I've Never Been Happier about my Body

I've been wanting to write this blogpost for a while now, especially after this last weekends video shoot in LA. This blogpost is about how happy I am with my body. I've loved my body for the first time in my life for quite a while now, ever since I lost over 120lbs. But what I've put myself through for a large portion of the past 2 1/2 years has not been all fun.

Let's go back and start with this past weekend. When I showed up for makeup the morning of the shoot, I put my new Lululemon on, did my hair, and I have to say that I could not have felt better about how I looked that day. I truly felt as if there wasn't one thing I could have done differently that would have made any more of a difference...as Mark said, I "peaked". I did keep my diet slightly tighter the week before, but I still ate a bit of candy, drank a bit of wine. I also cut some things out, but never felt deprived in anyway. And I trained like a mad woman...oh, but that's normal! And it's only the beginning, a new beginning.

I wrote a blogpost years ago about starting over. Starting over doesn't mean from scratch, because you get to take everything you've learned up until that point with you. You can make new decisions based on experience and create a different outcome. That's one of the things so beautiful about this life.....we can start again, re-do, re-try...all is not lost.

OK, so I lost a bunch of weight life was good right? Of course life was good, until perfectionism and judgement started to creep in. Having been so open and public about my weightloss "journey" (I dislike that description, but I'm lacking a better one right now), I felt as if people were watching me...yikes! And I don't mean that to come across as conceited, what I mean is as a former fat person there are people out there that will find secret satisfaction seeing me gain weight back. And not just strangers in the blogoshere, but friends, coworkers, maybe even family. Everyone knows it's just a matter of time, right? Fat people don't maintain successful weightloss for long....

I'm not going to get into all of that, only to say that I put so much pressure on myself if I gained a couple, 5, 10, 20 pounds and the shame of it had gotten me down...on myself. I have no one to blame but me....no one was looking, or cared, but me. I'm not going to do that again....it was exhausting!

The cloud lifted over a year ago, and my feelings, how I felt about myself turned back around. I started again, I started to feel my competence, confidence, and passion for what I do more than ever. I teach and train because I love it, not because I have to make a living. I do what I do regardless of anyone else showing up to train, or paying me for class. I know if you just keep showing up for the training, for the workouts, the body will follow, and it has. Sometimes you get to the body through the mind, and sometimes you get to the mind through the body....I've done it both ways now.

Mark asked me the other day what my goal was in terms of bodyweight. My answer was that I wanted to feel good in my clothes....I've got alot of nice clothes, lol! I also wanted to maintain as much of the muscle I've put on this past year, not really concerned so much with the number on the scale. I'm not going to lie and say that I wouldn't want to weigh 129lbs again, but I wouldn't want to be less muscular than I am right now either. I can always change my mind about what I want, and probably will many times in the years to come.

I look forward to everyday. I'm having fun again. Fun, not in the creation of my body, but in the creation of how I feel about my body, and I've never been happier.....how many 47 year old former fat girls can say that...heck, forget about being formerly fat, or 47! How many women can say that? Lucky me.

Top picture was taken this past Tues at Girya training clubbells with Mark (happy birthday sweetie!). Bottom picture was taken '99 during my first trip to Italy with my mother (thanks for the pic mom!). I weighed around 220 and 35 years old. I remember squeezing myself into size 18's....little did I know I would put on another 30+ pounds within the next 2 years,and end up a size 24!