I Used to Give a Sh*t

I posted this pic the other day…kind of as a preview to a post I had been thinking about writing….and realized later it was terribly small and hard to see, if viewing from a smartphone. Hopefully this time around you can actually read it.

 

 

 

 

You see, I used to give a shit.

Not saying that I don’t now, because I do, just not in the same way.  Now, I don’t let what other people might be thinking about me influence decisions I make regarding only me.

I used to view my body in a way that brought shame and embarrassment. And I am not talking about when I weighed almost 300 pounds, but I am talking about over the last two years of maintenance. I used to let what I thought others would think about my appearance dictate how I presented myself in public.

For example, when I bought my first bikini I thought to myself -‘this isn’t to wear now; this is to wear when you lose ten pounds. No one wants to see your flabby belly and thighs’

Or when dressing to run or take a hot yoga class it was always short sleeve t-shirts and capri length pants – because no one wanted to see my jiggly arms or that bulge around my knees.

This same dialogue happened when it came time to pick out almost every outfit- what could I wear that covered up all of my ‘bad’ areas?

But then one day I just stopped giving a shit.

I wore that bikini (not having lost any weight from the day I first tried it on) and guess what- it didn’t matter.  No one publicly shamed me or started convulsing at the sight of me. I am pretty sure no one on that beach gave a shit either. And me in that bikini- I felt comfortable. Strike that. I felt sexy. And in that moment I realized how important it was to focus on how I felt in my body and not on how others may perceive me.

From then I switched to tank tops and shorts because guess what? I live in Florida and it is HOT. There is no reason to wear more clothes than the bare minimum when you are working out in the heat.  Isn’t running in August punishment enough???

I stopped caring so much about what others might think about my appearance and started living comfortably in my own skin.

This is not to say that I don’t have moments of criticism or self-judgment as to how I look, just now the only person I think about making comfortable is me.

See, I honestly don’t care if my lumpy thighs or flabby arms bother you.  They don’t bother me and my opinion is the only one that matters.  I was tired of feeling like I had to be a certain size or shape or number in order for parts of my body to be ‘acceptable’- which is just dumb. I am human being. My body serves a million purposes but one of them is not to be pleasing to other people.

Anyway, I don’t really know where I was going with this other than to say that I think we could all benefit by giving less of a shit (not sure if that is the correct way to say that) about what others think of us. Not everyone will like us. Not everyone will accept us. But who cares? All that really matters is that we like and accept ourselves.

Love and hugs,

Dacia

xoxoxoxo