It’s my pleasure to introduce you to my long-time friend Golda Smith. She’s a mom of 2 and mompreneur. She is the owner of FitMommyBlog and is an inspiration to living a healthy lifestyle.
I have to be 100% with you so I hope that’s all right. I. AM. TIRED. of women constantly apologizing for their bodies. You know the ones who before posting a photo on Instagram or some other social media hot spot say something like “I feel so embarrassed posting this” and then go on to EXPLAIN why they are embarrassed! Listen, I am 43 years old, I have gone through and given birth twice, have stretch marks and when I go into downward facing dog my loose skin…hangs.
This is me and I make NOT ONE SINGLE apology and neither should you. I am not the same person I was in my 20’s or 30’s. Depending on where you are on the age spectrum you understand that physically, bodies change and boobs droop. Emotionally and mentally, hopefully, mindsets expand and shift.
While I could talk to you all day long about developing killer arms, and strong flat or flattish core and lifting that booty I prefer to talk about what many health professionals and people in general don’t and that is the importance of developing a healthy mindset.
For most of my life I have been inconsistently active while being consistently unhappy and depressed. Even after birthing two beautiful human beings I was still depressed only with the added pressure of not screwing up these perfect blessing from God. Starting a regular fitness routine was my therapy! It was my time to clear my mind, and accept myself with all my quirks and imperfections.
So how did it happen? These are two tips that I want to share with you so you can really love yourself, smile more (and mean it), and truly live a fulfilled life:
Let go of attachments to outcomes. We’ve all done it! I’ll use fitness since so many of my clients deal with this daily. You may have a goal of releasing that baby weight you’ve held onto for the last two years and have a flat stomach and of course you want to accomplish this in the next four weeks. You start your program and even attempt to eat better. You jump on the scale every morning…mistake but that’s another article and after a week you don’t see any change and you begin to feel discouraged. The moment you let that self-defeating thought into your mind is the moment you will not achieve your goal.Instead of being attached to the end goal, learn to fall in love with the process. Love the rituals and the actions that will lead you to achieving that goal because when you are doing things that make you feel good, you will inevitably attract more of it.
The second thing is to stop the comparison game! Why on earth do we do it to ourselves and I say “we” because I’m right there with you. We live in a world dominated by shorter and shorter attention spans, conversations that take place via emojis, 15 second videos and filtered photos. It’s easy to compare yourself to the “perfect” looking Instagram body but what you don’t see are all the meals she may be binge eating and throwing up. You may not see the tears she cries because she doesn’t feel worthy enough YET here we are wishing we had her thighs, abs, discipline, etc.
What I know for sure is that we all have something we would like to change but as I grow older I have come to accept much more of myself than ever before. I don’t want to be anyone but me. I am stronger now than I was when I was clubbing just about every weekend in college. Where depression once lived, love radiates and it is my mission to help other women accept themselves just as they are because in the end, we aren’t supposed to be carbon copies. The masterpiece is more than enough!
