Almost exactly two years ago, I went through a really bad breakup.
It was one of the hardest things I’ve ever gone through, and as a result, I lost a bunch of weight.
When I lost this weight, the comments from others were constantly rolling in:
You look great.
Ugh, how are you so skinny? I want to be like that. Tell me how you do it.
You have such a good body.
How do you eat whatever you want and stay so skinny?
It was constant. There were always comments on my body, how great I looked, how pretty I was.
And then… as my heart healed… my wonderful appetite came back…and I gained whatever weight I needed to gain back.
I am back at the generally “normal weight” that my body tends to level out at.
And all of the compliments stopped.
Nobody really comments on how “skinny” I am anymore.
Nobody tells me how awesome I look.
I hear compliments way way less often.
This was a really interesting experience for me to go through.
To have this skinny body that everyone praised, and to then gain weight to my normal weight and have all of the praise come to a halt.
And I watched myself. I watched my ego. I watched my emotions. I noticed what I was making all of this MEAN about me.
And to be honest… I was damn proud of how it all felt, on a deep level.
Of course my ego had it’s moments where it was like “wait, am I okay? Is everything okay at this new normal weight? Am I still okay?”
But those moments were rare.
Overall, my confidence didn’t waver as my weight changed.
And this is because my confidence is not attached to my weight. At all.
All of the work I have done in the past several years around my body image and my deep inner confidence and love for myself has made a massive difference on how I am able to handle these things.
My love for who I am extends so far beyond my weight.
The connections and relationships in my life are so profound and extend far beyond what I look like or what the other person looks like.
I feel – not just on an intellectual level but also an emotional and spiritual level – that my ability to be loved and desired exists regardless of what I look like.
These aren’t just nice things I tell myself, these are things that have shifted within me at a deep level.
So as my weight fluctuates, it doesn’t really mean much.
When I stopped getting so many compliments, it didn’t need to mean anything about me.
To me, it just meant that people generally idolize “being skinny” in our society, and that is the world we live in. So many people want to be skinny because they feel they’ll be happier if they are, so they were projecting their own feelings about what skinny means on to me.
And I get that, because I felt that way at one point, too.
Today… I am so much happier than I was at that “skinny” weight.
I love my appetite and have so much fun with food, and I am so thankful that it’s back in full force.
I love my womanly body instead of the tiny body I had before… I feel more like a woman and less like a girl.
And I love myself in a way I used to always dream about being able to… which is a direct result of focusing on my inner world and relationship with myself vs. the size of my pants.
I talk to women all the time who are so afraid of losing “admiration” from others. If I were to gain any weight, people wouldn’t admire me.
So they cling so hard to being a certain weight, which inevitably makes them feel crazy around food and experience low self-esteem.
We need to release the meaning we are giving to weight.
And when we are able to do that, we liberate ourselves to feel joy in any moment, confidence in WHO we are, and food becomes fun and easy again.
Check out this free workshop with one of my favorite people and body image expert Simi Botic, all about how to find your happiness regardless of your weight.
How to shift the meaning around your weight.
How to allow your body to change without freaking out.
How to find your real confidence that is NOT attached to your body size.
How to give yourself permission to enjoy every single moment of your life regardless of what your body looks like that particular day.
It’s called “What to do when you put on a pair of pants that are too tight”… because who hasn’t been there? 🙂
We are walking you through how we USED to handle these moments (hello meltdown) and how we handle these moments now, and how you can create that embodied shift for yourself.
It’s deep stuff, it’s really important stuff.
And it’s all free! Here’s where you can access the workshop.
Love,
