You Are Enough

I have an obsession with documentaries. I like them all, but I really enjoy them if they're about our food supply, nutrition, dieting, or the like. This lead me to watch American the Beautiful and American the Beautiful 2. The first is about the American obsession with beauty and the second about our obsession with our weight and dieting. In the first one the filmmaker interviews a woman who has an elective plastic surgery and takes over an hour to wake from her anesthesia. He said when he left he called every man that he knows and told them to call every woman that they know and tell them that they are beautiful just the way they are. Now, he wasn't making judgments on people who choose elective plastic surgery, and neither am I. There are all sorts of reasons one may do something like that. Heck there are cases where I might consider it. But his point in making those phone calls was to hopefully spread the word that we are enough just the way we are.

This blog has been devoted to my weight loss journey and my attempts at minimizing my life and being kinder to the planet. There's nothing wrong with wanting to improve your life. I'd be lying to you if I said that the only reason I want to lose weight is to be healthy. I have a big stack of jeans in my closet that I was wearing this time last year and I do beat myself up because I can't wear them now. I received a gift card to Victoria's Secret for Christmas this year and I went in there last night with the intentions of using it. I left empty handed and rather depressed. Honestly there are very few mannequins and only a few pictures of models wearing the items in the store. So it wasn't like I was bombarded with images of photoshopped women who made me feel like I could never look like they do in the items. The fact is, I don't need that. I know what I look like and I know that it doesn't make me totally happy. I have made improvements over the years and I am proud of those. But I do want more. I will never have a models body and I have enough stretch marks to look like a tiger. But I have the ability to achieve a body that would make me happier. It's OK to want that and it is OK to try to achieve it. I don't hate who I am, but I don't love it either and I think its acceptable to want to work to a place where I do love it. But even if I don't love it, I do have to appreciate it and know that I need this body. I have to treat it with respect.

In America the Beautiful 2 he interviewed people who lost weight in a variety of ways, people who suffer from eating disorders, and a woman who I would classify as an obsessive exerciser. The variety of observations he made in those people, and things I have observed in people in my own life lead me to one conclusion. This is the only body I get. It doesn't look like I want it to right now, but it is enough. I am a single mother. My kids have a great father and step-mother, but they need their mother too. No matter what I want my body to look like I will always respect it. I have standards I would like to achieve. I do want to look a certain way, but I will NOT take a path that risks my health. Anyone who loves me will take me as I am right now, and anyone who loves you will take you as you are. No matter what you want to look like, no matter what someone else says about how you look, never ever do anything to risk your life for the sake of weight loss or beauty.

It's OK to want things for yourself. But look in the mirror and tell yourself that if you never look any different than you do right now YOU ARE ENOUGH!