I remember being in 6th grade and noticing my body in a negative way. I started comparing myself to people in magazines and on TV, and I wanted my body to look different. I thought I needed to lose weight and put myself on a low fat diet one summer. Low fat diets were all the rage. I would eat low fat oatmeal for breakfast, have one sweet treat that I allowed myself to take one bite of per day, and I went on runs in the summer heat with sweats and a sweatshirt on to lose weight sweating. It kinda worked. I went into junior high thin and feeling better about myself.
I am majorly cringing writing this and realizing how unhealthy, toxic and just wrong my thoughts were back then about my body.
But many of those thoughts continued into college. I remember thinking about how to stay thin a lot. I bought Weight Watchers shakes (which are really horrible by the way). I tried to stay active so I could be thin. I was just always worried about how I looked.
Toward the end of my undergrad studies, God really started to get ahold of my heart and teach me that the way I was thinking about myself wasn't true, wasn't helpful and wasn't honoring Him. And I began a journey to change the way I viewed my body.
Having a daughter as my first child really took this to a new level for me. I began to think about how I would want her to think of herself and knew that I needed to model that for her. It's been a long, slow journey but I am glad that I faced it and continue to face it and develop a healthier view of my body.
LESSONS LEARNED
What it means to be "healthy".
Looking back, I can see that my idea of being healthy was being thin. Now I know that being healthy is about so much more than your body size. Thin people can have heart attacks. Thin people can have depression. While the way your body looks can be an indicator of health, it is just one of many. When I started prioritizing strength training, I gained weight due to the new muscle and that was another lesson for me that health is measured in all kinds of ways.
My value isn't based on what I look like.
I now know that my value as a person is based on being made in the image of God. My body may go through a lot of changes, my value never changes. I am learning to prioritize my health as an act of stewardship and desire for longevity, not because I want to be thing or because of the lie that it makes me more valuable.
The weight loss and diet cultures are a sham.
Things like the low fat diet and weight watchers shakes, those are absolutely horrible for you, but have been (and still are actually) touted as "healthy" choices. There is a weight loss industry out there that wants us to think we aren't good enough, skinny enough, etc. and we NEED their products to be better. Real healthy living is holistic and built on ancestral principles. While I am huge fan of investing into my health, I want to make sure they are good investments.
It's easy to take a "healthy" idea and obsess over it or take to too far.
The working out with a sweatshirt and sweatpants in summer.... sweating is good for us, but that was just dumb. (I was young.) The desire to stay active in college. It was a good desire, but my motives were all wrong. When I first started learning about real, whole food I got a little obsessive with that too.
I've learned that health is holistic (physical, mental, emotional, spiritual) and you have to keep everything in proper perspective. If I obsess over my whole family eating perfectly, it's not good for my mental health (or theirs, lol). If I obsess over going to the gym, my sleep or hormone health may suffer. I realize now that you have to do the best you can with the info that you have and not stress about the rest.
Thought patterns can change.
For a while there, I thought I would never break free from the self-sabotage of negative thoughts. But with God's help I did. I prayed about it a lot more. I had my husband (then fiancé) pray for me. I started to memorize scripture with truths about my value and worth.
That process went something like this:
Recognize the Lie - Rebuke it - Replace it With Truth
Lie: Your body is ugly.
Rebuke: That is not true, and I won't believe it.
Replace: God says that He knit me together in my mother's womb, and what He makes is good!
DO I STILL STRUGGLE? Yes, sometimes. I'm in my early 40s and my body is changing again and I'm trying to figure it out. But I know the truth about who I am (and whose I am) and about my value. So, it's a lot easier now to leave the negative thoughts and not get stuck in them.
I hope that I am doing a good job for my girls and that they won't struggle as much as I did. While I know it's common to struggle with your body image, I don't want it be their normal. I hope that I have broken some of the generational patterns and they can continue to do the same.
I hope that in sharing this, you know you are not alone in your struggle.
And I hope you are encouraged that things can get better.
Our bodies are precious gifts from God, let's be kind to them, respect and appreciate them.
Wishing you abundant health,
Melisha
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