This is the story of being on both ends of the body spectrum and learning about being happy; for all butterflies are beautiful, because they are all different.
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Growing up I was never the fat kid, nor was I the kind that are lighter than they look. You know what I mean. You swear they have bird bones. No, I was the child that had the round bottom and the cute chubby cheeks.
Then when I was just barely ten, I went through puberty. I shot up six inches, c-cup, 27 inch waist and mother earth hips. I was a very lovely and curvy young lady. I took on the family stature of my dads Austrian roots and not my mothers tall and slender English roots. This is when I learned that my beautiful hourglass figure is going to be capable of holding a lot more sand than I realize.
Sometime between 12 and 14 I went from a thin 120 lbs to 170 lbs. I realized something was wrong when I couldn't make a single pirouette that I have been easily capable of since walking age. It was then that I learned about my weight gain and started walking everyday and eating salads for lunch. After two years I seemed to have lost all of the weight, but the scale would continue to scream at me 155 lbs.
I finally went to a doctor. He took one look at me, looked at a chart and said that for my height I should be 120 lbs and being 155 lbs I am morbidly obese.
Yes. You read that right.
Morbidly Obese.
That crushed me. At 16 I was labeled as the fat girl in my mind, and there was nothing I could do about it. I was working out upwards of 20 hours a week, eating extremely healthy (I don't think chocolate had passed my lips in those two years) and there was no more change whatsoever.
It wasn't until I went to college and took a weight management class. When asked how much I weighed I ashamedly said 155 lbs. Everyone was shocked, including the teacher. "No, that can't be right, you must 135 lbs at the most." Yeah, I heard that a lot before.
BMI testing was pretty new then, so we all took a BMI test. I came out as 11%.
That's 11% body fat.
Under 10 is unhealthy.
I was considered the healthiest student in the class!
Was I happy? Yes and no. I was happy to learn that I was NOT morbidly obese and I wasn't happy, because my body image was permanently changed from what I looked like a 120 lbs.
The world is such a mean place. We are bombarded every waking moment with the label of if you have curves, if you are more than a waif of a body, you are considered fat, ugly, and have no part of the beauty culture.
Thank goodness things are starting to change! Curvy women everywhere are starting to stand up and say 'Hey! We're here, we're beautiful, and we will never look like a "Top Model"'.
Am I still 155 lbs? Ha! I wish. No, after meeting my hubby we grew fat and happy together. It wasn't until I had Things 2 that I realized how fat I got from being happy. I weighed 240 lbs. Wow. I was a size 8 at 155 lbs and at my heaviest I was wearing a size 20/22.
Have I changed myself? Yes. I realized that I wasn't healthy. I was happy, just not healthy, and in my head I am still that ballet dancer able to run after the kids, but my body told me other wise. So that's when I decided to get healthy for my kids. They needed a mama who was able to chase after them, not watch from the sidelines.
It's been 2 years since I started up the old regime of walking and eating salads again. This time around it's taking me a lot longer to take off the weight and I have learned why.
For one, when I was in my teens I didn't have my own business to run, I didn't have children to raise and teach, I wasn't married, I didn't have anything to look outward to. All my focus was on myself. Nowadays if I squeeze in walking time I have to take the kids, we don't walk as fast as I want to, we're always stopping and exploring something, and that's all right with me. The fact that we are out and about together as a family and discovering life is more important than me looking like I did in high school.
And two, Thing 1 and Thing 2 are still very young, so we all kind of eat like 5 year olds most of the time. I'm a master at peanut butter and jelly, by the way.
So 2 years and I'm down to a very nice size 16. I can squeeze into a 14, but honestly the number doesn't matter anymore. What matters is the fact that I can chase after my kids during a round of Dragon or Zombie Mommy. I can sit down on the floor and actually get up again without Thing 1 pulling from the front and Thing 2 pushing from behind. I look at myself and I don't think fat, I think healthy. Sure I can lose more weight, and if I do great! All that matters is that I'm healthy and I can make memories playing with the kids.
So my question to you my dear readers...
Are you happy?
With Love,
Emily
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