Changing My Life, One Mirror At A Time

I made a mistake.  About 2 ½ years ago I stood up and very publicly announced to my family that I was going to be in the best shape of my life by the time I turned 40.  Not because I wanted to be healthy, but because I wanted to look like JLo.  I used to.  The summer I turned 22 I lost 30 pounds.  I turned myself into a size 6, a 4 on a good day.  And again, not because I wanted to be healthy, but because I wanted to go out with a cute guy who wasn’t casting a serious eye on my size 10 self.  So, Slim-Fast and the Stairmaster became my best friends, and within three months I’d melted away 30 pounds…and I did go out with the guy.  Then I graduated from college and went out with another guy.  And we kept going out, and kept going out and before I knew it 15 years, two kids and 35 pounds had gone by.  So, 2 ½ years ago, when 40 became a not-so-distant thought, I made my very public, very self-esteem crushing mistake.  Best shape of my life by 40.  I have 25 days left and I’m in about the same shape as I was 2 ½ years ago.  And the only people who seem to dwell on that fact more than I do are the people I made the statement to.  How many more days, Lis?  You in the best shape yet?  How’s that workin’ for you?   And, I’ve tried.  Really….I promise I have.  I taped inspirational notes to myself on the top of the treadmill (I’d rather bust a move than bust a zipper).  I keep healthy foods in the house.  Every morning I wake up with a renewed commitment to my health.  Today’s the day I do it.  I’ll exercise.  I’ll only eat 1200 calories.  I’ll take my alli.  I’ll drink my water.  Today I will be beautiful…. And every day I manage to find something, or 14 things, that require my attention more than me.  Like, you know…laundry and stuff.  I mean, did I mention I have kids?  I have high-maintenance kids.  I have constantly hungry, under my feet, question asking, mess-making, “either you entertain me or I’ll have to get the TV to do it” kids.  The only ones of their kind in the world, I’m pretty sure.  And when the physical exhaustion and mental defeat come crashing down upon me, my commitment to myself gets thrown out with the tootsie roll wrappers.  Why is that?  It’s not a new question.  Women have been asking it for years.  Decades, really.  Why do we put ourselves at the bottom of the list?  Why is cleaning the bathroom more important than cleaning my chakra?  Vacuuming vs. heart health….hmmmmm.  Give me a minute.

I know it’s a mom thing, because I’ve known plenty of single or, and I feel funny using this word (it feels so Tennessee Williams), child-less ladies who are plenty wrapped up in themselves ~  shopping, gyming, Sephoraing.  I shop at Target.  My gym is the staircase, and the last time I was in Sephora was when I wandered in there to ask for directions to Mrs. Fields.   Not to say that being a mom means you have to be a big slug, because there are many a mom who are totally put together.  Who can seemingly do it all.  Keep house.  Cook wonderfully healthy meals for their families.  Play games and read books with their kids.  Work-out, show up for PTA, and look like the cover of Self magazine all at the same time.  I just don’t think of myself as one of those women.  And that’s the problem.  The way I think.   My mind says I’m not taking care of myself and that makes me a slug, so my body believes I am a slug.  I feel like one.  I feel like I look like one.  It depresses me.  It exhausts me.  It overwhelms me. 

I saw this piece on the Today show.  A woman named Caitlyn Boyle had been going through the same struggle that I am now.  Feeling fat.  Feeling ugly.  Hating the way she felt.  She wanted to do something to make herself feel better so she wrote a note on a post-it.  It said You are beautiful! and she put it up on the mirror.  The trick was she didn’t put it up on her own mirror.  She posted it on a mirror in a public bathroom so that other women might benefit from her positive thought, as well.  Then she started posting these same kinds of notes in various places that other women might see, taking pictures of them so she could (hello) blog about it.  (My favorite one was the note she put on the front of a Slim-Fast box….).  Her plan worked.  Other women did see them.  They did believe them.  These notes started a beauty revolution.  Women all over started participating in Operation Beautiful, leaving their crappy self-image at the door to help themselves, and other women, rise above the scale and see the beauty they’d been missing in the mirror.  They started posting notes and taking pictures of them.  Writing their stories and sending them to Ms. Boyle.  So strong was this shift in thought, that she wrote a book about it, sharing the stories and images that had been shared with her by the thousands of women that had been touched by her positive thought…You Are Beautiful! 

Isn’t it interesting that it can take a total stranger to help you see something that been right in front of your mirror the whole time?  I mean, my kids think I’m beautiful.  My daughter says that to me all the time.  My husband, after all these years, is more attracted now than he was when we first started dating.  So, who am I trying to convince?  Who am I fighting?  If the people who love me the most can see it, why can’t I?  Why can’t I accept that beauty isn’t a pants size?  One of the sexiest things I’ve ever seen was a full-figured friend of mine in a low cut blouse and slit skirt dancing at a wedding.  The self-confidence that exploded out of her was intoxicating.  People couldn’t take their eyes off her as she rocked her hips and jiggled her chest.  She looked amazing and, more than just knowing that, she felt it.  She knew was smokin', and so did we.  So much so that from that night on she has forever been referred to as Wedding Monica because that's how we all remember her, think of her, and long to be her.  And she wasn’t a slender little wisp of a girl.  She was a size 12.  Marilyn Monroe was a size 12.  The average woman in America is a size 12.  Beauty isn’t a pants size.  Sexy starts in your mind.  Positive thinking has the power to change your life.  So, what if, instead of spending the next 25 days trying to lose 35 pounds, I spent the time thinking positively about my mirror self?  Spent those 25 days convincing myself that, while it’s okay to want to be beautiful, it’s not okay to think I have to change myself to be that.  What if for my 40^th birthday I gave myself the greatest gift of all….a break.  Stopped beating myself up for taking longer than 5 minutes to achieve my goals.  Let go of the warped and twisted notion that the scale measures, not just my weight, but my worth.  Put forth my energy towards living healthy in body and mind.  Put down the Slim-Fast, picked up the torch and became the newest soldier in Operation Beautiful, beginning the lifetime process of positive acceptance.  Hello, my name is Lisa, and  I am beautiful…and SO ARE YOU!!!