Nothing drives me more crazy than listening to women complain about their bodies. Like seriously, I have a visceral reaction whenever I hear phrases like “My thighs are too fat.” “I’m only eating celery this week because I have a big date.” Not only do you sound ridiculous when you speak like this, but what exactly are you expecting from your friends when you speak like this?
I was always that pudgy wannabe athletic kid. Although I played outside frequently and, in middle/high school played two seasons of sports, I was always a little pudgy because I loved food.
Later on during my first job, with the help of sales reps who wanted me to buy stuff off of them, I developed a penchant for wine, fine dining, and drinking into the wee hours several times a week. Before I knew it my 5’6 frame was carrying close to 200 pounds. In the years that followed, like many women, I developed a hatred for my body: punishing it with extreme diets, juice fasts, over training, over eating, and self-loathing whenever I looked at myself in the mirror.
Over the last ten years I’ve been down to my lowest of 145 pounds because of the Master Cleanse: living off of lemon water and giving myself reverse enemas with salt water twice daily, to tipping the scale at nearly 200 because of foie gras at lunch, beer during happy hour, and the comfort of General Tso after a hard day of drinking, when my activity level was that of a sloth.
And in each of those times of extreme thinness or fatness I always found something wrong with my body.
I no longer live like that. In my 30+ years on the planet, I’ve found ways that make me love my body. Here they are: