All in offers
This is a note from my journal one week into my senior year of high school.
This is one of the times that journaling really tugs at your heartstrings. If you don’t have a regular journaling practice, I’d encourage you to start, even if it’s just one line in your planner or on your phone about how you felt that day, and this is why: you gift yourself the opportunity to witness your growth in real time.
We tell ourselves we'll be happy when we're small enough, we'll eat the cheesecake on Friday when we've earned it, we'll love ourselves when we hit our goals.
We believe the freedom to wear a bathing suit, the deliverance that allows one to choose the curly fries as well as the salad, and the liberation to appear in candid photos are things for other people.
(Who are those people? We don't know, but they're certainly not us.)
We keep aiming to shrink ourselves, and, as a result, we stay hidden.
How's that working for you?
I'm SUPER excited to be included in theBody Positive Fitness Finder, an incredible resource from Superfit Hero! There's a whole database of coaches, both in-person and online, who are, "committed to inclusivity and acceptance of all body types regardless of size, gender identity or athletic ability." I didn't know that there were so many other coaches who shared this philosophy, and I was thrilled to learn how many fitness professionals did.
AND- they gave me a small gift to give to you!
If you use the code in the photo below as you shop on their website, you can save 15% as a first-time customer, between now and February 21.
Your alarm goes off, and you blearily rub your eyes as the mechanical beep (or, you know, the sounds of The Rock Clock) ring in your ears.
It's still dark outside. You're dreading putting your feet on the cold floor, but the bills don't pay themselves, so you swing around, hunt for your slippers (you missed one, so now you're awake), and head to the bathroom.
As you brush your teeth, you look in the mirror and take in your presence for the first time today.
What do you say to yourself?
“No one ever told me it wasn’t about my body before.
It was never about me. Nobody before you. I hope you know that has given me the ability to move in the world with less fear and shame; I can be entirely myself without disclaimers and I get to reclaim all of that energy and put it into things and people I love.
It has an impact on every single person around me.
No one told me that I can be as smart and insightful as I am and STILL not know that it isn’t my body’s fault and it isn’t about my body.
I can be a genius and still be fucked up by these things, but I don’t have to be anymore.”
And neither do you.
The day I realized that I could use exercise for something other than losing weight, my world changed.
I’ve told the story before, but the Cliff’s Notes version: I was sick as hell (strep throat, no insurance, riding it out with some Popsicles and a blankie), no one by my side (I was deep in the swill with the most familiar of swine, to quote @hozier), and I just wanted to feel capable of one motherfucking glob-damn thing, so I picked up a barbell and saw what happened.
Loving yourself looks different for everyone, and it's important you find what it looks like for you.
For some, it's strength training. It can be meditating. It can be yoga. It can be cooking. It can be your favorite show on Netflix. It can be a manicure and a bubble bath and a glass of wine.
Those wonderfully-Instagrammable acts of self-care are important parts of loving yourself, for sure, but this picture is not complete. The ultimate act of loving yourself, imo — the one ring to rule them all, if you will — is to protect your energy.
I grew up in an emotionally abusive household, and I received a message from a young age that I wasn't good enough. For millions of reasons, but the point on which it all converged was my body.
My body became a physical manifestation of everything I wasn't: I wasn't tall, or thin, or unconventionally beautiful like my mother, or quiet, or succinct, or self-controlled.
I was too much, constantly spilling over the edges of my container, and my body was alleged to have reflected that.
It's effortless to pick on our bodies; the "flaws" there are visible, after all, so they're very easy to pinpoint.
Ready for some unconventional holiday season advice?
You don't have to "earn" your body (or mashed potatoes).
It's the language of the season, the undercurrent of every holiday-themed meal, but I don't find it productive. In fact, it often does more harm than good.
I think it's terribly destructive to use this language, not only because it sets us up on a food-as-reward-fitness-as-punishment cycle, but also because it reinforces an idea I am vehemently against.
Picture these 2 scenarios:
A) How bad do you want it? Push it, push it, PUSH IT!! Pain is weakness leaving the body. Come on, you can't quit until you puke or faint! You can sleep when you're dead. NO EXCUSES.
B) How well did you sleep last night? You got 3 unbroken hours and the rest were up and down, because your daughter had a nightmare? Okay, how about we do a moderate-intensity continuous circuit instead, or would you rather go for a walk? Have you eaten a fruit or vegetable yet today? Would you like me to fill your water bottle for you while you warm up?
My training philosophy has shifted over the years, as I stare down my 10-year anniversay of entering the fitness industry.
How regularly do you stop to take stock of your progress?
It's a practice I highly recommend (and for which I block off time every Friday afternoon, on a micro level, and that occurs naturally on a macro level, I find, if I pay attention to my rhythms and those of nature). I've found both with myself and with the vast majority of my clients, if we don't stop to look around and notice how far we've come, feeling the breeze on our faces of the new places at which we've arrived, things can feel like an eternal uphill battle.
Honing our crafts takes reps under the bar, after all. To learn where we thrive under the pressure and where we cower in fear, we need to set out on the path.
When looking into some research on perseverence and change, I found that the highest performers work on their weaknesses the most. Seems obvious, no?
But it's the last thing most of us want to do.
We want to avoid them, find ways around them, out-muscle our weaknesses with our strengths.
