I Think She's a Body Image Winner!

I was recently reading through some testimonials from students of mine and then out of the blue this came through from a student I adore and love. She makes me very proud. And I wanted to share something she sent me with her permission of course. She has healthy body-esteem and self-esteem and still like all of us, she is not perfect…she just knows how to work with being imperfection and live her life. I will let her explain that. She writes:

on the positives I do feel around my body. Such as how well it serves me in my everyday life and to be continually grateful that I have a body that is pain free and mobile. So what if I get hunger pangs sometimes or

I can’t win

Did you ever have one of those days where you felt like you just couldn’t win? That feeling came over me today when I thought, “When I try to limit my calories to drop a few pounds, I feel so hungry that now I feel bad physically”. And if I have a day when I eat to my heart’s content I think, I feel physically good in the moment but then mentally not so good afterwards.

Like I’m weak and have no control.

Neither way seems to work for me if I am truly honest with myself.

Eating/Not Eating. So I find myself stuck with that feeling of “I can’t win”.

It happened again when I was doing some exercise. I work with a trainer twice a week and probably the hardest move she has me do is the Plank Drag. It’s where you’re in a push up plank position with a towel under your feet and you walk using your arms, in my case, across the width of a basketball court. My trainer knows my mindset well so it was brilliant of her to tell me that most of her clients, including men, cannot do this. As a 63 year old female, it makes me feel like a rock star so I think of that when I’m wanting to quit my Plank Drag 20 feet from the wall. So recently while on vacation and in the privacy of my own space, I decide I’ll get some exercise in and do a Plank Drag. And I don’t want to be encumbered by clothing so I do it naked. So here I am, doing an exercise that most people can’t do. And what is my mind consumed with? The fact that when I look down at my body while performing my rock star moves, I hate, I mean HATE the way my thighs and stomach look. My thighs are crepey and the skin across my abdomen hangs down. Mind you, I should take pride in this due to the fact that in my mid 50’s, I lost 80 pounds.

Again, an accomplishment many people don’t succeed at.
But I don’t feel pride. I feel disgust.

I can’t win.

Again.

So now both my mind and my body are trapped in what Laura refers to as negative self-talk. I wished I could tell you that I’ve been able to stop this craziness but I haven’t. In fact, I don’t really know if I will ever be able to. And maybe that’s not really the point after all. Because what choice do I have? I’ve kept the weight off for 9 years now so I’m not concerned with gaining it back. And I’m not going to stop being physically active because I am one of the lucky ones, I enjoy it too much. So I think I just need to focus on the positives and have a visual reminder that I carried around too much weight for too long before I did something about it. I can live with that. Whoa, wait a minute, did I just win? I think I did after all. Thank you Laura for giving me some great body esteem coaching along the way that has supported me to not give up.

Now having seen how far this student has come, I have to tell you all that as hard as her critical voice may roar, she is doing amazing!!! She is a winner to me. Don’t you agree?

I FEEL SO PROUD OF HER. She totally inspires me.

Oh and speaking of proud, I also wanted to share a recent radio show I did on Hawaii Public Radio.

Please listen to the interview and by all means, feel free to comment below.