Stop Hating Your Body Challenge

On Tumblr, someone posted a Stop Hating Your Body Challenge:

New Years is coming up, I have a challenge for you.
On your own blog make a text or photo post, about what you’ve learned this year. I want you to make a body positive post.
I want you to make a promise to yourself, to move forward and think positive, to remove toxic people and things from your…

So here's my response:

Last year at this time, I was recovering from a horrible month. I had panic attacks daily, no appetite and couldn’t keep food down when I did manage to eat. I lost 20 lbs in less than a month. Pretty much in the last two weeks of December. It was a horrid way to lose the weight, even if I needed to do so for health reasons.

I’ve recovered slowly from that hell. But kept the weight off, in good ways. Eating good foods, in appropriate portions. Walking, playing with the kids, working out. I’m happy with the way my body looks now.

It’s not a model’s body. I’ve had two kids, which brought about some stretch marks and other changes. No matter how toned I get, you will not see the muscle definition in my abs. But I have curves! Didn’t have those before the kids. And that hell I went through…lost more from my waist than anywhere else, which just shows off the 38D’s that I got from having my kids. Fair trade for the stretch marks, I think. And I love my legs. They look great even when I’m not in heels. I may have thick farm girl arms, but from muscle not flab.

Even still, it was tough to look in the mirror and start to like what I saw. As a teen, my family called me Twiggy. 5’6” and barely 100 lbs all the way through college. Before you think that is an ideal to work toward, let me tell you that I barely had hips, much less breasts. I got stopped more than once to be lectured about eating disorders I never had. I was everyone’s little sister, or just one of the guys. If not for the long hair, I probably could have been taken for a boy. Being Twiggy was not great for my health either. But hitting the 178 lbs mark was not any better. Just different issues, physically and mentally.

I’m mostly healthy now. My weight fluctuates from 135 to 140. Oddly, it’s higher when I’m working out regularly rather than when I stop. Or maybe not…that whole muscle mass thing. Either way, I’ve been skeletal skinny and I’ve been uncomfortably heavy. There were hard parts to both situations. And benefits. I do miss the days when I could eat 2 foot long subs and not worry about the weight. But I’ve gotten many more compliments on my figure, even at my heaviest, then I ever did when skinny.

Now, I love my body. Not because of the size it wears, or in spite of its flaws. But because it’s me. And I deserve it. I deserve to be loved, to be taken care of. To enjoy life and food, friends and fun times. I treat myself with respect and give my body the attention it needs. (Yeah, take that in every way you want. Because, dammit, the body needs that kind of attention. Perverts. *wink* I love you.)

I hope that the lessons I learned this last year are not lost in the chaos of this one. And I hope that someone out there can learn from them too.