by guest blogger Lori Race
During the height of my compulsive exercise and body image issues, my body (well actually MY PERCEPTION of my body) ruled my world. Literally ruled it.
I regularly skipped classes in order to fit in my 4-5 hours of workouts a day. I often opted out of social events if I was feeling the slightest bit “fat”. I spent my student loan money on extremely expensive diet programs and didn’t have enough to go to the grocery store by the end of the semester. Broke and starved for a binge, I shop lifted a bag of chocolate rosebuds and got caught and driven back to my dorm by police.
I even told a boyfriend at the time that I did not want to see him for an entire month while I lost weight, I only wanted him to see me at my leanest and fittest.
My body was often so exhausted from the hours of workouts that I failed to perform well on my University volleyball team. Trainers and staff at the University gym would ask me what high level sports event I was training for to be working so fucking hard.
I was training for something alright.
I was training for a ticket into my own life.
I was paralyzed by the belief that if I could just get thin and fit enough then I could have all the things I desired. I would be accepted and loved and appreciated and WORTHY. I had an image of some mystical gatekeeper to my life whose tools included a scale and some body fat calipers. “You want to live? Enjoy life? Be happy? Be loved and accepted? Make friends? Attract men? Well then youmust meet these certain body requirements. Step right this way to my scale of seduction.”
That scale was the altar to which I prayed.
Every single thing I did was influenced by the number that showed up on that scale from week to week. I gave that number the power to make me feel elated, in control & successful and also devastated and boiling over with self hatred. It always came back to one thing.
Failure. Again.
I missed out on a lot through those years of dysfunction. Don’t get me wrong, I did have many wonderfully magical and rowdy experiences through this time, it was University after all, and I have been accused on occasion of knowing how to party. However, all my experiences through that time were tainted and touched by my body image issues. The pendulum swing of my constant exercise and binge eating left no one in my world untouched. How could it, when it affected my finances, my sports team performance, my class attendance, my values and morals, and every single relationship I had.
If I had known then that I could walk into a room and own it at 180 lbs just as easily as I could at 150 lbs, that I could be loved completely and unconditionally for just being me and that no one else saw my body and it’s supposed flaws in anywhere near the light that I did, things would have been a whole lot different.
See the thing is, is what allowed me to walk into a room and own it at my leanest is exactly the same thing that allows me to do it at my heaviest, the confidence of loving myself and of truly knowing on a visceral level that the fullness and richness of my time on this planet has nothing to do with the size of my pants. That is what owns a room. That is what allows entry into your life and full open-hearted living. And really, why would you want to live any other way?
Step through that gateway and INTO YOUR LIFE.
Freedom tastes good.
Lori Race is an acupuncturist, Master Life Coach and the creator of Heart Your Package. She’s also just a wonderful person with a lot of wisdom to share.
Want free trainings on dropping the negative body image, screwing weight loss and being your most radiant, gorgeous self? Sign up here.
