learning to love my body.

I was going to post something else today but in light of something being brought to my attention from my post yesterday, this is what you’re going to get. I’ve been scared and hesitant over this one, but I feel it’s finally appropriate.

My strongest, most automatic defense mechanism is humor. I laugh or joke about what makes me uncomfortable. I feel like diet is often an uncomfortable topic because SO  MANY GIRLS are unhappy with their bodies. Therefore, joking about it is second nature to me. I don’t intend to offend anyone with my posts, please let me know if you are so that I can be aware of it moving forward. I’m not going to stop making jokes as a way to start a larger discussion around something I feel is very important, and if it means posting something politically incorrect that starts a conversation of real benefit, that’s fine by me. Learn to control how you react, how you deal. I’m not responsible for how you feel about what I post. The end.

I think a lot of people who read me “on the internet” or “are my internet friends” have had a very specific view into my life… I chose what I wanted to post, how I wanted to show myself, the way I wanted to present myself. When I had my first anonymous Twitter account, I was knee deep in working on myself, and my diet. PS. Read my ask post if you need to catch up on this part of the story. I’ve been at my current resting weight for about a year now and I’ve finally accepted that my body is all I have and I need to treat it the way it wants or I’ll never be able to feel like myself, good about myself, comfortable in just my own skin, until I do that. When I was bigger, I was the ultimate jokester party girl – it was my defense mechanism. Can’t be hot and skinny? Better be hot and funny, and bro out with the guys. That’s how it was. Because of social media, and how old I was when it became as mainstream as it did, no one really saw that side of me. So… Rather than tell this story, I’d rather just show you, and detail my timeline and tactics through my weight loss journey. Maybe if people understand the work that I put in, they’ll be a little less quick to judge me for what they do not know.

I fucking hate this picture. This is in January 2011, at the beginning of the leanout that made me learn how to BE HEALTHY AND LIVE THAT WAY. Note the neon, that’s been a longtime trend with me. Note the fat – I have it, I am not it. I lost it, and I don’t plan to find it again. For the record, I weighed about 185-188 lbs when this photo was taken. I’m obviously uncomfortable, but you can see this is the automatic way that I deal with trying to hide it – thumbs up, joking, with a big smile on my face. Yes, my body has shrunk quite a bit, but I am still the same. :)

Same pose because I’m funny. This is in March 2011, my “after” photo for my gym‘s Leanout contest. This is just what 8 weeks of clean eating can do. If you’re curious about the details on this, tweet or email me, I will happily break it down. I lost about 10 lbs during those two months, so this photo I’m around 175 lbs. I trained at this weight for a while… This is one of the times where I let my body reset, re-normalize as a leaner, more functional machine, before I set a new goal for myself, doing the Advocare 24 Day Challenge.

Full disclosure: At this point, my “goal weight” was 165. I just wanted to be 75k so that I could do Olympic Weightlifting competitions (yes, I do that) in that weight class. I didn’t know if it was possible… I was pretty sure I was just one of those “big boned girls” who would always be thick. Turns out most anything is possible if you want it so bad you’re willing to work for it! Funny how that goes.

Between Halloween of 2011 and Thanksgiving, I did the Advocare challenge. At the beginning, I weighed in at 172 lbs. By the end I weighed 162 – that’s not even the most loss, from the stories I’ve heard. The challenge is REALLY hard, but fantastic in that it teaches you a lot about eating right. It also goes hand in hand with the Crossfit lifestyle I was living – I felt like I was on cloud nine. I was strong, felt good about how I looked, and I was eating and living really well. At this point, Crossfit was life.

Paralette pushups are harder than they look. Also, neon booty.

After I got my agency job in August 2012, I started working all the time and stopped doing Crossfit entirely, essentially I stopped anything that wasn’t doing work to meet deadlines. I gained 10 lbs from sitting in an office all day, then stopped eating sandwiches every day for lunch and normalized, and then I got really psycho and went off the deep end because life got so insane with work that I practically stopped eating entirely. That need for control, I have it. I’m lucky that I got out of that situation and was told by friends and recognized what I was letting me do to myself. It was just a few months, but I got what felt to me, real skinny for a second. It made me uncomfortable. I don’t know how to be that girl, I’m used to being a much bigger person. It’s still weird for me sometimes, and we all know how I look now. I do feel really, really comfortable in my own skin now – I love my curves, and I work on where I don’t feel so good. I have a very strong sense of self-confidence because of all of the work I put in. You can see now, that I was not born with the body I have. I built it. I’ve lost over 30 pounds over the course of two or so years, not without gaining weight, and not without going a little crazy about losing it. It’s all a process, and you need to figure that out for yourself – I am just trying to share some tips that I have found to be useful with my personal experience. I’m not trying to tell anyone they must do this, do that, do Crossfit, not eat carbs, or anything. I’m merely sharing as I hope to help motivate other girls to get off their ass (sorry, been there, you know it’s true) and instead start working on it.

I know this was kind of a rambling post, so I hope it makes sense. I’ve gotten emails and tweets and comments from people curious about the details, so I just wanted to clarify MY story. Please understand that when I talk about diet on MY blog, I’m approaching it and posting from MY perspective – not yours. Just take anything I do with a grain of salt if it’s not how you view or do things. The last thing I want to do is promote an unhealthy lifestyle – I know that life too, and I know so much better now. So, that’s all.

xx SCB