This post has been a long time coming. It was inspired by a photo I took last summer. I got a new bathing suit and posted a picture of myself. When friends began to compliment me on my body I was so confused. This was the biggest I had ever been. I wasn’t posting for compliments. I was posting to liberate myself from the shame of feeling like my new body made my less worthy. And yet when people said how good I looked, I felt compelled to remind them of how far away I was from a version of my body that I considered “good. So I made this side by side.
And then I really studied the two pictures and I thought back to the day I took the photo on the left. It was when I was getting ready to go to the beach with my daughter and my cousin. I remember that very day talking to my cousin about how I had gained weight and I was worried about it. I remember talking about pictures from the past and how I didn’t look anything like those photos and it was my own fault for loving junk food and not exercising and I needed to make a change so I could get my 17 year old body back…. I wanted to trade in my 30 year old body for the younger model… I thought it was realistic to have my body look like it did before having a child.. before 13 more years of life and experience and change. Let’s take a moment to first acknowledge how ridiculous that is. And also, when I was 17, I thought I was the fattest girl in my dance classes and that everyone was judging me and that I didn’t have a boyfriend because I wasn’t thin enough. These thoughts forced me to accept the reality that it was never about my body. It was about my mindset and the standards I held myself to because of what I was seeing in the media.
Then I looked at the photo on the right. I am wearing bikini bottoms which was brand new for me. I had been wearing short bottoms almost exclusively since high school to cover my butt as I was so insecure about it. Yet now, thanks to the body confidence and body positivity communities that I found online, I was in bikini bottoms. No shorts. I had also recently bought coloured leggings after years of only allowing myself black or dark grey.. anything that could hide my cellulite. And I was 4 months into a journey of working out for FUN and not for weight loss, and I was loving it. I was also gearing up to start a new job in September that I was very passionate about because of a grad school program I had finished 7 months prior that truly changed me for the better as a teacher, as a mom, and as a person in general.
This made me realize that in all the ways that mattered, I am a much better version of myself in the photo on the right. I am happier. I am healthier. I have done more schooling and found a job I love. I have learned more about social issues and become educated on causes I believe in. I have learned new crafts and talents. I am reading more. I am more confident and more in love with myself and my body than I had ever been before. How dare I shrink down my worth to a side by side visual comparison and use that to determine which version of myself is “good”.
And yet, even though I have been percolating on these ideas and wanting to write this blog post for 7 months, I continue to find myself having a strong reaction to posts on social media about weight loss, calorie counting, “good foods” and “bad foods”, before and after photos, and much more. I see these images and ideas and I instantly feel like I am not enough as I am. I see my physical self in the before photo and never the after and it makes me feel like crap. I used to categorize my response to these messages as “motivation”. If I could just start tracking everything I eat, exercising regularly, and maintaining a calorie deficit, I too can be the after photo! But I am finally starting to recognize my response as what it actually is, what the diet industry counts on me feeling: shame because my current body is not a type valued by society.
After seeing the above image from @beauty_redefined, I made a choice to change up my feed. I went into my follows and unfollowed or muted any account that did not make me feel good. And I am continuing to make adjustments as things pop up. It is amazing how impactful it is when your feed is full of people who share like minded views that make you feel confident, powerful, and included, instead of feeling like you too can fit in if you just start now and change everything about yourself.
Now I want to end off by saying that I am not casting judgement of others. I was taking and sharing “before and after” photos as recently as this past fall. I am also very proud of my friends who have made lifestyle changes because they wanted to do so and are happier and healthier because of them. And I understand why they want to share their progress. I guess I am just at a point where I am seeking to understand and be motivated by intention in my own life. If my intention is to be happier and healthier, how do I achieve that? I know for me, calorie counting and diet restriction does not do that. And seeing people post about their weight loss impacts me negatively as well, so I have chosen to mute those accounts for my own health. I am finally getting inspired to move my body and fuel my body out of a place of love and not a place of hate.
I am learning and growing and changing every day. Everything before today is the “before”. Everything in the future is the “after”. And there is no photo that will ever capture that. And I think that is pretty exciting.
The Infinite Iris 