And There's More...

This is a companion piece to yesterday's post.

My friend Terri commented/commiserated on yesterday's post about how much is sucks to be stuck. To just feel like you cannot budge that scale, can't change those numbers. And as I was writing out a response to her I had a realization and that lead to this blog.

What I was going to tell her is that she was being unnecessarily hard on herself. That she HAD budged that scale. She went down two sizes before having knee surgery. TWO SIZES. If I went down two sizes all of those clothes I put aside for "someday" would fit, well most of them would fit, some of them would be too big!

And yeah, sure she hasn't been as active as she would have liked over this past winter but where she lives winter was a beast this year. Like ours was oddly warm and dry hers was buried under snow storm after snow storm. And the fact that she's kept the weight she lost off is amazing.

And I know her life. She's busy. She has family commitments, and work commitments, and church commitments, and all of that leads to stress and cortisol which makes losing weight extremely difficult. So she really needed to give herself credit.

And it sort of hit. I mentioned I gained 15 pounds but I didn't say that was when my thyroid crapped out and I was gaining like a pound a week while not doing anything differently. And that when I got my thyroid straightened out with meds I went on HRT which has been a huge blessing in a lot of areas, but it makes you gain weight so the fact that I lost 5 pounds of the 15 is actually pretty decent. The weight gain wasn't because I did something "wrong" it was expected stuff due to what was going on. Thyroid kaputting and then estrogen replacement.

But I took the blame for the weight gain on like I had done something wrong. Oh I was just weak and didn't have the willpower to resist temptation. Even saying in the blog yesterday that part of why I like that I did all of the tracking is that I can see that I'M NOT EATING TOO MUCH. I'm doing what I should be doing. The frustration is justified.

The blame is not.

We (women especially) do this all the time. I was telling Brent about it at breakfast and he said that as a child, a woman more specifically, of the 80s I was never going to have a realistic vision in my head of what my body should look like. Very astute man, that Mr. Mastenbrook. Because yeah, I have never been able to fit my body into that super skinny mold. It's never been shaped that way. It never will be. I've said so many times that there is nothing straight about me, not my way of thinking, and no place on my body. I'm all curves and swerves. And that's fine.

But I need to stop blaming myself like this is a problem instead of genetics. And no matter how much I preach self acceptance I have a hard time with self part. I needed to catch myself talking to Terri in my head to realize I should be talking to myself.

And now I'm talking to you all too. No matter what it is in your life that you are working on, or struggling with you need to make sure you are giving yourself credit and not just blame. Look at what you have done and pat yourself on the back. And when you are looking at the things that aren't working ask yourself why you are blaming yourself. Is it really something you have control over or isn't it? Is it something that at this point in time you are doing the best you can? Is it something that is never going to be different and you are working from a model that is faulty?

Stop being so hard on yourself.

Give yourself credit and not just blame.

And your ass looks great in those jeans.

(always makes me feel better so I'm sharing)