Were you actually happy?
"Why didn't I appreciate that body? I looked so good back then - how did I not see it?"
You've had that thought before. Maybe it was a photo from a few years ago, or even a decade back. You scroll past it and are hit with intense emotions, some mix of longing and regret. If only I looked like that now. But I want to stop you right there and ask you something you might not want to answer honestly:
Were you actually happy then?
the game that nobody wins
When I sit with clients and we talk about these "back then" bodies they miss, something almost always comes up: they weren't actually happy then, either. They thought they looked fat, they thought they looked “gross,” they thought if only I lost five lbs. They were picking themselves apart in the exact same way that they are right now and they just can't see it from this distance.
That person in that body that you are long for now? They were waiting; waiting to feel thin enough, small enough, good enough, worthy enough. Waiting to finally feel like they could exhale and just live their life. Sound familiar?
it was never really about your body
Here's the thing nobody wants to actually admit to: what you're chasing isn't a body. It's a feeling, a feeling of acceptance, love, worthiness. The undeniable sense that you are finally enough.
At some point, through messages from diet culture, social media, maybe your family, maybe just growing up in a world that ranks bodies, your brain formed a belief: that feeling lives in a smaller body. That the only way to get to that feeling is to shrink, is to look a certain way, is to meet impossible standards.
If that were actually true, you would have felt it then, in the moment. Not just now, looking back through rose-colored glasses at a body you were tearing apart at the time.
The body you're in right now? Future you is going to look back at it the same exact way.
what if you stopped waiting?
The truth that will actually set you free is the hardest one to sit with. It means the “goal” you have been running toward doesn’t actually exist. The smaller body, the certain size, the number on the scale, was never going to give you what you needed. That feeling that you are looking for isn’t waiting for you on the other side of weight loss. It’s available to you right now, in this body, exactly how you are today.
That doesn't mean it's easy to access. It doesn't mean you just decide to love yourself and poof, it's done. There is no amount of body positivity that you can preach to others that will actually give you this feeling. It can’t be represented by the scale, the clothing size, the before and after pictures. The work is internal and it’s really freaking hard. You know what else is hard work? Dieting, counting calories, crying over the scale, chasing those last few pounds.
What would it look like to stop waiting and to start living in the body you have right now?
