The Weight of Body Image

I have had a lingering thought the last few days… It is that time of year where most people feel their New Year’s resolution goals looming over their heads. For SO many years for me, my goal encompassed my weight. Eating better, working out more, etc. In 2020, with little more to do than worry about what exactly a global pandemic was going to look like, I really dug into that goal in the healthiest way I ever had.

But first, did you realize that not eating is a horrible way to reach weight goals? Of course you did, and honestly I did to, but that didn’t stop me prior to 2020 from considering or attempting this option. Being hungry from time to time seemed like a small price to pay in order to be able to wear whatever I wanted and “feel like a million bucks”. I had an on-again-off-again relationship with dieting and “healthy” lifestyles that never worked out in the long run. But in the beginning of 2020, I read something that changed my entire perspective.

For the life of me, I cannot remember where exactly I read it or who said it, but I stumbled upon a woman speaking about creating healthy body image goals where she said, “the goal cannot be skinny, it has to be healthy”. Now maybe you read that and didn’t see the mind shattering genus from this statement that I did, but let me explain what I really read here.

You see, skinny had always been my goal. I wanted to wear the baggiest t-shirt or the tightest t-shirt and feel like a million bucks, just like every skinny tiny person I had seen. I wanted my arms and legs to be the same thickness all the way down. Plain and simple, I wanted to be skinny.

But skinny was NOT about to happen for my body type. At no point in my childhood was I even really a “skinny” child. I always had a little something on my tummy, and in high school, gained hips and a buttock that were ready to have babies. Nothing about my body was overweight, but curviness was inevitable which equaled no such thing as a truly “skinny” version of Ashlyn.

But that wasn’t really what shook my core the most about that sentence. What shook me to the core was that I had always done dieting and and working out in the name of health, but that was never actually the goal. When I ate only salads, barely ate at all, or worked out consistently, it was to be skinny. It was to look like the skinny people on my social media And what I was willing to do to look like them wasn’t healthy at all. So what would pursing a healthier lifestyle look like when the goal was ACTUALLY my health?

I was about 25 pounds overweight going into 2020 and my most recent trip to the doctor revealed that I was considered overweight for my height/weight. So pursuing a healthier lifestyle was not only ideal, it was becoming necessary. But even when I had first discovered that losing weight was necessary, I wanted to come out of it being skinny.

So here I was, having a mind-blowing realization for the first time that maybe the reason I had never held onto a healthy weight or lifestyle wasn’t because I am lazy or not driven, but because I had held an unrealistic finish line expectation that was never going to happen. I was never going to cross the finish line of skinniness. I had set myself up for failure every time before.

I took a good long look at myself in the mirror and for the first time I saw my body. Not for the extra bumps or curves it had, but for the only body that I would ever get to have. This body that pumps blood through my veins and creates energy for me to do the things I love and all it really asks for in return is water, food, and a little cardio. Heck, it doesn’t even force or demand those things, but it isn’t nearly as capable without them.

Now that I had accepted that skinny could not be the goal because it was never going to happen, what if I did this for my health? My actual health? Along the way I was bound to feel more comfortable in my own skin, and healthy was possible.

Within weeks of making adjustments to my diet and adding in workouts, I felt better. I just felt different. And a few weeks later, I started to feel different in my clothing. Pants became too big and shirts looked a little more flattering. Weeks after that, I started taking more fashion risks and wearing more tank tops here and there.

A year or so into it, I was down 20 pounds, and I had never been healthier. I was drinking more water, I was getting in 2-3 days of exercise, and my relationship with food became about energizing my body instead of eating whatever I wanted regardless of how crappy it would make me feel.

It has been an imperfect journey at times, as most journeys are. I went through times of not eating enough or veering off the exercise path. But I always find my way back. And if I ever look in the mirror and wish I saw something different, I take time to think of where I have come from and how much healthier I feel.

I don’t always look exactly like I want to in the mirror, but I feel great. I feel healthy. And it is a goal that will always matter and always be attainable.

Why does all of this matter?

Because sometimes the weight of what we wish we looked like is heavier than the weight that is actually on our bodies. The weight of the expectations that we have for ourselves, or that sometimes others have for us, may be the unhealthiest thing in our life.

We are all beautiful, of course, but our healthiest self is not 50 pounds overweight or underweight. Our healthiest self isn’t size 000 or size 4X. Being “healthy” is different for every body type, and it is not an easy thing to attain. But knowing that we get just one body for our whole lives should matter more than how a t-shirt feels. It should inspire us to take care of this vessel that takes such good care of us. And if pop culture took a moment to encourage that instead of telling us that we’ll be happy 30 pounds lighter or that being 300lbs is completely okay… think of how that might impact critical things such as suicide rates, the obesity epidemic, heart disease rates, diabetes rates, eating disorder rates, and so much more. I know its a big wish, because most of what pop culture advertises makes lots of money off of supporting what causes those tragic things I just mentioned, but who gave them all of the power for making decisions for us anyways?

I am taking back the ability to pursue a healthy body over all other things. Not skinny. Not eating whatever I want. Healthy.

If you are like me and the weight of carrying expectations for what you wish you looked like has become ridiculous to carry. Let it go. Let it all go. Look at yourself in the mirror, take a moment to thank your body for getting you this far, and think about what you could do to take better care of it.

Maybe that starts by drinking a little more water each day, or going for a walk with a friend when you can. Don’t do it for how your clothes fit or what you look like in pictures, do it for your body.

We can all do it. We should all do it.

When would you like to begin?

Until next time.

Ashlyn R.