If you've read my earlier posts this year on flourishing you would know I've been on a weight loss journey. It's been about 14 months since that journey started, but I reached my goal weight several months ago, that 'magic number' that was going to make me happy. That number put me in the healthy weight range in the BMI charts, that number put me in an average clothing size instead of the plus section where I had lived my whole adult life, but that number did not magically make me happy.
Yes I was healthier and fitter, but there was still plenty of jiggly flab to be found, especially around my middle, not to mention the saggy skin that happens after losing lots of weight, plus add the flappy skin & stretch marks from 3 babies to that. I still looked in the mirror and saw nothing but flaws, nothing but more work to do. Feeling defeated that even with working so hard I looked nothing like any of those fitness motivational pictures on pinterest that used to inspire me and now taunted me. Living terrified of gaining back even 1 kilo. I had lost all this weight in a completely healthy way without obsessing over it, but now found myself in a negative, unhealthy mental state constantly criticising everything about the way I looked.
So I signed up for the 8 week beach bod boost challenge at my gym thinking that it would help motivate and inspire me and that maybe my weight hadn't just found where it was meant to be maybe it was a dreaded plateau and I just wasn't tying hard enough. It is now 5 weeks into that challenge and the results have been very different to what I expected, not because of any numbers, not because I learnt any amazing new nutrition or fitness information, but because along the way I have had a mental shift, let me share it with you, it's mind boggling......I discovered that the numbers on the scale do not dictate my life!!!!! You might already know that, you may think how is that mind boggling, but the reality is deep down I thought that a number would make me happy and I have only just realised that it didn't.
You see part of that challenge is a weekly food coaching & weigh in session. The first week I got weighed and measured, the 2nd week I lost weight, then weeks 3 & 4 I gained weight which I expected after some crappy food choices, then this week after getting my eating mojo back to normal I lost all the weight I had gained. I came home after that session yesterday and had a good laugh at myself because I suddenly realised that I actually know how to eat well and live healthy now and in those 5 weeks of focusing on the scale all I saw was the number fluctuate a little up & down and end up right back where it started. It all of a sudden seemed completely ridiculous to be worried about that number.
I had a good long look in the mirror and realised that the woman I see is healthy, she is fit, she is achieving things she never though she could, she can jump and run and play with her kids without getting puffed, and despite the flaws and imperfections she is beautiful, and that woman is me!! All this time I thought that magic number would make me happy, but I had to actually choose to be happy, to love myself as I am, to accept myself flaws and all even if I never ever have a flat belly, and I can honestly say that for the first time ever in my life I feel comfortable in my own skin, flappy bits and all.
Life is a journey and that number will probably move up and down many more times, but once this challenge is done in 3 weeks time I wont even be worrying about the scales anymore. I will be enjoying chasing fitness goals (which includes the mud run, eeek!!), eating the good food I love that nourishes my body, embracing life in the skin i'm in and hopefully passing onto my daughters a much healthier attitude about body image.
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