New Years Thoughts: Can I want to change my body and still claim to love it?

Happy New Year! I hope 2024 brings you health and abundance in all the areas you may need it. I figured today was a good day to kick off the blog. It’s only said “coming soon” for like 7 months, lol.

Today is the day many people kick off their new diet, exercise, or other health related plan. This year is really perfect for it. A lot of people like to start something new on a Monday so the first of the year being a Monday makes it even more likely that many people are kicking off resolutions and goals today.

I have a business based on helping people find love and healing for themselves. So when thinking about how my own goals for this year could impact my clients or even my friends, I looked hard at why one of my biggest priorities this year is to lose weight. Can I love my body and want to change it? Can I teach others to love their bodies and still allow room for change if they want it?

Absolutely. If we’re doing it for the right reasons. The right reasons are not because society, a partner or family, or our community thinks we need to. We will not love ourselves more, and will not be loved in the way we deserve by others simply by losing weight.

The right reasons, according to me (ha): 

To honor my body by providing it with nutrition and activity that allows it to exist healthfully. 

To remove pain that can be removed by lessening the burden my muscles, bones and organs must carry.

To have an active role in my life instead of allowing it to pass me by.

I know for me, I need to lose weight to make any of that happen. I know my chronic illnesses will not be cured but the severity will decrease significantly by relieving my body of the burden of carrying around the equivalent of an extra human.

There are benefits from losing weight that I cannot get in any other way. 

I love myself and my body. It took me a long time to learn that not only I can both love my body and want to see change but doing so is a ritual.

I am choosing to kneel at the altar of self and place an offering of wellness upon it.

I see no greater showing of love for myself than to stop destroying my body and my life.

In October of 2022 I relapsed on 7 years of sobriety and started drinking again. In June of 2022 I had half my liver removed (unrelated to drinking, due to medications I was given in my early 20’s). When I was given the all clear from my doctor, I decided that after 3 years of one major medical trauma after another I was living my life as I saw fit. In the unhealthy and incorrectly medicated state I was in that meant doing whatever I wanted, consequences be damned.

Why am I telling you this? Well for one because I intend to dig more into my addictive behaviors in blogs to come, but also because of this moment: My wake up came the night before I had a follow up MRI for my liver in February 2023. My doctor wanted to make sure everything looked good and that no new tumors had shown up. And that night my husband was done with my antics. I drank a lot that night and it was a big turning point in our marriage. We went to bed angry which is something we never do.

Two days later when we discussed it he told me he was close to telling me to leave. “You can kill yourself in someone elses house with someone elses money.”

That line has haunted me since he said it. It has also been what has driven me to take control of my life again. By June I had gained back 23 of the 60 pounds I had lost before my surgery, I almost ruined my marriage, and it was all just a pattern I had been living my entire life. I was done with self harming through any means available.

My last drink was around my 40th birthday. I don’t remember the exact date so I use my birthday as the marker. Since then I have received the correct diagnosis and the correct meds for my mental health. I really dove into discovering my personal reasons for seeking out self harm and addictive behaviors. I started dancing again. I focused on my education and my health. In December I once again embarked on a journey to take back my physical health. 

I’ve lost 11 pounds in one month. I’ve cut out sugar and processed carbs. I weight train and work on cardio most days of the week. I teach yoga and movement classes while also spending time in my own practice.  I remembered that just like I have to show up and put in the work in my marriage and other relationships, I have to do the same thing with myself. I can’t treat any of these relationships like a dumpster and expect them to be healthy. And I can’t treat myself that way and expect to be healthy either.

So how can I say I love my body and myself, yet still want to lose weight? How could I not? The physical effects of poor food choices and not moving my body caused just as much harm as drinking did.

I don’t have a specific weight loss goal set upl. I have an approximation of how I remember my body feeling when I weigh a certain amount. Once I feel that way, that's my goal weight. This journey is very new and different in comparison to any of the unhealthy and disordered paths I’ve taken in the past. That’s how I know it’s about health and how I feel  and not anything else. My entire approach is about loving myself, nurturing myself, cultivating my body and my life to continue to grow.

I wish you and yours blessings in the coming year. I hope you find the things you need to help cultivate a loving and nurturing relationship with yourself.