Dear ,
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It is a valuable thing to come home from a weekend away not necessarily thinner in my body but actually thinner in my mind.
I took a group of women to Canyon Ranch
last weekend, which coincidentally, was my birthday-and birthday gifts do not get better than this.
I actually came back a few pounds heavier on the scale which is shocking because I actually lost weight! Mental weight-that is, which makes it all the more noticeable.
I don't know how to explain it other than to say that I had a breakthrough
in the body-image battleground of my mind.
Canyon Ranch devotes a lot of time to re-educating women about how to be in a relationship not just with their body but also with their mind, meaning that you learn how to talk back to (or ultimately stop) the self-trash talk.
Can you imagine letting go without letting yourself go? How many extra minutes of the day would you have if you took away the wanting-your-body-to-be-different mantra?
I sometimes have those heaviness thoughts drifting into my head before I even get out of bed depending on if I'm feeling left-over guilt about what I ate the night before
and it feels like ten pounds of not fat,
but ten pounds of not-enoughness.
Now I'm not saying I'm ten pounds overweight.
I weigh 136ish pounds and I'm 5'6", smack dab where the charts say I should be. Don't misunderstand me.
It's actually my head that's ten pounds overweight.
Standards for women these days are too high, or rather too thin. Look at any magazine cover. We are brainwashed with airbrushed models who are anorexic to begin with.
It's a dilemma. As anyone who's been fat can tell you, thin feels better (and anyone who's been poor can tell you, rich feels better but that's another rant.)
But what dawned on me at Canyon Ranch was that by the second of several exquisite meals that were lovingly and artfully cooked to such peak nutritious perfection that tears of joy welled up in my eyes while eating them was the thought that my lycrastretch waistband was awfully tight around the belly and I started the internal trash talk about my pooch (although there was nothing in my digestive track that wasn't either cruciferous, fiberous or immune-enhancing.)
I caught myself frowning at my profile in the spa area and wishing I could have a flat belly like my friend Viola.
Viola seems happy with her weight.
But all is not lost
since noticing a problem is the first step towards correcting it which is the exact thing that was mentioned in the next lecture that I attended.
To win the Body Image battle we have to recalibrate our brain.
Simple.Become our own thought police. Unlearn what years of reading People magazine has taught us.
The first step, besides not reading magazines (which I highly recommend) towards redirecting your thought is pretty easy.
Just start noticing.
Turn on the Pantry-cam of your mind and listen for the soundtrack.
I don't know about you but if someone spoke to my kids that way that I speak to myself in my head, I'd report them to Children's Services.
Here's a radical sentence. Sit down and try to hear this without the Thin Nazi in your head hearing it.
Size doesn't really matter.
Not really.
That's not to say that health doesn't matter.
Health matters.
(Check out your BMI rating here)
You know what else matters?
Happiness.
Specifically yours.
And if chunks of your day are spent beating yourself up because you are focusing on a magic number on the scales because Jennifer Anniston weighs 119 and she is your same height,then you will be very distracted from making yourself happy.
But there's good news.
If we stop struggling to be something that is out of reach, then very possibly,
through the vehicle of contentment,
you may just find yourself FEELING great and BEING beautiful in a way that celebrates who you really are inside.
It starts with how you feel about yourself. Think of how cool you really are inside. Invisible things like character, style, grace, your ability to laugh, your personality and your smarts are all things you friggin love about yourself on the inside.
Make an effort to cherish them about yourself on the outside too.
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