It’s a Pity Party—RSVP and BYOB!

Me circa March 2007

So in the essence of full disclosure, I had a major pity party last night.

I was procrastinating  studying for my final exam and I decided engage in a completely random activity–look through old pictures from my digital camera, as far back as Feb 2007.  It was quite entertaining and Matt and I had a few good chuckles about how heavy he used to be (Seriously, it looks like he got attacked by a swarm of bees and puffed up).

But the pictures of me were a different story. Ignoring bad hair coloring, I was shocked to see how friggin’ THIN I was in those pictures (see above). Back then I had never been more obsessed with healthy eating, dieting, and more MISERABLE than I was at that time. But I regardless of that, I was thin. It certainly was a jolt to see myself in a way more slender body.

Which of course caused me to look down at my body now, which, don’t get me wrong, I revel in my voluptuousness…most of the time. But comparing my body now with my body of 3-4 years ago was very difficult.

And then the pity party started.

“Look at you, you can’t maintain your weight”

“You’re weak, you should have more discipline”

“You should eat less, exercise more, go on a diet. How could you let yourself get to this point?”

“You should be ashamed of yourself. You’re studying to be a dietitian, for crying out loud! Why will people want to listen to you if you can’t even keep your own weight down?”

And then, the victim voices:

“Well, you do gain weight as you age”

“My schedule has changed and I don’t have as much time to exercise and I’m stressed all the time.”

As you can imagine, I felt as though I was insane. It WAS insane.

So I made a compromise with myself: Go ahead and think these thoughts, feel badly about yourself, but you only have until the end of the night. Wake up tomorrow morning and it’s a new day. No more of this bullshit.

And you know what, it worked. I let myself be grumpy, angry, ashamed, sad, and spent sometime mourning my former self (which, according to my friends and loved ones, was too thin) and then went to bed. I woke up with a smile on my face, put on an outfit that made me feel fabulous, and sashayed out the door.

I’m just like you—I have the same negative thoughts about my body, and even with the massive amounts of work I’ve done on myself, sometimes they rear their ugly head when you least expect it (like 10pm on a Tuesday evening). By allowing myself to experience these negative feelings, I was able to move past them much more quickly.

So often women in particular are afraid of making waves in their life, and instead plaster on a smile and pretend like they’re OK. I used to be like that…it lead to a lot of issues, especially around food (aka binges). If you’re feeling crappy, seriously, give yourself some time to feel crappy, embrace the crappiness,  and then say, “Thank you for sharing,” and move on.  Look at yourself in the mirror and say, I Love you, body!

Have you ever experienced this? Do you feel like you’re allowed to throw yourself a pity party?

Me circa July 2010