Recently, my friend Sarah made a post titled "Hot and Chubby" all about how one of her guy friends mentioned to her that he always thought she was hot...but chubby. Not that he had a problem with it, but that was just how he felt. Then she continued on with a pleasant blog entry about how she was sick of being hot and chubby and she just wanted to be hot. So she waltzed her way into a personal trainer, went through all the ins and outs of BMI and figuring out what a healthy weight would be, and finally her and her trainer came to a goal, which left her lean, healthy and with a remaining portion of boobs. It was actually quite motivational.
With that being said, let me tell you a little story. I grew up with an older sister who got the tall, skinny genes all through puberty, a mom who I remember always being concerned about her weight, a dad who was built large, 2 older cousins (who were a lot like brothers) with great metabolisms, 2 aunts who were thin and very attractive, a younger brother who ate everything in sight and packed on muscle, and all the while having little to no education on what being healthy meant. With all of this perspective I had to figure out what my reality was. And the reality was I, Sarah Murray, had a slow metabolism, with my dad's Slavic build, but I was eating like the rest of my high metabolizing family members, all the while absorbing my mom's extreme concern for weight. All of that combined landed me at age 17 and 250 lbs.
Now, luckily, I joined weight watchers and lost about 70lbs, and have, over the last few years, formed healthy habits which have resulted in losing another 20lbs. Now I say all this not to gain praise, or to brag, but to tell you that I am downright SICK of caring about my weight!
Since my victorious 90lbs do you know how much I've actually celebrated my weightloss? Zero.
I lost an entire 5th grader and never congratulated myself. In fact, even after all that, I mentally beat myself up everytime I ate a piece of cake, and still continue to do so. I ask myself why I can't have self control, and then I tell myself that I'm never going to be skinny, I can never wear a swimming suit in public again, boys will never ever like me, which means I'll never get married, so I'll never have sex and I'll live my life as an angry, lonely old fat woman. Then I eat a the whole pint of Chunky Monkey. Cause that's what I am. A chunky monkey.
Little irrational? Yeah. I know. And I am tired of it. I am sick of wanting to be thin. I just want to feel good about my choices.
I went to this revolutionizing presentation the other night about how the media has screwed up our perceptions of what a "normal" woman should look like, and it's brainwashed us to think that "thin" and "beautiful" equal "happiness" and "success." In this presentation was a study about how the better you feel about yourself, the better choices you make. Loving yourself = Healthy Choices. Hating yourself = Downward spiral. You should check their website out. I had a lot of mini revelations, and just in the last few days I've realized that the more I've loved myself, the more I've loved my choices, which in turn, makes me love myself more. Isn't that amazing!?
So to sum this up: Hot and chubby? Damn Straight ;)
