My Roots to Grow: Full Disclosure

I am full on focused on weight loss right now.

I hadn’t been for awhile. I thought I probably shouldn’t be. I struggled with the whole ‘health at every size, advocate for acceptance, love myself as is’ mentality that was making me feel like I couldn’t also focus on weight loss.

Like in my head I could accept myself as is OR I could want to change BUT I couldn’t accept myself AND want to change. That seemed wrong. It seemed hypocritical.

But it isn’t. Body acceptance/self-love and the desire to want to change how I look aren’t mutually exclusive things. I can love myself now and still want to lose weight…I mean, isn’t that how I got here in the first place?

When people ask me how I was able to lose 130 pounds I always say I found self-love early on in my journey and that allowed me to make the choices that reflected the future I wanted for myself and kept me on the path that allowed me to get there.

So what’s different now? I mean, aside from weighing less than I did 4 years ago when I made this discovery what’s different?

Nothing!

Honestly, it was ok for me to be that way then and it is ok for me that way now. Meaning it is ok for me to focus on weight loss now because it is coming from that same place of love and concern, that same desire to be healthy and active and fully participate in my life. But in my head I had it all wrong. I thought because I was all about the HAES philosophy and beauty from within and loving and accepting who you are and feeling good in your skin and not measuring worth from beauty (or size) that I would be a big hypocrite to turn around and say I want to lose weight. It feels like it even now when I type it but maybe that’s because so many times I have seen stories of people wanting to lose weight for the wrong reasons, for unhealthy reasons and that does go against what I believe. But for me, right now, I want to lose weight for the same reasons I did back then. I just have a lot less to lose.

Maintenance isn’t easy….I am sure you hear people say that all the time. For me it is more like a big jigsaw puzzle that I am trying to put together and every time I get close to figuring it out someone comes and throws the pieces on the floor and I have to start over. But not really start over from piece one. There are still some sections of pieces are still assembled and I am able to see the big picture even with the missing pieces it's just that I am not finished. And I probably won’t ever be. I will probably cycle through weight gain and loss (on a small scale) all of my life. My life is not, nor do I hope it ever is, consistent enough to always eat the same way and exercise the same amount and sleep regularly every night. It just isn’t, and that is ok. I like my sometimes whirlwind life.

But what I came here to say, in full disclosure, is that I want to lose 10 pounds. I just do. I run better, my clothes fit better, I am not so self-conscious, I feel better, I sleep better, I am just better when I don’t have to worry about the negative impacts of my weight. I also want to be able to come here and talk about it, openly. I want to be able to tell you that I rejoined Weight Watchers (a program that I left 3 years ago) because I was desperately trying to figure out what I was doing wrong this time around, why nothing was working- which as you know turned out to be my health, not my lack of trying. I also bought Cize (the new fitness program from Shaun T- it’s all dance routines and I love it) and started back with Shakeology and even signed up to be a Beach Body coach, even though I doubt I will get too involved right away since I am overwhelmed with school right now. I am just trying to find what works for me now, which is going to be different than what worked for me then….maybe. But I want to be able to talk about it and not feel ashamed or embarrassed or hypocritical. And now that I type that I can say I don’t, and that I was silly to even think I would.

I just want to tell you where I am right now in my life with my weight loss/maintenance and not keep anything off the table. Being honest with you keeps me honest with myself. And if I am being honest I should tell you that I was struggling for a bit back there. But now, well now I think I am finally making some head way and am ready to talk about it.

And since that it is all out in the open here are some funny weight loss memes to lighten the mood J