One Body to Love

I wrote this one night when I was unable to sleep because of thoughts I was having about my family and their issues with my weight, and the one question I asked myself was did I think that my father thought I was good enough. I honestly started to cry because I wasn't sure. It never seems like I am, and sometimes lately I wonder if I spend too much money just because I want there to be some other issue for him to talk about, other than my weight. It's easy to promise not to spend too much and to even keep that promise. But I can't promise that I will lose the weight. I can't promise anymore, because I don't know. It's something that still bothers me, but if I do lose the weight the focus needs to be not on the outward problem of being fat, but on the inward obsession with food and where this obsession came from.
But here is what I wrote:

Am I good enough?
Am I good enough as I am, right now?

If I am then why can’t I feel it? If my issue with weight comes from an addiction to food, then as with any addiction it’s just a crutch holding me up because of something else bringing me down. I don’t know what would have started the addiction, but I have a guess as to what the crutch is now.
For so long now, this weight has been a burden, such a hassle, consuming me. WHO AM I? Am I this weight? Does this weight define who I am? Is this weight all that others see when they look at me? If so, am I still good enough?
When everything coming out of your mouths has to do with me being overweight, and different ways for me to lose the weight, what am I supposed to think? I can’t move on to anything else until this weight is gone, I can’t BE who I want to be until this weight is gone. I AM NOT GOOD ENOUGH until this weight is gone. If my father, my grandmothers do not think I am good enough because I am not thin, then how am I good enough to face the rest of the world? How am I good enough to buy pretty clothes, and to look in the mirror and be happy? How am I GOOD ENOUGH to love myself?
If I don’t love myself then, why should I care what I eat? Why should I care what I put into my body? I don’t. I try, but I can’t because I am not happy. I am not happy because I am not thin enough, and food feels good. It’s not foods fault it makes me feel better, it’s not foods fault that I am overweight so stop blaming the food, and look at yourselves.
I know how to eat right, I know portion sizes, but what I don’t know is how to care enough to do it for myself, because I am only good enough when I am on a diet, or when I am getting thinner, but it doesn’t last. Obviously it doesn’t last, obviously it’s not something that is going to change over night, and yet tomorrow morning I am still going to have to wake up and look in the mirror, and hope and pray that whether or not I am on a successful diet, whether or not I am as thin as someone else wants me to be I am good enough. So, if I am good enough, then treat me like I am, as I am now. Accept me whether or not I lose the weight, because if this weight is coming off, it’s not going to come off because you or I are screaming at it.
I am who I am right now, and I have to live with that every day. So if I am good enough for you, then treat me as you would if it were any other day that I was good enough.

I read a lot of blogs. If you follow my blogspot profile you'll know that I follow nearly 200 and am ALWAYS reading them, and sometimes commenting. I read a lot of fat acceptance blogs, and I am liking what I am hearing, but I also feel very threatened. I feel like in order to be accepted into the throngs of people wanting to love themselves I need to go through my blog and delete any talk of eating healthier, and trying to lose some weight. I want to be an advocate of body image acceptance, fat acceptance, and self love, but I feel like since I want to lose some of the weight I carry... I am not a real fat acceptance advocate. Even though I accept that others can be healthy and comfortable at whatever size they are, I personally find myself extremely uncomfortable at my size and want to be smaller. Not anywhere near the thin ideal, but back to a size that feels right on me. I don't want to preach weight-loss to anyone, but I don't want to feel like I can't speak my mind or frustrations regarding my own journey. I don't want to feel ostracized by everyone, because I am too fat to be accepted by the thin people, but since I want to lose weight, I can't be accepted by the fat people. I want to learn to love myself at whatever size I am, even if I am twice the size I am now.

But yes, it worries me that because I try to be healthier and reward myself for being healthy that I am not following the FA protocol. But I am only 20 and literally only about 2 months deep into this whole blogging and FA thing, so maybe someday I'll look back on this entry and feel foolish. If so, EDUCATE me. I want to learn. I am learning so much this semester about self love and sexualities.

I made a pact with myself that if I could not figure out how to wear the few skirts in my closet, I'd have to give them away. Here is how it worked out:

I really liked the pearl necklace against the purple.

I was definitely feeling a little bit like Blair Waldorf with my headband on. It made me want to go out and find better quality, more statement making headbands.

Jacket: TJMaxx Purple

Shirt: Kohl's

Skirt: Target

Tights: Wal-Mart

Shoes: Madden Girl via TJMaxx

Necklace: Fashion Bug

I am 20 now, have been for awhile now and sometime near the beginning of this school year I started to tell myself that I had wasted my teenage years being fat. By allowing myself to be fat I had wasted the years of youth and happiness that I could never get back. Now that I’ve started this journey, I am thinking this concept over. While it goes without saying that being fat did not make my teenage years any easier, is the waste due to the fat, or the obsession with getting thinner and dieting that caused me to waste my teenage years? Was I so obsessed with the idea that I could not be happy until I was thin the cause of the severe depression that started in 7^th grade and held on to me until freshman year of college? I think so, because lately I’ve been fatter, and I’ve never been happier than I am now.

Another thing that I had begun to think this year and previously was that my reason for over eating was an addiction to food. While this may be a possibility due to the genes I inherited from my alcoholic family members, I have a different theory. My new theory is that I am not addicted to food; I am obsessed with food, and not just fattening food, but all food. There has been very little time in my life that I have not been fat, and even during those brief periods where I was somewhat thin, I was constantly thinking about food, when I was in middle school I knew that when I got home I’d have to eat healthy so I’d scheme and plot how to get junk food outside of the house. Once I became fat again, the obsession became so ingrained in me that it became subconscious and at times almost seemed like a good thing. But if I were so conscious of food, why would I continue to pollute myself with “bad” food? Perhaps the fact that I have always been taught that certain foods were “bad” and that I should not eat them has caused me to constantly subconsciously assume that if I am eating bad foods now, I will never get to eat them again. I am so obsessed with food, and I never think about actually eating “bad” foods as good so my mind always sees foods in the black and white of being good and bad, constant and forbidden.

I am so obsessed with eating healthy, and so obsessed with thinking about food, and what I am going to eat next that I have programmed myself to overeat.

I think the best next step in this journey, is to focus on eating what I want, but cutting back on the portion sizes. I need to keep in mind that this food is not forbidden. I can eat some of it now and still have some later. Rather than obsessing about what I am going to eat next, I should think about what I can do next that will make me happier, or better myself in the long run, whether that is going out with friends, working out, or doing homework (which never ends). Think positive, and hopefully the food will stop being an issue.

I might waste my 20’s being overweight, but I’ll do it as healthily as I can, and I DAMN sure will NOT waste my 20’s being unhappy.

Since the last post was pretty lengthy in itself I decided to make a new one for the outfit report. On this day, I was definitely feeling fierce!

RAWR!

scarf: not sure but nice scarves are everywhere

sweater: The Deb Shop

Leopard Print Top: Plus size Forever 21

Belt: Torrid

Leggings: Probably Walmart to be honest, haha

Booties: Madden Girl via Marshalls

And since I did my make up for once, I took some close-up face pictures to show it off (and maybe because I was feeling pretty hot).

If you'd like to know the make up used, stay tuned I'll likely do a post about my fav. products but for now I'll throw out LORAC and Urban Decay.

I have been putting off a new entry for awhile now, because I was hoping to do a more serious post including some readings by some of my favorite body image authors. However as a college student my first priorities are the midterms looming ahead. Even so, some thoughts I am having due to a passing conversation with a stranger and a long conversation with an old friend have lead me back here to discuss the idea of learning to love oneself, and ultimately achieving self happiness and self worth in ones OWN eyes as well as in OTHERS.

The path to self worth is a JOURNEY, and not the one-stop kind. It's a journey with bumps, wrong turns, crossroads, growing luggage, lost luggage, and most importantly backtracks. As someone on this journey, I find it important to be AWARE of all of these experiences and to examine them, evaluate them, learn the lesson in such a way as to further your journey and then to keep moving. So in an effort to do as I just said, here is what happened, and my thoughts:

The conversation with a stranger was one where I was walking a long, it was raining and I was wearing a frumpy (but warm) grey sweater, purple leggings and highheeled Ugg boots. The stranger was a male, somewhat attractive around my age with some of his friends. I overheard him talking about getting Rosetta Stone in German, and since two days ago I too got Rosetta Stone in German I piped up "Me too!". Most of the time my interruptions into peoples conversations go unnoticed and that's expected but this time he responded, briefly and then continued to chat with his friends. My thoughts (most likely affected by my mild paranoia) immediately began to wonder if he didn't continue chatting because I wasn't very pretty, and if I were prettier would he have made more of an effort to chat. THEN being on this SELF AWARE journey to self confidence I immediately questioned those thoughts about myself. I thought, wait, haven't I been telling myself that I am goodlooking? Don't I look in the mirror and feel happy with what I see? Then why do I assume that others see me differently than I see myself? Why is it that I can accept that I appreciate myself for who I am now, but that I can't accept that my weight and features aren't the first things that people think about? How do I know that he just didn't talk because he didn't know me and would prefer to talk to his friends more?

Later on, I had a long conversation with an ex-boyfriend. Things ended strangely but to say the least we both had our faults and we both made the other very aware of them (me moreso than him because I can be bitchy like that [one thing on this journey I am trying to change]). We talked about our changes and immediately I turned into my usual mother-fixer and tried to explain to him what he was doing wrong and exactly how to change it. I didn't mean to, but I apparently invalidated him by making him think that I thought it would be so easy to fix what he was struggling with. But, isn't that the very thing that people do to others in the line of body image? I know that my parents seem to think all I need to do is stop eating so much and all of my problems will just melt away, but it isn't that simple. I tried to mend the way I had spoken to him and the conversation ended with a promise to be willing to re-evaluate my words should I come of as judgemental, because if more people stopped thinking that they were know-it-alls, there would probably be less unhappy people in the world.

Somehow this still relates to the idea of change, specifically with body image. Do I try to change those around me because it's such a struggle to change myself? Do you?

Let me leave this rant by saying that I pledge to stop trying to force change onto others, and if help is called for, to do so with an open mind, and open ears because as much as I'd like to think so, I don't know it all.

Let's start this entry off on a gorgeous note:

I had this brown dress in my closet for a few months now. When I first bought it I thought it was acceptable, if a little frumpy. However after wearing it once by itself I refused to wear it again, I am only 20 I can't hide my body under loose cloth, one of my best assets is my waist, so if it's made to look larger that can't be a good thing. However, recently I went on a belt splurge and bought some really cute ones meant to be worn higher up on the body, and when I put one on this dress it went from older and frumpy to young, sexy and legalicious.

Brown bubble dress: Dressbarn

Purple Scarf: I forgot but there are a lot like it on Torrid!

Black belt: Torrid

Black Wedges: Payless

I suppose the best way to begin a blog is to clarify what the blog is all about and who exactly is writing it. My name is Leslie, I am currently 20 years old and 250 lbs. Throughout my entire life, I was never thin enough, and rarely actually "thin". My weight was always an issue, something to be ashamed of, and something to hate myself for. I was constantly defending myself from my family, and those who judged me for my weight, this lead to a rollercoaster of diets, constrictions, and then binges. I was always hiding food, and feeling like people were watching me eat. But, the worst part about the entire ordeal was that I really hated myself for the way I looked and my inability to change who I was. I would never buy nice clothes because I wanted to "wait until I was thin". I played with make up but never really felt pretty. I never had a solid relationship with my family, and this lead to a lot of depression and issues with myself and the world around me. However, once I moved away and went to college, it felt like there was less pressure on me, the world was slightly less nauseating, and within the 2 years that I've been here I've slowly become a happy person. This semester, I started out fatter than ever, happier than ever, with a new relationship, a new lifestyle planned, and an entirely new wardrobe. I am learning to love who I see in the mirror, and I definitely love dressing the body that I have. I have turned into a raging shopaholic and I don't think I'll ever turn back. I still love make up, and while it's not as big a part of my life as it once was, I now and then get inspired by the wonderful blogs bellasugar and the sugar network has to offer.

I've created this blog to track my path on my new lifestyle, my favorite outfits, make up inspirations, and opinions on fat acceptance and fashion, incorporating my own as well as some of my favorite blogs.

The healthy lifestyle I speak of is a system of healthy choices and rewards. I want to do my best to lead a healthier lifestyle through being more active and eating more fruits and vegetables as well as paying attention to portion sizes. At the same time I don't want dieting to be my life so there are no strict guidelines or punishments for perceived failure.

To start this blog off right, my first fashion entry:

Necklace: old from a cheap boutique in manhattan

Dress: TJMaxx

Shoes: Payless