Cassey of Blogilates finished her 90 day journey to muscle recently and reading through her private blog post and looking at her own comparison picture from leanest to muscle had me realizing how much I related to her feelings of failure, even though in reality we are not failures. We are just too hard on ourselves and have yet to learn to let go of numbers and allowing them to define our worth. We need to program ourselves to simply using them as data points to track progress and not letting it affect us so personally. Unfortunately, of course, being human it’s hard to not be bias in your own experiment when the test subject is yourself.

I wrote my own reflection after reading hers and it made me realize I need to appreciate my own journey more.

The number you are trying to reach has been disconnected. Please check and try again. (I mean this as both literally the number on the scale, and metaphorically the person I was years ago when I was that weight.)

Why? Because they say the only person you should be comparing yourself to, is the person you were yesterday. The premise of this is to stop yourself from comparing yourself to others, and look to your past and present self as progress of self-improvement.

"𝑩𝒖𝒕 𝑰 𝒄𝒂𝒏'𝒕 𝒈𝒐 𝒃𝒂𝒄𝒌 𝒕𝒐 𝒚𝒆𝒔𝒕𝒆𝒓𝒅𝒂𝒚, 𝒃𝒆𝒄𝒂𝒖𝒔𝒆 𝑰 𝒘𝒂𝒔 𝒂 𝒅𝒊𝒇𝒇𝒆𝒓𝒆𝒏𝒕 𝒑𝒆𝒓𝒔𝒐𝒏 𝒕𝒉𝒆𝒏."

I keep beating myself up for my weight, but visually I love how I look so much more than I did 4 years ago even though I miss how much leaner my legs looked when I first lost all the weight. I love how much definition I have now despite my legs being thicker because I worked really hard these past few years to grow my glutes! (Isolating glute muscles without growing the rest of your legs is hard esp when there's such limited exercises for it.) And I'm so proud of getting them to 38 inches recently!

I also have to remind myself the body on the left in slide 2 didn't start running yet. I was just working towards losing weight at the time, but no goals in mind except a scale one. I started running in Aug 2018, when my friend officially signed us up for my first half.

The body on the right has trained hard for the past 4 years, carrying me through 1 full marathon, 4 half marathons, 3 10ks, 6 5ks and countless, countless miles of training. It spent hours in the gym everyday weight training, pushing through session after session of home workouts and Blogilates. It carried it all. I need to give it so much more credit to what it does and allows me to wake up and do everyday.

It's not just about that one number on the scale. It's so much more. It's clothes fitting better, feeling better, looking better in the mirror and liking what you see. It's about the lean muscle I've acquired and the strength, stamina and endurance my body has now. It's about all those miles I've accomplished both training and then the grand finale race days. This body has carried me through so much.

I need to stop feeling guilty when I eat and start viewing my nutrition as NOURISHMENT for what I need my body to do. Fuel for what it allows me to do. It deserves this love. 𝑰 deserve this love from myself. I need to rewire my brain to think this way more often.

I hope one day I can and will love my body the way it deserves to be loved for all the things I have put it through to achieve my stupid goals. She deserves better. She deserves to be loved and celebrated in all the different forms and transformations she goes through; weight gain, weight loss, age, health hiccups, everything.

But make no mistake, this is not my final form. I'm absolutely terrified for the challenges life throws at me as it forces me out of my comfort zone each time to learn to adapt to life’s changes as I age and my metabolism slows down and energy levels start to shift, but I will do my best to adjust so that my mind and body will continue to grow and transform for years to come.