Perspective

This post has nothing to do with my kids, or FPIES, or anything I usually write about.

This post is about perspective.

When I was 14 years old, I joined the swim team at my school.  I sucked at every single stroke except  for backstroke, but I was so awesome at backstroke I wound up on the Varsity team my very first year.

I also played deep-end goalie on the water polo team.  (Now that’s a vicious sport!)

Spending two-plus hours a day swimming your brains out in the pool has a drastic effect on your physique: I was the skinniest I had ever been in my life.

However, even though my ribs and hip bones jutted out almost sickly on my body, I thought I was tremendously fat.

Unlike most other girls of that age group, I was a, ahem, well-developed young lady.  I had a perfect hourglass figure.  No joke – my  measurements fit the definition of perfect hourglass.  I’ll even share the numbers: 36-25-36.  Compared to the girls with, um, straighter bodies than me, I thought I was fat.

My mind boggles at the thought of that now…can you imagine?  For a brief period of my life, I had a dang near PERFECT body.  And I thought I was FAT.

If I had a time machine, I’d go back twenty years and slap myself across the face.  Ugh.

Once my P.E. requirements for graduation were finished, I quit the swim team.  Athletics has never been my thing, you see.

So my last two years of high school saw some weight gain.  Now, I was nowhere near obese – I was just bigger than those first two years.  Plus, I was growing and getting older, so that helped to compound the issue.

I wore a lovely size 10, with an occasional 8 or 12 thrown in depending on manufacturer.  It looked good on me, now that I look back, but at the time, I thought I was OBESE.

See, if I was FAT when on the swim team, then that meant I had to be OBESE when I wasn’t as skinny anymore.  Logic, right?

Again, I’d really love to be able to go back in time 18 years and slap myself.

Because today, my dears, TODAY, I have lost a whopping 32 pounds off the weight I’ve been stagnant at for the last 12 years or so.  A weight that WAS, in fact, borderline obese.

I am now wearing clothing I wore in my junior year of high school, and it fits well.

For the first time in almost two decades, I see myself in the mirror and LIKE what I see.

At the risk of sounding vain, I’ll go a step further: I see myself in the mirror, and I preen and think to myself “You’re looking HAWT today, girl!”

And believe me, I’m anything BUT hot!  I *have* had two children, you know!  That perfect hourglass is long gone, things have shifted that probably won’t ever shift back, and you mama’s out there know what the tummy looks like the year after you give birth!

But right now, to me, based on how I looked throughout my twenties and early thirties, I feel like the hottest, sexiest babe on the planet.

Well, if the hottest, sexiest babe on the planet wears her hair in a bun so she doesn’t have to wash it so often and frequently deals with spit-up and poo!

It’s alllll about perspective.

While I am very pleased with what is happening to my body, I’m not writing this just to toot my own horn.  One of the thoughts that has been rolling around in my head lately has to do with how women look at themselves; their perspective, if you will, of how they look and feel.

As I stated, I spent the best-looking 4 years of my life feeling fat or obese, when the truth is, I was anything BUT those things.

I know (because I’m a girl, and girls talk) that I’m not alone in that.

So I really want to encourage every woman that reads this to go take a good look in the mirror.  Odds are, you look a WHOLE lot better than you think you do.  Odds are, your perspective is just skewed.  

Now, if you really, truly do need to lose some weight for health reasons, please do so.  But I promise you, even if you’re packing a few extra pounds?

You’re beautiful.

HAWT, even.

You just need to believe it.

(Because we don’t have time machines to go back and slap our 15 year old selves.)

Anyone else out there had a perspective shift about their bodies?