Have You Ever Experienced Something Like This...?

At a dinner party one summer night, after serving myself a second portion of my favorite dishes, a guy at my table narrowed his eyes at me and said with a slight smirk, “Wow, you must really be hungry.”

I wanted to smack him.

At one point in my life, his comment would have set off a major shame spiral.

I would have shrunk down in my seat, hung my head and clamped my mouth shut while my cheeks burned bright red.

Thoughts like these would have raced through my head:

• I’m a pig.
• I shouldn’t be eating so much.
• Going back for seconds is bad.
• I have no self-control.
• I don’t deserve to eat what I want.
• If I want more food, I need to hide while eating it.
• There is something wrong with me.

Painful, Powerful Words
As I shared before with my brownie incident, careless comments like this can be really painful and very powerful.

They can have a huge impact that negatively shapes your core beliefs regarding who you are and what you deserve. For me, they contributed to years of disordered eating.

Thankfully, with the help of some very wise teachers, I was able to shed my destructive beliefs and behaviors.

I learned how to give myself unconditional permission to eat and enjoy food, and how to cultivate a more nourishing, trusting and peaceful relationship with food and my body.

Unconditional Permission
Each one of us has a right to eat whatever we want—whenever, wherever and however we want it.

You don’t have to earn the right to eat something.

You don’t have to justify your food choices, make excuses for them, hide them, or apologize for them.

And what’s on your plate is nobody’s business.

An Opportunity for Gratitude
After the initial flash of anger I felt when that guy made his comment, I caught myself starting to justify my actions to the entire table, something along the lines of “I’ve hardly eaten today” and "I had a light lunch." 

Realizing what I was doing, I stopped talking, picked up my fork and went back to enjoying my meal.

Later, while reflecting on the situation, I came to appreciate the opportunity it gave me to see just how far I’ve come. 

Do You Suck It In?

Growing up, my summers were spent at the neighborhood pool. I have very fond memories of playing Marco Polo with my pals, perfecting my swan dive, and snacking on frozen candy bars and sour taffy. 

I also have a very vivid memory of one of my girlfriends. I’ll call her Kim. She was about 13 years old at the time.

To this day, I can still see Kim walking down the diving board and around the pool deck in her magenta one-piece swimsuit sucking in her stomach like crazy. 

I was struck by Kim’s vigilance and unwavering determination to reveal nothing but a perfectly flat stomach. We never talked about it, but I could sense how strongly she felt her body wasn’t acceptable unless she shape shifted it to fit a cultural ideal. 

Protection from Rejection
Of course, I can totally relate to Kim's actions. Maybe you can, too. 

There have been many times over the years that I either intentionally or subconsciously walked around chronically sucking in my stomach.

I felt it was critical to hide this protruding part of myself that I feared others would find unattractive and label as a weakness, ultimately leading them to reject me. 

Deeply ingrained, I still sometimes catch myself resorting to this tactic when feeling vulnerable. Unlike my butt or thighs, I can instantly suck in my gut.

By controlling the size of my stomach, I mistakenly believe I can control a world full of uncertainty, including how others perceive me and the degree to which they admire, accept and love me.

Liberate Yourself
As you pull on your swimsuit this summer, you may find yourself also getting pulled into the false stories about what the size of your belly (or butt, thighs, arms, etc.) says about you.

Such toxic thoughts can trap you in a negative mindset that drives you to relentlessly beat yourself up for not having the "perfect" body while missing out on all the fun.   

Instead, what if you used this moment as a life-changing opportunity to liberate yourself from the conditioning and beliefs that are no longer serving you? 

It takes courage and commitment to change your relationship with your body, to accept and love yourself even when you don't always like what you see in the mirror, to let go of what others might be thinking of you, to let it all hang out.

But, in the words of one of my beloved healers and authors, Mary O’Malley…

"Nothing less than freedom comes when you can let go of being somebody that needs to be different in order to be okay." 

Are You Breaking Your Own Heart?

This passage from author and wise woman Anne Lamott really resonates with me:

“Oh my God, what if you wake up some day, and you’re 65, or 75, and you never got your memoir or novel written; or you didn’t go swimming in warm pools and oceans all those years because your thighs were jiggly and you had a nice big comfortable tummy; or you were just so strung out on perfectionism and people-pleasing that you forgot to have a big juicy creative life, of imagination and radical silliness and staring off into space like when you were a kid? It’s going to break your heart. Don’t let this happen.”

In the past, I’ve shared how I let my so-called inadequacies and imperfections stop me from fully living.

I let the size of my body dictate the size of my life.

It breaks my heart when I think about how much time, energy and life force we waste berating ourselves for not having a better body and obsessing about how to fix it.

I often wonder, if we weren’t thinking about this, what would we be thinking about?

Where would we be putting all our energy?

How different would our lives be?

How different would the world be?

My highest intention is to help end this needless suffering so none of us dies wishing we would have gone swimming.

Pick a New Direction
I’ve seen with myself and with my clients that it is possible to replace criticism with compassion, judgment with curiosity, loathing with loving, rejection with acceptance, playing small with living big.

As Anne Lamott says, it all starts with the willingness to...

“Pick a new direction, one you wouldn’t mind ending up at, and aim for that. Shoot the moon.”