Healthy Dose Fridays

I'm not certain I like my title.  Kim had suggested "Fitness Fridays" which has a great ring to it but I didn't want to limit myself to just fitness.  My disclaimer here is that I am not a professional nor do I play one on television, so these thoughts on Fridays are just mine.  Sometimes I may quote a source or a person, but for the most part, just my opinions.  Disagree respectfully and we will get along just fine.  I'm always interested in thoughtful responses and if you have any questions regarding anything I do or have done regarding WLS, exercise, eating, etc, we'll deal with those on Fridays too.

I've been giving a lot of thought of late to self image.  Not just mine though it does play a part in the picture as a year ago, mine was not the greatest.  But what I do think is that though I didn't necessarily LOVE my 315 pound body, I didn't loathe it either.  I didn't spend my energy being a hater on it.  I tried to accept it even though I didn't like it, mainly because it couldn't do many of things I wanted it to do.

I have a friend who I think loathes her body, or at least talks as if she does, so I'm going to use her as the example to make my point.  She's a fabulous person, but when it comes to body image, I think it is a little bit distorted, though we tend to do this with ourselves.  She has a point of reference that I never had because when she got married she was tiny, where I have never really been tiny other than as a toddler.  I have to wonder that when we knew ourselves as a smaller version, if there isn't something in our brains that thinks we can get back to that regardless of how many years have gone by.

She also had an experience I have not had in that she gave birth to two children.  Pregnancy does things to our bodies that we often times can't get back, as can aging.  Our bodies change over the years, whether we want them to or not. 

See, when I look at my friend, I don't see what she perceives to be her bodily imperfections.  I see a body that has served her well and gave her two incredible kids.  I'm not saying she should stop trying to improve on what she has, but I don't think detesting her body is the answer either.  When we stop to think of all the experiences and the things we have done with our bodies, I would like to think that we should be eternally grateful for the things it has given us.  Sure, there is always room for improvement, but I don't think we should hate our bodies nor think that they are going to go back to the way they were years ago either. 

We have been given a vehicle to get through this life that we should be doing our best to treat well.  But with that being said, we aren't perfect and we are not always going to put into our vehicles the best gasoline.  We still need to appreciate how far our bodies have brought us so far.  So maybe instead of saying "I hate my arms!" we could instead think of all the things our arms have done for us and maybe a better thought would be "I would like to improve my arms." 

I guess I just kind of think that hating on any part of ourselves is unproductive and it puts us in a mentality of doing battle with our bodies or going to war against our bodies in a mind/body dual.   If we focus more in our weight loss of challenging our bodies and working with them, I just have to wonder if it isn't going to put us in an overall better frame of mind for what it is we hope to accomplish.  We can hate on ourselves and throw ourselves into a depression over it which can lead to being completely unproductive; it could cause us to overeat or not exercise or drink. 

Acceptance and self love are hard things to master, but when we start out with baby steps in appreciating what we have accomplished so far and the vehicle that allowed us to do those things, we may very well be on the road to winning the self image battle.