I got a stern talking to last night. Dave and I were talking via Facetime, and I told him that I didn’t like what I saw in the mirror at the gym during my trainer session last night. I’d done so well last year losing a bunch a weight, and these last few months, it’s been creeping back on. My pear shape is returning. Of course, since Dave’s a boy, I didn’t put it quite that way, but I did express my disapproval with my body, and he went off on me – in the most loving way – about loving myself and accepting myself as I am. 

I think part of what drew us close early on in our relationship is that we talked about the ways we are insecure, and we saw that we similarly drive ourselves pretty hard as one way of dealing with the insecurity. He’s been working on being kind to himself, and I have too. In fact, I have a card taped to my bathroom mirror that says, “Be nice to yourself. It’s hard to be happy when someone is mean to you all the time.” I didn’t worry about what Dave would think when he saw that note. I knew him well enough by then to know that he’d get it.

It is hard to be happy when someone is mean to you all the time, especially when that someone is you. But that doesn’t mean I shouldn’t push myself. I should, and I do.

I liked the leaner version of myself that I came upon last fall. She surfaced without much effort on my part. I was training, but I wasn’t thinking about weight loss. It just happened as a by-product of my training. But earlier this year, I decided to be intentional about weight loss, and that’s completely backfired on me. As long as I ate fairly well and trained a bunch and didn’t worry about weight, I lost weight. But the minute I started withholding food or treats or trying to monitor what I put in my mouth, I became so focused on food that I craved things I hadn’t previously missed. I’m sure I’ve had more ice cream in the last six months than I did all of last year. The lesson for me has been to focus on eating well and training, without concern for the weight. Since I’ve shifted my focus back to health and fitness rather than weight loss, the scale is dropping again. That makes me happy.

But right now, when I look in the mirror, I see a frumpiness that I had shed and that I’d like to shed again. I’m not being harsh with myself when I say that. I’m not berating myself. I’m just being truthful. But I love that the man I love doesn’t care even a little bit whether I’m a stick or a pear. I didn’t leave the conversation wanting any less to trim back down again, but I did leave it with an even greater appreciation for the tender-hearted man Dave is and how much he loves me just as I am. That makes me super lucky. It doesn’t make me any less frumpy, but it does make me super lucky.