I’ve got something to say and I’m feeling inspired by a conversation I had with a client recently.
Since we started working together 2 months ago, she’s seen rapid gains in strength, endurance, movement quality, confidence in training, etc — but she found herself hung up on the fact that an old pair of jeans are still too tight.
She told me that simply getting rid of the jeans that no longer fit well would feel like defeat, like admitting to herself she’d never fit into them again.
This is something that I’m sure many of you are familiar with, unfortunately. There’s so, so much to unpack in this seemingly trivial, common experience. But I only have 30 minutes to write, so we’ll just scratch the surface.
Body fluctuations are a natural, beautiful part of the human experience.
(say it with me now)
Body fluctuations are a natural, beautiful part of the human experience.
A body in flux is a body contracting and expanding through the ups and downs of life, through varying priorities and seasons
— all of which is beautiful and allowed.
(and anyone telling you otherwise probably needs to go spend some time in nature and think about what really matters)
You are fully capable of living out your core values at Size X as you are at Size Y.
And if you are truly prioritizing your wellbeing — honoring your body’s cues, exercising to be stronger, eating nutrient dense foods, resting, all the good things — could you accept your body as it looks in response to those good things, even if you never lost another pound?
It is so freakin valid to feel this way about your changing body. We live in a world that profits majorly off people feeling bad about their appearance. It’s not your fault. You’re swimming upstream by questioning and acting in opposition to it.
Try to view these moments of body dissatisfaction as a distraction from your life force, purpose, vitality.
The band-aid response to this kind of experience is often to hyper-focus on some temporary distraction and brief sense of control. Clean it up, dial it in, exercise more than usual, pay a lot of money for some temporary “fix”. Hardly ever sustainable, hardly ever aligned with your values, hardly ever getting to the root of it.
A more productive way to go about this is to really reflect and rewire the thoughts you have in relation to your appearance. Especially if you find yourself comparing the body you’re in now to a past version with old photos, old clothes, etc…
Think about it:
- What was the most special thing about that time? Was it my body being smaller?
- How do I want to remember that season? How do I want to remember the season I’m in now?
- What is my body today actually stopping me from doing? Can I enjoy my life in the same way now? Can I love and be loved?
- Am I supposed to fit into clothes, or are clothes supposed to fit onto me?
I hope you can anchor into self-acceptance and compassion for the version of you that is here today, and wear clothes that are comfortable on your body in the form it takes right now.
That’s all for today.
Love you!
Sofia