Be Content With Your Body

I loved the last paragraph of this post over at Angry Trainer Fitness -

"I know how hard we can be on ourselves, but really, will you be any better as a person if your stomach is tighter? Do you think people will like or love you more? I know what you feel, really I do. I just wish we would all learn how to love what we have rather than focus on what we don’t."

Love it!  That's something I've learned but am still trying to master, and an idea I hope to share with this blog - your body is great, love it!  Go ahead and strive to make it even more awesome, but love it everyday along the way.

I had my breakthrough with this idea last year when my friend Shannon passed away.  She had been active for years hiking, biking, running marathons, you name it.  She was strong and in great health (especially considering she was a breast cancer survivor) but didn't have an amazing body or killer abs like I was coveting on others.  Still, she was still my hero in every way.  Then her cancer came back and she was so sick, she lost all her energy and also lost a lot of weight.  She now had that "thin" body on the outside, but her vibrant active life was over. She passed away a few months later.

When she died, I was working off the baby weight of my 4 month old.  Even though I was carrying an extra 30 pounds, I could do everything and anything I wanted, except fit into my small tight fitting clothes.  And was that really that big of a deal?  My friend was skinny now, but I was sure she'd trade me places to have her active and healthy functioning body back.  Was I happy to be where I was?  It made me think - what do I need to be happy?  Would I rather be carrying around an extra 15 pounds but be able to go running and hiking?  Or would I rather be thin and skinny and fit into size 4 jeans, but be sick and frail?

It was a wake up call for me and I finally really got it - I understood a little bit more how to be content with my body.  Enjoy where you are!  Enjoy what you can do! Choose to be happy now.  It's good to strive and work, it's also good to be content and focus on what you have over what you lack.