This article on xoJane has restored my faith in what I am doing with my life.

You should read it, even if you don't read the rest of my post here. It's about fat shaming, not judging a book by its cover, all that good stuff.

The basic gist is summed up really well in the following:

"To paraphrase Marilyn Wann: The only thing you can tell for sure by looking at a fat person is the degree of your own bias against fat people."

"A stance against fat-shaming is not a matter of trying to make anyone feel bad for enjoying exercise/being vegan/wanting to lose weight. After all, there are lots of fat people who enjoy exercise immensely. There are lots of fat people who are vegan. There are fat people who do all kinds of things, because fat people exist in a dizzying variety of perspectives, experiences and lifestyles. Just like not-fat people."

"I choose not to diet, not to try to lose weight...my body’s dramatic response to starvation (and really, that’s what a diet is) makes it impossible for me to lose weight and still have a life that is at all worth living. My priorities are different..."

"Even for those few who manage to beat the odds and maintain a significant weight loss long-term, the price is constant vigilance, and I can’t live with that degree of food obsession and also be at all mentally stable...You may not understand this. That’s cool. We don’t have to fully get each other; we just need to mutually respect one another."

I don't think I'm fat. Sometimes I think I LOOK fat, but I don't think I am fat. I have decided to do what Lesley (the author of the above article) is doing - shifting my priorities to what is healthy, regardless of how it will make me look, and enjoying things in life instead of obsessing over things that distract me from the things in life that I should be paying attention to, like time with friends, or a really awesome piece of cheesecake, or even doing yoga (or writing run-on sentences, apparently).

The one thing that I ask myself is, "Will my body let me do things like yoga, take walks, jog, or hike?" If I am sitting around a lot eating fries and hamburgers every day, it's going to be harder to do the physical things I want to. That is one thing that bothers me about having a desk job; it's like I can feel my arteries withering up from too much sitting.

But in reality, I can do those things, and while I'm still trying to get back into things like jogging and hiking, and it's going slowly, I know I will get there again. And I may not lose a ton of weight in the process, and that's fine. As long as I'm feeling well enough to do those things, I don't really care. I can have a huge pudge and a round ass, as long as I can climb a mountainside without feeling like I'm going to die!

I want to feel comfortable in my skin, regardless of what people think. There have been times in my life when my family members have made comments about my weight (fat-shaming, even if they meant well), which was always really hurtful, because I feel like I gained weight very quickly and it just has been a huge struggle to lose it since then. It's like I was a skinny kid one day, then I hit puberty and the next day I gained a bunch of weight. But I'm trying to put those comments behind me and focus on feeling good, whether that means I have curves and or I don't. I also know that my boyfriend would be really sad if I didn't have my curves anymore. But I'm not doing any of this for him or for anyone else, I'm doing it for me. (By "doing it" I mean focusing on my health and what makes me feel good.) I'm not doing it for the media who think I'm not toned enough, I'm not doing it for my mother, I'm not doing it for my sister, I'm not doing it for my father, I'm not doing it for my friends...I'm doing it for me. Trying to find the happy medium where I feel good and balanced, healthy and lively and alive and strong.

Damn girl! That's hot! (Though it makes me sad that the website it was on had an ad for losing weight with Slimband...Totally not the point. By the way, this model is Tara Lynn, and she's like "I don't care what the scale says, yo!" OK, maybe she didn't say "yo," but that was basically what she said.)

OK for once I am actually NOT tired. This has been a good week in terms of fatigue, and that could be due to the fact that I've exercised pretty much every day. Except I may not today. I really need to cook and do laundry. Maybe I can dance around the kitchen while I cook or something.

My life has been good, honestly. But, I warn you, there will probably be some moaning in the paragraphs ahead.

My period is about to start, so I feel like crap. Whenever it's about to start, the day, or two days, before it does, I start feeling reeeeeal bad about myself. I start looking at other girls and comparing myself to them and seeing all my faults. Like today, I feel fat. My stomach is pooching out too much. Woe is me. I also start looking at my own life and finding everything that is wrong with it. "My life isn't going anywhere, my boyfriend doesn't compliment me as much as I wish he would, I don't want to do this job anymore, I wish I could be more flexible in my work, I wish I were a writer, I wish I had more time to write, I don't have enough money to do the things I want to do, I don't have enough time to do what I want to do." Etc. etc. etc. It just spirals down from there.

Then I start thinking about those memes. You know, like this...

...Of course I go on Google trying to find an example and there's, like, nothing. WTF?

OK, like this:

Or this:

OK granted I really like those quotes, and any other day I would be like "yay, I'm going to print that and put it on my bathroom mirror so I see it every day!" (Do I ever do this? No...) But on the day before it's time to surf the crimson wave, I'm like, "FUCK YOU INSPIRATIONAL MEME. YOU DON'T KNOW WHAT IT'S LIKE TO BE ME. MY LIFE ISN'T GOING ANYWHERE, MY BOYFRIEND DOESN'T COMPLIMENT ME AS MUCH AS I WISH HE WOULD, I DON'T WANT TO DO THIS JOB ANYMORE" (insert the rest of my aforementioned list here).

What is up with my hormones? I know this happens to, like, everyone else who gets their period. But for me, it's the day or two before it starts, then I get it and I feel bloated and tired and like I want to eat all the junk food on planet Earth, but I don't feel all bad about myself. It's just the day(s) before. So weird.

Does anyone know what happens to our hormones in our bodies when we're about to get our periods? Would be interesting to find out.

Anyway, right now, I feel like I'm stuck. I'm at a dead end job, and I don't take the initiative to change that (like, sitting down and fracking writing something so I can try to get published). Don't get me wrong, when I have things to do at work, I like my job. But lately, I've been sitting there...staring at the screen, bored...Actually, even if I have things to do, I don't want to do them.

Where's my motivation? What killed it? What do I do about it? I have no clue. It's like the fact that nothing is moving in my life is making me also not move. Oh wait. I think it's the other way around. When I don't move, my life doesn't move. So what am I supposed to do?

I sometimes feel like one day, I just won't come into work, I'll quit silently, never go back, and do whatever the hell I want. (Hands up if you've ever felt like doing this.) I actually have done that in the past. I called in one day and said "I'm not coming in anymore." And that was that. I didn't worry about the consequences, I just did it because I was unhappy being at that job and I had to get out of there. Now, I go, "But my bills! My rent! My cats! My this, that, and the other thing!"

So my conclusion is...I need balance. I've had this idea to work part time and work on writing the other part of the time. I don't know if I can do it financially, and I certainly can't yet, and I don't know if I'll be able to save up enough money to be able to do it in the next year. But, it's something I'm seriously considering. Until then? Finding any spare minute I can to work towards something productive, like a novel, or a screenplay, or something. I want to be my own boss. Well, I should probably start working on that now before I end up 50 and sad I didn't try.

Alright memes. You win. This time.

I was going to post this picture as a visual of being insecure:

But then I realized they're like "Embrace your shape! Love yourself! But here's a picture of a skinny woman with long legs!" So, you can only embrace your shape if you're THAT shape? Or what?

So I found this instead:

Yeah, that's more like it.

So, the point of this post today is...I am feeling insecure today.

And I know why.

I haven't been doing yoga every day, and I really think that is the reason. When I was doing it every day, my confidence level was HIGH. I also slept like crap last night, and didn't eat the healthiest food yesterday. Insecurity all comes down to how you treat your body, I swear.

The lesson here (for me) is: Even if I'm busy, I have to squeeze yoga in somehow!!! Not to mention good food and good sleep. I have no idea why I slept like crap last night, but the crappy food and the stressful day might have had something to do with it...

I keep waking up in the morning with the intention of doing yoga when I get up. And it just doesn't happen. I wonder what the best way to train yourself to do this is.

Love yourselves, kids. 

(Sorry about the ugly lines...I think it's because I'm using a custom template and Blogger doesn't like it.)

Something strange is going on...

I look in the mirror today and I like what I see.

I don't know if this is because something has changed, or because my views have changed. Possibly a little bit of both. I feel like I'm getting more toned doing yoga so much, and I've really been working to change my perception of myself. So I think they are going hand in hand. I also really like what I'm wearing today and I think it accentuates all the good parts of me. (See, I'm not quite at the point of saying that every part is good...But someday. Someday.)

I somehow started getting these E-mails from some website called "Upworthy," and I have no idea how I started getting them, but I'm glad I do. They had a video today, which is the following:

I love how she points out that you can't just judge someone by looking at them. After I posted this on Facebook, a friend of mine commented: "I weigh over 260 lbs and I: can run over 11 km non-stop, can do one handed push-ups, can fireman carry a full grown man the length of a gym floor... at a run, have thighs dubbed 'Zeus' and 'Thor' on account of the thunderous power of my kicks, and have seen thin people have to lay down gasping for breath trying to keep up with the workouts I do on a regular basis. You wouldn't know any of this just by looking at me (or maybe 
you would; nobody ever calls me 'fat' to my face)."


Exactly. Way to go!


I also love how she mentions that fat is just a descriptor, it's what you attach to the word that is hurtful or destructive. Sometimes, fat is good. It's Halloween, you want to get a pumpkin, you find the perfect one, you say, "This is the biggest, fattest pumpkin I have ever seen!" But then you say it about a person and it's not a good thing anymore. Interesting.


Anyway. I'm looking at some of the comments on YouTube that people left. This is one that kind of made me angry: "in a time/place that is not suffering from shortage in food and most people are well fed, being over-weight will never be the standard for attractiveness and will be generally 
seen as un-attractive as it shows poor physical health."


OK, that is true, there are people who don't take care of themselves and as a result have gained lots of weight. Guess what, there are people who don't take care of themselves who are rail thin. String beans.


It's too complicated of an issue for us to just see it as a black and white subject. There are so many factors involved: Genetics, health issues, metabolism, etc. etc. Just looking at someone who may be fat and saying you know everything about them is just ridonk. RI-DONK!


So, meghantonjes as you are called on YouTube, you keep rocking it! You're fat, you are an inspiration, and awesome, and as you say, none of those things necessarily negate or make the 
others true, amirite?


Oh, and follow it up with this awesome video, which is a lot longer at almost 10 minutes, but totally worth it: 

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My therapist gave me this "assignment" a while back for body acceptance. She said she read an article where a woman started with a body part and for days would stare at it in the mirror until she had accepted what it looked like, then she would move on to another part. My therapist said the point is not to love your body overnight, but to start hating it a little less.

Don't get me wrong, I don't hate my body. I mean, I get frustrated with it when it decides to be too tired for life. Or when it decides to start randomly hurting for seemingly no reason. And there are things I am not so fond of aesthetically. Sometimes it's my arms, sometimes it's my legs, sometimes my stomach (usually my stomach, actually), sometimes my nose. Other days, those things look totally fine to me (except my stomach, usually).

So today, I was just looking at my feet. I have times where I really don't like them. I feel like my big toenails are shaped funny (they also don't look the same), and my big toes have a gap between them and the rest when I stand, which I always thought was weird. I notice that my big toes curve up so the nails point up to the sky, whereas the rest of my toes curve towards the ground. And my second toe is shorter than my big toe, which I've actually never really minded because - no offense people with longer second toes - I always thought it was kind of strange to have a longer second toe. (My dad told me they're actually both Native American traits, that the big toe separating from the rest makes it easier to walk in sand...Who knew? My dad, being a doctor, finds this kind of thing fascinating.)

In any case, I was looking at my feet and realized they're not actually all that bad. Feet take a beating throughout our lifetimes. We walk on them, we stomp on them, we do things like squeeze them into high heels, which are narrow and unnaturally raise our heels; many of us when we were kids stood on them in ballet class while cursing ourselves for wanting to torture ourselves in that way (or cursing our parents for making us), and while I know that most people in North American culture don't move enough, we still have probably walked the equivalent of many, many miles in our lifetimes. At the very least, I should appreciate them for carrying me this long, even if I can't appreciate the way they look. If I didn't have feet, well, I'd probably be in a wheelchair, and I am very grateful that I am not. But, I can still strive to accept their shape, their texture, their colour, their uniqueness.

To sum this up...If we can't accept our bodies fully, if we can't love every inch of our bodies, maybe, just maybe, we can work on accepting them the way they are, and hating them just a little less.