I guess you are wondering the direction of this blog this week with a title like this.. Well…

I have been thinking all week about body image and how we view ourselves. Many of us have a love-hate relationship with our bodies and it may not be our fault. I have always wanted to be taller with smaller shoulders and even skin tone. There are other things that you want to fix about your body and only you know how it effects you when you look in the mirror.

I see this thick woman who was stick thin in my youth with a problem gaining weight from birth and then puberty came around and I had a woman’s body with a child’s mind. Which is a dangerous thing. Thank God my mind caught up with my body before there was trouble…lol

The horrible thoughts running through our minds about our bodies are not the only voices we hear unfortunately. Everyday there are commercials on television and the radio about how to lose weight fast, and pictures of people that seemingly look perfect according to society, but I want to know…are they happy? I mean really happy or do they wake up each morning eating the same things so that they do not put on weight or look bloated that day?

Now I am certainly not bashing healthy people, but I have followed a clean living lifestyle for a long time, and I sometimes have the same thing for meals but only because I am getting all my nutrition from those foods, and I do eat a variety of foods on other days of the week. I still have red meat but only once or twice a week. I eat a lot of grilled or baked chicken, turkey, tuna and lots of beans.

I admit there are days that I fall short of meeting my clean living goals, but I do not fall short for long, I mean I want pancakes every once in a while, so I have some. I don’t look in the mirror and curse myself because I ate a pancake..how ridiculous.

While I admit I do not have the body I had in my twenties or thirties, but I am grateful to be alive at 45 and still have a healthy body that allows me to bend, stretch, lift, drag, move and dance. I see others my age who complain about their knees, backs, arthritis, their feet hurting and look like they are 20 years older than me. I thank God that I am aging well, but there was effort on my part. I had to decide how I wanted to live my life and I chose to keep it clean.

I also admit that sometimes seeing tall skinny women on television makes me want to be tall and skinny and then I see my short thick frame and understand that working in health care for the last 25 years has put me in a position to need strength, warm hugs and depth. My body fits me!

How do you get comfortable with your body you ask? It is not easy, and it takes work everyday to make that happen, but one thing to remember is that you have to love you before you can accept you. If you don’t like yourself, figure out why. Need to make a change so that you love you, do it. There is only one thing standing between you and accepting yourself….you!!!

Make the decision today to fall in love with yourself and to accept who you are and to stop comparing yourself to everyone else…..you are more than enough!!

I love ya,

Dina