#HeMadeYouBeautiful – Finding Beauty & Confidence in Your Own Skin

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A few weeks ago, I talked at length on Instastories about body acceptance and positive self talk. It was after I shared a photo of myself on Facebook in a bright pink bathing suit – pale legs, jiggly thighs, saggy boobs and all. I got so many uplifting comments and encouraging words from the women, telling me that I looked great in the suit. But the one thing I also kept seeing was “you are so brave to post a picture of yourself in a bathing suit!” and like many things do, it struck a chord with me.

A Little About My History

Delving a little into my past, I have always been a “curvy” person – I was never a stick thin girl in middle school or high school. I had hips and boobs from a very young age and I, like a lot of other girls, thought I was fat at the time. Oh what I would give to go back and slap my 14 year old self right in the FACE! I wavered between a size 7 and a size 9 back in the day, and that was when I was working out 2-3 hours a day, five days a week, year round. (Yay high school athletics!)

After volleyball season was over my senior year, I immediately gained some weight and I honestly did not care. I was having fun with my friends, really enjoying what little time I had left in high school, and eating Taco Bell literally every day for lunch. Fast forward a few months and all those bean burritos were definitely starting to show. By that time, I was working a million hours a week at Texas Roadhouse and they had just moved me up to being a server.

If I thought having volleyball practice five days a week was hard, that was nothing compared to waiting tables for 30 hours every weekend. Without any time to really eat a dinner, ever, and the fact that I slept through breakfast, I quickly started to lose weight. I dropped so much weight so quickly in fact, that my mom thought I was doing drugs and was legitimately concerned about it.

Outside of work, my personal life was not that great. Due to the fact that my mom thought I was on methamphetamines, my relationship with my parents was slightly strained. I was in what I thought was a healthy relationship with my boyfriend, but looking back I was more likely emotionally abused and being strung along. I’ve obviously come out of that, but I wanted to tell you all those things before I show you a photo of me at my very skinniest, because I was incredibly unhealthy, unhappy, and emotionally unwell.

I have to say, blurring out the face of my ex here was kind of cathartic. Anyways – I used to look back at that person in that photo and be so incredibly jealous of my body. But the older I got and the more I remember about that time in my life, the less I would ever consider trading the happiness and security I have now for the turmoil that brought on that size four waist. I keep this photo because it reminds me that healthy & skinny are not the same thing.

Now Back to Present Day

Fast forward 16 years (holy $h!t… the years go by so fast) and here I sit today, perfectly happy mentally and physically in my size 12 jeans. So how did I go from that girl who was at an unhealthy size four to where I am today? To say it has been a journey doesn’t really do it justice. To say that I just magically overnight came to accept my body isn’t fair. And to say that I’ve arrived at this place permanently is a lie.

For many years, I was completely uncomfortable in my body. I always felt like the fat girl in any given group. I tried dieting and diet pills and diet shakes and painful, boring workouts. None of those things did ANYTHING to change my body, ever. And why would they – that is not how we are designed to work. So after many years of being unhappy with what I looked like and embarrassed to be in photos, I literally just decided one day that if this is what I was going to look like, then I would have to learn to accept it and love myself through it.

What happened next was years of changing the way I looked at myself, changing the way I took care of myself mentally and physically, and changing the way I thought about my body. There was no magic cure. Therapy would have likely helped or sped up the process, but would not have been the fix-all I was looking for. But looking back, I can tell you the few things that I started doing (that I still regularly do) that helped me start to accept myself as I was.

The Steps I Took

For starters, I started making healthier choices. One cannot expect to have chips & queso at every meal and expect to feel good afterwards. (Not even if you’re Texan). I started looking at my body as a whole unit, and not as individual parts. Not only did eating an entire appetizer of chips & queso from McAlisters make me feel bloated and terrible physically, but because I had eaten no actual protein, I didn’t have any energy. I was in a mental haze because I was in a queso coma.

I think it is important to say that I did not go on a diet. I had already proven to myself that diets were not for me. I just started choosing to have a salad for lunch from McAlisters instead of chips and queso. I decided to start going for a walk every once in a while. I decided that maybe I didn’t have to drink an entire magnum bottle of white wine every night. I decided perhaps some water would do me some good.

These healthier choices really were the beginning because I felt like I was actually rewarding myself for just being who I was. I was no longer punishing myself but I was giving my body things it actually liked and benefited from, rather than shoving large portions of cheese and wine down its throat.

Then I started focusing on the parts of my body that I did love. I have striking blue eyes and thick, voluminous hair. I was pretty much the only girl in our group who could wear a low-cut v-neck and show off cleavage, so I learned to love my boobs. I have huge thighs, and I always have, and slowly I’ve learned that my legs are really freaking strong and I can do squats like nobody’s business. These are tiny things that could easily be mistaken for something totally unimportant, but they started to become important in my journey.

I also started paying homage to the parts of me that weren’t physical. I decided to go back to school and get a business degree. I started attending church with my mom and really worked on my relationship with God and how He saw me. I quit worrying about whether or not I was going to get married one day and just focused on loving and being myself, no matter what size jeans I was wearing.

For every part of your body that you dislike, find something that you love about yourself. Maybe your arms are jiggly (hi, welcome to the club), but you are one of the rare people that actually has cute toes and feet! Perhaps you hate your thin hair, but you have the skin of a goddess to offset it. It also doesn’t have to be a physical attribute! Maybe you’re terrible at making healthy food choices on a regular basis, but you can keep plants alive like nobody’s business. Or maybe you’re a terrible driver, but you can lay down the framework for a juicy story and delivery a punchline like a professional comedian. Instead of nitpicking those things about you that you may not be able to change, start focusing on those things about yourself that you love the most.

Next you have to remember that there is much more to YOU than what size clothing you wear. I’ve seen floating around a meme that says “you were not born to just diet and die” (or something like that) and this could not be more true. You have so much more to offer the world than your bra, pant, or shoe size, or what color your hair is. God gave you spiritual gifts, you have honed your own special talents and skills, and you have a story to tell that could never be conveyed through skinny jeans or a size XS bathing suit. Start focusing on sharing that story with the world and seeing the fruit come from that.

Where I Am Today

Now, like I mentioned, this is not a journey with a final destination. Some days I have to repeat to myself over and over that I am more than just a body, and that my body is strong, capable, and worth investing in, mind, body, and soul. Some days it is easy. Some days it sucks the life out of me. But the point is that I want you to know that you will have sucky days that you don’t want to be positive about who you are. Those are the days I want you to lean in the most – because I believe that it is God trying to reveal something in you that you’ve never seen before. Or, it could just be the devil being a total jackass too. So if you need to take a mental health day every now and then in order to stay moving towards the positive side of this journey, consider this your permission.

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So, tell me your thoughts below? Have you had this same experience before? Do you feel this way? Are you looking for ways to improve confidence in yourself? Share below and let’s start a conversation about it.