Wednesday, March 27, 2019

Emotion alert: self worth takes a bite

I wrote a blog post today. It was heart wrenching, at least for me. I don’t know if I could call it profound, but it came from my heart. The problem? It was rambling and not clear and concise. So I’m going to try to paraphrase the idea in a nice short post.

I saw a picture of myself from 18 months ago. I was disgusted. My face looked so thin in relation to what it is now. Wow, I knew I had gained weight but it really hit home when I saw that picture. 
When I saw the picture my immediate thought went to my self-worth. You see, like most people in our society deep down I still tie self-worth to my size. I know that who I am has nothing to do with my weight. It has to do with the size of my heart, my compassion, my sense of humor, my ethics. But yet those negative thoughts still coming to my mind on occasion. When they do I can’t hope but question so many things. Things like:
 Am I good enough to be loved? When will they decide im unlovable because of my weight???   Am I worthy of even having friends? Am I good enough to get another job promotion??  I’m sure you know the thoughts and emotions… I know that some of my emotions are derived from the baggage of my previous marriage that I actually talked about a few weeks ago.    Furthermore and maybe most importantly,  I know that these negative emotions are invalid.

The negative emotions make me want to knuckle down and lose every ounce of this excess weight. After all, if I lose the weight then my self worth and value increases right? But let me backtrack and remind myself and anyone reading this that those emotions are invalid...my self worth is NOT tied to my weight.   So then I sit back and say the opposite thing.  Why bother losing weight because I certainly never want to lose weight to make someone love me...or be friends with me.   Been there done that!

I need to lose weight because I want to.  I need to do it because I see the worthiness in living a healthy lifestyle.  I need to do it because my knees ache and that is unacceptable to ME!   I need to do it for ME...because I want the benefits.  I will still be the same compassionate, caring, goodball girl if I lose the weight.  My self worth won’t change, what will change is the activities I will be capable of doing!!!

(So earlier you got the thinner faced me from 18 mo this ago...here is the current...see the difference!!)