After yesterday’s post about why focusing on ‘results’ and looking fit isn’t the best motivation for working out, Nicole and I got chatting about why this hits some people harder than others. I shared this older post about the advantages of never really being inside the beauty ideal. Here it is as our Throwback Thursday post….
“I have a fairly robust self image despite being significantly overweight. How did I come by this? It’s puzzled me a bit so I thought I’d share some of my thoughts.
It’s not that I think my body is perfect, far from it. I see the flaws: footballer knees, a soft lower belly from pregnancy, wide calves, short legs/long torso… What I mean is that when I look in the mirror, I usually smile. I see my stretch marks even (hard to be pregnant three times without getting some) with affection.
I used to think that body acceptance would be easier if you were closer to society’s ideals for women. Now I see that isn’t so. Doing the Lean Eating program I got to know some very small women with some serious body image issues. I found some of the self-loathing pretty difficult to be around and in the end I chose a smaller subset of that community as allies and friends….”
Read more here.
I love this! I think about this often as someone with a chronic disease that impacts my joints. All the memes about folks in their 30s realizing that a bad pillow can ruin your week – I’ve known that since I was a preteen! I think this makes the non-aesthetic impacts of aging more tolerable for me than many others.
Combine that with also never having been in the beauty ideal…aging can’t get me down!