I am a woman. I think as a woman for whatever reason, be it advertising or social media pressures or whatever, we set ridiculous standards for ourselves. We all want to be perfect and this is simply not obtainable. We are HUMANS. Perhaps men feel the same pressures, but I’m going to talk about my personal experience here and I’m betting women reading this, will agree with me. We are all nuts! We put too much pressure on ourselves to be young, thin, great spouses, parents, caregivers, employees, (fill in the blank) and to look like a supermodel while doing all those things. We rarely or never think we are good enough. ☹
For women, we definitely focus on our weight and the whole body image thing. For most of my adult life I weighed 119 pounds. I got really sick my first year in college and at the peak of that illness weighed 99 pounds. I felt like crap but was elated at that number on the scale. WHAT AN IDIOT. Of course once I got over the mono, I resumed my normal teenage eating which consisted of free cheeseburgers and fries (perk from my job) and soon regained the weight and went on my merry way. I can say that I felt pretty good about myself at that nubile age and didn’t do much comparing of myself to others. I was pretty healthy in mind and body in my teenage to post college years. Looking back on that girl, I am grateful for the years I felt that I looked ok! I was SATISFIED and didn’t self-hate myself when I ordered dessert.
Then in my early and then again in my late 30s, I experienced REAL debilitating anxiety and simply could not eat or function much at all and I got down to 110 from my “normal” 119. I was too anxious to be excited about that number but remember afterwards when I felt like me again, I longed for that number. AGAIN what an IDIOT. Focusing on weight as a number and not good mental and physical health is a societal problem that will never stop I guess.
In my late 30s, I was living in this “adult dormitory” luxury loft apartment complex in the Strip District of Pittsburgh. That move started a really unhealthy part of my adult life. Being in an environment of total over consumption of food, alcohol and witnessing some really interesting lifestyles, I was in a bad place personally. First off, I gained weight which had NEVER happened, I remember attending one of the many parties (nightly someone had one) and weighing myself in this lady’s bathroom on her scale and seeing 131.4. I was devastated. I HATED myself. I left the party, went home and said I needed to STOP all this consumption. So I DID. Back to the gym for me, I cut down the wine consumption, stopped eating bread and butter at every meal and put my mind into it. I did lose the weight, people NOTICED and commented so up went my self-esteem and I felt a bit better about my body image.
Even when I was a perfectly acceptable weight for a 5 foot 2 inch woman, I admit now that I wasn’t REALLY happy with myself. I would say to myself, you are ok but you are 10 pounds from perfect. Don’t you want to be perfect? FIX IT.
At 51, looking back at pictures of myself from my 20s, 30s, 40s, I think at ALL OF THOSE AGES AND WEIGHTS, I was amazing. I certainly was more youthful than I am today.
I wish I could have really loved myself more when I was young and mostly line-free. If I can espouse advice to the young girls of the world, I would say appreciate who and where you are every step of the way because sadly I have learned that today is probably the best looking and youthful as I will ever be…. A new line or crease appears magically all the time and the pounds are harder to keep control over. We women need to start appreciating ourselves TODAY, tomorrow and the next day. I work on this. I really do. Usually I fail but I am trying!!!
When I discovered the Ketogenic diet one year ago in May 2018, I thought well this is revolutionary. Though, apparently, this diet has been around since the 1930s and designed for diabetics, it truly is a way to train your body to burn fat for fuel instead of living on sugar. I will write a future blog about this diet but suffice it to say that with eating keto I was able to get under my old perfect weight and really feel most of the time that I look pretty good. Again, I am mostly satisfied with my weight and the doctor is happy with the bloodwork. With a year pretty much straight keto, my cholesterol is fine, triglycerides and everything, sugar is good so I will keto on and continue to exercise, take supplements, eat natural, real food and still occasionally treat myself to a forbidden item. I am not lying to myself when I say, life is short, eat the piece of cake and ENJOY IT but no one needs cake every day or ice cream or a candy bar or whatever.
So, let’s now take our focus to wrinkles In my 30s, I had a doctor and I liked him and I thought he had my best interests in mind. That was until he started practicing BOTOX and during a visit for some issue, told me “for $500 I could fix your whole face.” That is a DIRECT quote. I had never even thought about my face but then I started really looking. I examined the forehead lines, the smile crinkles, the neck wrinkles, the lines around my lips. Maybe he was right…. I WAS aging….. maybe I should get some injections. I consulted friends and realized several of my friends of the same age and some older had already been doing a little this or that for YEARS. Really? Hmmm….. so I started lying to myself about how spending $500 on BOTOX could help me feel better, look younger and still turn heads.
I tried it once. I was indeed wrinkle free on my forehead for about 5 months but the wrinkles go somewhere so my eyes were droopy and I hated that way worse than the forehead wrinkles. When it wore off and the wrinkles returned I decided I can just wear hats. I am a hat girl and wear them well.
The lip wrinkles and smile lines, well, it is what it is. I have earned those lines! I will own them.
So, I am going to try and stop telling myself ridiculous lies about how changing this, adding that or losing 5 pounds is really going to change my life and make me happier. Happiness starts on the inside! I am TRYING to live that kind of authentic life. I have my struggles for sure, but can say, when an 18 year old beautiful and REALLY skinny girl told me in January while on Key West waiting to rent a moped that she wished she had arms like mine I told her I AM A FARMER! Hauling 50 pound bags of chicken feed really gets you strong! And I smiled the rest of the vacation about that….. I may have wrinkles but my arms are KILLER!
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