My Thankful Post

I've had a lot of thoughts in my head the past few weeks, and a lot of things I should have written down, but I haven't.  November went so fast and I found myself so uplifted and inspired by all of the everyday Thankful posts.  I didn't tackle that 30-day feat, but I was planning on doing at least one!  There are so many things I am thankful for, and even though it's late--today I am going to focus on one: my body.

While I hope you gain something from this post, it's mainly for me.  I'm not starving for compliments.  I'm not promising a change.  What I am doing is telling how I feel.Maybe I'm a loner in feeling this way, but I feel like most women are too worried about how they look. How we look is superficial, but no matter how many times I try to convince myself it doesn't matter, it just does!  How I look matters to me.  The problem is that I feel like I don't have a ton of control over what my face looks like or how much money I have to spend on clothes and accessories--which all makes a big difference on our overall appearance.  One thing I do feel like I have some control over is my body.  I know I don't have total control over it, God does.  I'm just so thankful he's blessed me with a good one.  I rarely get sick, and I can do any physical activity that I want to do. What more could I want, right?!  Well, let me let you in on my secrets…

I love to exercise.  I'm so thankful for a strong, able body that is able to go as hard as I push it.  I know that exercising makes me happy, and it makes me feel good about myself.  My hang-up is my motivation to work out.  As much as I try to convince myself differently, the main reason I work-out is so I can look better.  I know it's for the wrong reasons, and I tell myself that it's to be healthy, but this reality just keeps surfacing.  In the mean time, I'll keep on working out and hopefully someday I'll be able to convince myself that it's just to be healthy and happy.  For now, they're just nice bonuses :)

I love to eat.  I'm so thankful that I am not a picky eater and that I have plenty of food to eat.  Once again, there's a slight problem: the amount of food I eat.  I want to eat just about everything in my sight!  Now, if I had the metabolism of a super-model this wouldn't be that big of a problem, but it seems that for every ounce I eat I gain a pound!  So, maybe that's an exaggeration, but seriously, I'm pretty sure I have the worst metabolism.  If any of you have metabolism boosting advice, feel free to enlighten me!

Finally, I love my body.  Now that you've heard my personal-image "woes" you're probably thinking I'm a liar.  While I have these conceptions about myself, I am thankful for them.  Because I feel the way I do about my body, I set good goals for myself, I know how to push myself, and I'm working on a little self-control.  Hopefully someday I'll just be able to be happy with my body, but for now I'm thankful for it.

This post is pretty scatter-brained (which is how my life has felt that past few weeks), but I just needed to document how I've been feeling lately about my body.  I hope that this will help at least one person not be so hard on herself.  If you feel this way, you're not alone.  If not, maybe it will help one of my future daughters to be able to know they're not the only person who's felt this way.  Oh, and Happy December Everybody!!