I am still trying to find a balance in studying, working and writing a blog. I decided to stick it out and make time for this post as it is something I have wanted to talk about very strongly.
Most likely if you know me personally, then you know I began a fitness journey (still ongoing) at the end of December of 2016. It has been a little over a year since. It has been a very successful year, successful, but slow. When I began my journey, by now I believed I would look like a bikini competitor, not that I wanted to look that way, in my mind, I just believed with a years work of discipline and commitment, I could be up to that potential. Am I anywhere near that? Hell no.
My journey did not begin because I thought I was fat (looking back at pictures now, I would definitely consider myself over weight and not healthy=motivation though). I started college in the fall of 2016 and lost connection with a lot of people from high-school. I went somewhere where I knew no one, and if you know me, you know I do not make friends well. This led to a lot of frustration and feeling sorry for myself. Which led to me ultimately living a very unhealthy life for the first semester of my freshman year.So again, it had nothing to do with how I looked, because frankly I had no clue how good or bad I looked because I never left my dorm room. I did it because I was tired of being tired, I was tired of not being able to walk to class, I was tired of feeling helpless and depressed because at that point that's all I thought I was.
But the key to that, was that I wasn't any of those things. Those things did not make me who I was, so I decided one day, cold turkey, that I was not going to let those things define me. I didn't give my self a date to change my life, I didn't set a plan, I just went with it right there and then. I figured the first part of a healthy lifestyle was recording where I started, I recorded in a journal how I felt, and I also took my first photo for reference even though that was not my ultimate goal. I read another blog post, I think it was from a you-tuber, it said that in order to be happy and healthy you had to surround yourself with happy and healthy things. This made complete since to me since I did nothing to help myself in how I felt that semester. I would go to class, go get pizza from the cafeteria, and then hide in my room every single day. No wonder I felt the way I did. Even though that statement made complete since to me, I still had no clue as to what made me happy anymore. Even color guard/winter guard at that point had become something of a burden at that time. I still hadn't started the spring semester at this time, so I knew I still had some time to figure out what I liked and didn't like.
I was working at a restaurant in Kosciusko for Christmas break with the most three amazing ladies, at seasonings off the square (literally the best food ever), so I was saving up quite a bit of cash. This led to me being able to buy my own food and not having to eat from the cafeteria during the semester as much, which that alone made me feel so much lighter and healthier in the mind. Still, I was missing something, I was still locking myself in my dorm room and not having any contact with the world, so after the first week of classes I decided to use my free membership (is it really free though?) at the Sanderson here at MSU. I didn't start out in the gym because it scared me none the less. I went to a workout class (sometimes two) a day for the entire spring semester. That made me happy, as I actually made quite a few friends and lost a tremendous amount of weight from where I started, which is when I realized after comparing before and after photos, that I also was unhealthy looking for myself. That is not to say that i thought I looked terrible, but you could definitely tell an emotional change in my face that I was happier after.
After the spring semester ended, I had some friendship problems that sort of made me lose my sudden happiness and I felt like I was going back to the same place I started, but I never let myself get there. I decided to change my entire approach and goals for fitness to keep things fresh and give my mind something positive to worry about. I had begun working at seasonings again so I bought a membership for the summer and began weight lifting. This has led to my obsession of now not worrying about the number on the scale, but worrying about how much muscle I was gaining. I wanted my body to look stronger, not necessarily more skinny. I wanted people to look at me and say "that is a strong girl", because in my mind, my body portrayed what my mind was on the inside. I felt that the stronger my body was, the stronger my mind would be. That has been my focus and love ever since.
When I went to music city for my second (and most amazing) summer, a lot of my friends from when I marched in 2015 noticed a huge change in who I was. I marched in 2015, the summer before my senior year, and I was very unsociable, very sad and homesick and just let everything get to me. This past summer that I marched, I took a complete different approach, (especially since I had already been away from home for almost a year), I wasn't going to let my negative thoughts define me. I wasn't going to let anyone or anything dull my shine. I wanted to bring a positive, funny, and accepting environment with me everywhere I went. I occasionally got asked every morning during PT or breakfast how I was always so positive this early in the morning. In my mind I probably was asking myself the same thing, but being positive is what kept me pushing harder and working harder for myself and my MCDC family, so I just always replied with either "its gonna be a GRAT day" (yes I meant to miss spell great) or a quote from my favorite fitness athlete (Whitney Simmons) "Its a great day to be alive", because it is, no matter how negative or tired you feel about anything, just saying in your mind that you are cherishing the fact that you are alive and breathing can honestly change your mental state so much.
This comes to my next point, earlier it was said that you had to surround yourself with happy and healthy things. We have only covered just a fraction of what these possibilities could be. The healthy part being changing your diet and way of living and the happy is with doing things and saying things that keep you positive. A big problem with this is that people can only do this for so long. Have you ever heard the saying "fake it till you make it?" well I like to think "fake it till its real". It is proven that if you are angry, but walk around with a smile on your face you will ultimately begin to fill happier. Most people never make it to the real part because they do not commit long enough or they simply put them in an unsustainable position of life.
You cannot go into a new lifestyle and eat 500 calories a day and go to the gym twice a day and think that you could potentially do this ( and feel good) for a month or even two weeks. You can't go in pretending to be happy if you are only worried about making others happy or doing things that make others happy so that you are surrounded with happy things. These are not sustainable ways of life, you have to make yourself happy first.
You aren't going to get abs overnight, you aren't going to lose 10 pounds (safely) in a week, and you will not look like a bikini competitor (if you are just starting out from an unhealthy position) in a year (living proof- and I was pretty consistent and even restrictive at times), so why rush it? I absolutely promise, and have a lot of videos and post to back me up if you are interested, that slow and steady wins the race. Plus if your main goal is body image this really does apply because it reduces the risk of burn out and unsafe and unhealthy habits forming. Surround yourself with people that appreciated the way you look and the way you are. If someone judges you, throw then out. Tell them its a great day to be alive and that you have no time for negativity in your life.
I have a really good example of the surround yourself with people that appreciate you part that recently happened to me. I recently started a fitsta (fitness instagram) and I actually became more self conscious because I felt as though i didn't look skinny or fit enough for it (these thoughts have only in the last two months came up and they have since gone away) so I wanted to cut, a lot, so that the muscle I was gaining would show more and so I looked thinner as well. I am aware that I am a "thicker" body type. I found myself recently saying that "oh I wish my pudgy stomach didn't stick out as much" or "I wish my thighs weren't as big" and I have never thought this way. I found myself feeling deep regret if I even just ate one piece a candy a day, it was getting crazy, and to be honest I just only recently snapped out of this state of mind with the help of my amazing boyfriend. I was reading a post that said back in the early 1900s a woman who was 5'4' 145 lbs and a waist of 25-29 was the ideal 'sexy' woman. I am 5'4' 148lbs, and my waist is a 27 and 1/8inch. So I made the comment to Matthew (my boyfriend) that "did he know that in the 1900s I would have been the ideal body" and he came back at me with the "did you know it still is?" That hit me. In a good way. It did not matter what was considered the ideal "fit" body was, he has always made a point to let me know that he appreciates the way I look and he has even told me I am the most fit girl hes ever known. It merely just made me realize that the people we
allow around us effect how we see ourselves. If you have people that tell you are ugly then you will feel ugly, if you have people around you that say you are pretty, you will feel pretty. Now this no way means that if he would have told me I wasn't the ideal body type or that I wasn't fit enough that I would have starved myself or killed myself in the gym, it just would simply mean that maybe I shouldn't have that type of person in my life. Are you getting what I am saying? When I snapped out of my brief body shamming period, I realized that there was nothing wrong with my body and I wasn't going to change it for someone, but it has made me even more aware that I am fine, I look fine, I feel healthy when I have someone and others that also appreciate myself. Don't change the way you look if you feel content because of what others say, just change the people.
My last point is that since you do not need to rush the process and you don't need to stress the process, have that donut. Go out with your friends on the weekend. Now that is not me saying have 5 hamburgers and a pizza every Saturday but if someone brings cupcakes to work, eat a freaking cupcake, repeating myself, you won't have abs overnight, so enjoy yourself, make life livable and sustainable because restricting yourself and getting depressed because you ate a reeses cup is exactly the opposite of sustainability and can actually set you back. Sustainability also comes with happiness, so surround yourself with happy people, don't change yourself because of what others look like and remember (ladies in particular) that the ideal woman body (of today) is only attainable by 5% of the population of women and most of the ideal bodies you see in the media are almost always photo shopped, so do not worry with the fact that you do not look like someone on a billboard, its most likely fake anyways.
I am going to link some videos and articles to help explain my points further, as well as some interesting topics and the medias influence on the ideal body.
Dove commercial: You are more beautiful than you think (3 min)
This commercial really shows that we judge ourselves way to harshly, we are more beautiful than we think
https://youtu.be/XpaOjMXyJGk
Dove commerical: Model to billboard (how they are photoshopped) (1 min):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v3YvvFbsj94
Benefits of a cheat meal (article):
http://www.medicaldaily.com/9010-rule-cheat-meals-actually-boost-your-metabolism-and-help-you-lose-weight-327212
If you do want an entire cheat meal per week, here is how you can prepare(article):
http://www.eatthis.com/10-cheat-meal-strategies-weight-loss/
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