me, the light bulb finally snapped on in my brain when I went through 2011 as a semi-regular runner.....and I went January to December with no real change in my body. And I thought "I just went a whole entire year with no change.....do I really want to look back at every year in that way?"

So it's July. Seven months into 2013.

What did you say you wanted to do for yourself this year? What progress have you made towards that goal? 

And more importantly.....how are you going to feel if you start 2014 at the same place you started 2013? 

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My suggestion for getting back on track? Give yourself 21 days. 21 days of no cheating, no quitting, no excuses. You can do anything for 3 weeks. And they say....it takes 3 weeks to make or break a habit. All you have to give is 3 weeks. It's not even a whole month. 3 weeks of yoga or therapy or running daily or not drinking or not eating junk food. Whatever it is for you......give yourself 3 weeks. 21 days. That's nothing. That's a blink of an eye.

Whatever it is you want to do, you can do anything for 3 weeks.

And then maybe on January 1, 2014....you look back and think "Damn.....look at what I did this past year!"

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Note:

This is NOT a persecution. I am so incredibly guilty this year. I have failed myself the past few months. This is a call to myself to get back on track, to get back to being happy with myself, to make myself proud in the way I know I'm capable of and deserve. I am not immune from falling off the wagon....not by any stretch. I do not want to waste this time. I do not want to get to the end of 2013 and look back and think "Man, I could have done so much more". I'm right there with you.

hard words

I've gotten far more snotty comments for being thinner than I ever got for being fat.

Friends have insulted me to my face. I constantly see comments/pins/quotes/passive-aggressive-comments being passed around the internet about how "real women" are curvy/fat/voluptuous/not thin.

And the comments about working out? Even worse. There is currently a Jennifer Lawrence quote making it's rounds around the internet about how she wants to punch people who enjoy working out in the face. "Oh ha ha ha! Yes, punching people who work out is awesome!!!"

I post about working out and five of my friends on FB make passive aggressive posts about how people who work out are dumb/annoying/stupid. But posting pics of food or boozing gets nothing but "likes".

I hear a lot of talk about how hard it is to be fat. But that wasn't my experience. I never got treated as badly being fat as I do being not-fat.

And it's not what I witness happening on an average day. I see nothing but support for being fat....and I feel like I have to hide the fact that I take care of myself in a way that is not popular with most of society.

What I have learned over the past year is that the majority of other women don't consider me a "real" woman. And that my lifestyle choice is considered less valid than most other peoples. And that while posting endless pics of drunken escapades is ok, there is a limit to posts about work outs that most people find acceptable.

You think that getting healthy and being more comfortable in your body will make a lot of things easier, but the one thing I've found is that it makes it a lot harder to fit in. Most of the time, I feel like an outcast. I almost always feel like I can't share the things that are important to me because most people make it abundantly clear how much they disapprove of my life.

I kind of hate it. But what can I do?

For now, I just live my life in my tiny bubble and keep plodding along. I don't really know if there will ever be a balance......

For The First Time

This is the first summer of my adult life that I went swimsuit shopping and didn't spend weeks trying on suits and getting depressed.

It's the first summer I went suit shopping one day and liked every single one I put on and my struggle was picking just one. 

This is the first summer I went out in public in my bathing suit and just walked around like normal. I didn't keep a cover up on, I didn't constantly adjust myself or the suit. I went to a beach this weekend and swam with my kids and then came on shore and played with them. And then sat in a chair and ate some snacks and watched the boys play.

I do not have a perfect body. Not by a long shot. At the beach next to us, there was a group of twenty-something college kids, with a handful of very very tan, thin-ish blonde girls in bikinis. They very well may have been looking at my white dimpled thighs and mocking what becomes of the bodies of women who have children. 

Even though my body isn't the definition of perfect, I'm really proud of where it is. Strangers may look at me and not realize that I worked really  hard for this imperfection, and I guess that's ok. At least I know.

Being not self-conscious for the first time makes it all worth it.