Self-Acceptance Lesson for the billionth time.

I loved all your comments about running! To all of you who want to run with me, you should, I would love some support on this adventure.

A good friend pointed something out to me. She could tell I was bumming about struggling with my weight and going in and out of "the blues" about having a miscarriage. She told me that of all her overweight friends she has, I am harder on myself about it than anyone she knows. We talked for a long time about it and I rediscovered some things I need to work on.

I didn't realize how hard I was being on myself. I think I'm still just a little depressed about having a miscarriage and it's manifesting itself in some self-doubt and hyper-focusing on my faults.

This friend and I have known each other since the 7th grade and we are both the kind of people who take on a lot of projects and decide that whatever we want in life, we'll get it. She was telling me about dealing with her autistic son. She said she can't ever stop managing it, or working to improve his quality of life but she has to quit thinking there is a "cure," and that she can see me doing a lot of the same things about my weight. She can relate to feeling like "If I work hard enough and long enough, I'll get what I want," and she had to let go of that when trying to help her son and his autism. Some things aren't necessarily overcome-able and with those things you just do the best you can.

I have had several people encourage me to come to a level of acceptance about my weight, and to me that  has always meant giving up and not taking care of my body. What I have realized is that just like my friend and her son, I will always have to manage my weight and work on taking care of my body even if that means daily exercise for the rest of my life and always being aware of how much I eat. It doesn't mean I have to beat myself up everyday about it. It also means I don't have to reach 150 lbs to be "healthy." I think I have to accept that 150 might not be in the cards for me no matter how hard I work.

That is difficult for me to accept because I did it once so I figure I can do it again. It's also difficult for me to accept because until now, I have ALWAYS been able to accomplish my goals no matter how out of reach they seemed.

Right now I am not giving up and letting myself go and I am just working on doing my best and changing my expectations for myself. This might take 5 years for me but so be it. Realizing that I can give myself acceptance while still working on managing my weight and working on my health is huge for me. I'm sure I've written this same post like 5 times but I will probably have to learn this lesson over and over and over and over.

As for running, I have accomplished my goal of running to the gas station and back everyday. Dan has been taking pictures of me so after a couple weeks I'll put a little photo timeline together. It has been challenging but it gives me a solid goal everyday that I feel like is completely reasonable. How often to I sit and waste 30 minutes dinking around on the internet and looking at pictures of strangers on facebook and pinterest? Mr. Covey would be proud because I am feeling freaking highly effective right now.