I Choose Myself

I wish I had a super inspiring blog post for you. One that emphasizes the important of body acceptance and how to build body confidence but instead I am going to be honest.

Loving your body can be hard. Accepting your body in a world that glorifies bodies that don’t look like yours can be hard. And there will be moments of insecurity and challenge.

Just today I looked at my stomach in the mirror and felt a mixture of emotions. It is soft and round and in so many ways it is what I always feared. 

It isn’t flat or hard, it isn’t the type of stomach you see on a magazine cover or on the grid of an Instagram influencer. But that doesn’t mean it isn’t worthy of love or acceptance.

For me, I have to approach my stomach with a neutral and accepting approach. I might never be happy with how it looks, but it serves so many important functions. Thanks to my stomach I can eat and enjoy my life. I am grateful to have it even when I am not.

I am pleased with how it functions and how it helps move me through life. I am not pleased that I still allow time and energy and insecurity to flood that part of my body. But it is part of the journey.

I am less insecure than I ever was before, but I still struggle. And so I want to say this, it is okay to struggle. It is also okay to choose yourself and your body. So here is what I say:

I choose to accept myself.

I choose to honor myself.

I choose to love myself.

I choose to pick myself over what society was telling me about my body.

I choose to love myself rather than leaning into diet culture.

I choose to accept my body rather than spend the rest of my life hating my body and feeling insecure.

I choose to accept my stomach, even though it has fat on it.

I choose to accept my stretch marks, even though I haven’t had a baby.

I choose to accept my arms, even though they aren’t covered in defined muscles.