For most women, the downward spiral toward hatred for our bodies begins the same. From the ripeness of our youth, we're pressured and surrounded by expectations to look a certain way. I remember in fifth grade someone told me that I looked pregnant. Which isn't even that dramatic, but at 11, it was enough to start the beginning to years of pointless self-ridicule and efforts to change my body. I remember where I was standing, what I was wearing, who said it, and how that made me feel. Up until then, I couldn't care about what my body looked like. I was so young, why should I? I started doing leg lifts under the desks and stopped taking lunches to school in an effort to lose weight that I didn't need to lose. Nothing shed the fat, and I despised my body even more for it failing me like this.
Throughout high school, I played lacrosse year-round and began to work out consistently during my junior and senior years. I followed all of the fitness models that I wanted to look like on Instagram, failing to understand that everyone's healthy looks different. I was obsessed with looking as fit as these women. I went to the gym before practices nearly everyday, counted every macro, and took progress pictures constantly. While effective, I still wasn't happy with the results. I dreamt of a completely flat stomach, stronger legs, and leaner arms. But nothing I did seemed good enough.
Then, I went on the most effective diet out there: oral cancer. In the beginning, when the cancerous lesion took over my tongue, all I could eat was applesauce and pudding. Then, only liquids. Next, came surgery that prevented me from eating or drinking anything. I had a PEG feeding tube and cartons of the feeding tube formula to fuel me. Once I had just gotten used to my new tongue and was able to eat soft foods again, it was time for radiation treatment. This destroyed all of my taste buds, and brought mouth sores which prevented me from eating and drinking once again. Every time I visited my doctor, the scale crept lower. I was down to 118 pounds. Standing at 5'9", weighing 150 pounds at my healthiest, I didn't wear this weight well. My hip bones protruded through my pants, and I had dropped down from a size 8 to a 4. For the longest time, I yearned to see the scale at 120 pounds. This was what I thought I had wanted. No matter how hard I tried to keep my calorie intake up in an effort to gain some weight back, there's only so much a girl could do with feeding tube formula. I felt depleted. I had lost all of my body's muscle that took me years of hard work. Going from squatting 150 to my quads getting sore after squatting to pick something up off the ground took a major shot at my confidence. It no longer mattered what I looked like, I just wanted my body back to feeling as healthy as I did before.
My body had allowed me to play the sport that I had so much passion for, had healed so quickly from my surgeries, and continues to function its very best with a tumor in my heart and for that, I am so grateful. We need to support healthy lifestyles over a lean physique. Healthy looks different on everyone, and there needs to be more emphasis on how we feel, not how we look. You deserve to be kind to yourself. If you wouldn't say it to a friend, don't say it to yourself. Once I took on that practice of speaking kinder to myself, it made the world of difference and sparked so much self-love within me. It's unfair to hold ourselves to other's standards, so if you're following people that make you feel insecure about yourself, unfollow them. Quit feeding your negative self-image, and start praising all the amazing aspects about yourself. The journey to self-love and body acceptance doesn't happen overnight. It might take a while, and you'll have slip ups here and there. But, as long as you take charge and decide to be kinder to yourself more consistently, the easier it gets to love yourself for all that you are. Because at the end of the day, the things that really matter have nothing to do with your appearance. Our worth goes far beyond our bodies.