I Love Me

If you read this blog pretty much at all, then you know how much I love to write about my two favorite subjects: food and fitness and sometimes those two at once! Well, I’m going to talk a little bit about both of those things today, and I want to frame this discussion in terms of confidence—what it is, what it isn’t, and why we could all use some more of it.

 For me, discovering fitness and discovering confidence went hand in hand. I had spent so much of my life hating my body and its curves, wanting desperately to take up as little space as possible, that I didn’t feel particularly attached to this physical vessel that carries me around. It was only when I began exercising frequently and consistently that I started to realize that my body is something to be proud of and to be respected in and of itself. Almost two weeks ago now, my legs carried my 13.1 miles. According to my Fitbit, I walk about five miles every day, not including running or other exercise. That’s just everyday sort of getting places—and my body enables me to do that. I walk from my house to campus, from class to class, to the library and to work and back home pretty much every single weekday. I feel very, very lucky that I have the physical capacity to do these things, especially because there are people out who don’t.

 I think running in particular did a lot for me in terms of fostering my current appreciation of my body. When I came to college, I joined the rowing team in part because I was unsure if I would be able to coax myself to the gym often enough if left to my own devices. When I had teammates and a coach counting on me to show up to practice, however, I pretty much had to go [and wanted to, for the most part a.k.a. when it wasn’t five in the morning]. My strategy worked—I dutifully went to practice, and worked out somewhat consistently the summer after my freshman year in order to stay in shape for the team. Living in fear of the rumored “freshman fifteen” motivated me to find such ways to keep active, and that pressure to stave off the weight and be thin and be healthy consistently loomed over me whenever I thought about not rowing.

 When I started running seriously this winter, however, I wasn’t doing that for anyone else besides myself. In fact, it may have even hurt my rowing performance since I spent more time doing that than actually training for the spring season, which is also rooted in sprint-based competition rather than endurance. As I continued running and kept up with it, gaining distance each week and consistently surprising myself, I was able to see that I didn’t actually need to rely on other people to force myself to exercise in the way that I had thought. I was able to enjoy fitness independently in an environment without really any sort of pressure at all. I was capable of pushing myself on my own.

 Realizing that independence made me look at my commitment to the rowing team rather differently. While I still loved all the people on my team and had fun spending time with them, it became increasingly difficult for me to access the sheer joy that I find with running—and that I believe I did once experience through rowing. With the knowledge of my ability and my will to continue exercising on my own in a productive, healthy way, the value that the rowing team held for me lessened; I didn’t need it for the same reasons that I did when I initially joined. Once I realized that stepping away from the team would not make me “fat” or cause me to lose all of my fitness progress or even alienate me from all of my friends, there wasn’t much keeping me there, and I was able to do something that I think is crucial to living a balanced, happy life: reprioritize.

 I vacillated about this decision for a long time before I finally committed to it and told my captain, team, and coach that I would be taking a step back from the team for the rest of the semester. Interestingly, it was completing my half-marathon that cemented my confidence in myself and my resolve to prioritize my commitments in the way that would make me the happiest. Crossing that finish line was genuinely one of the proudest moments of my life so far, if not the proudest moment. I know that might sound crazy, but a lot of the things that I’ve been proud of before that were things that I expected to do. Getting into college, for instance, was an exciting achievement, and I’m thrilled to have been accepted to William & Mary and to have enjoyed the past nearly-three years here, but I knew that I would be going to college since I was very young. I expected to do it, and everyone around me shared in that expectation. Running a half marathon is something that I never expected to do. It’s been on my mind for less than half of a year at this point. Six months ago, this goal was almost unthinkable—and then two weeks ago, it happened. Except, of course, it didn’t just happen, I worked hard and trained diligently and I achieved something that I thought beyond my abilities. That distinction sets it apart from many of my other life accomplishments, and so I regard it highly, and the experience of finishing a 13.1 mile race has had a fantastic impact on my perception of myself and my potential.

 For me, that is what confidence feels like. Confidence is walking that fine line between “I never thought I could do this” and “I have faith in myself, so I knew that I could.” It’s expecting to surprise yourself, knowing that you can surpass your expectations with the right dose of hard work and dedication. It seems paradoxical, and maybe it means something different to each of you, to any given person, but for me it is a kind of oxymoron. Now, I have the confidence to believe that I can achieve my fitness goals on my own [although, of course, I still love running and working out with my pals!]. I believe in myself and my ability to step up to the plate.

 Not only do I feel good about my physical and mental capabilities in terms of fitness, but I also feel confident in the way that I look—possibly as a result of the first clause. As many of you know, I’ve been in the process of introducing a more sustainable system of health and fitness into my life throughout the past year. Part of that has involved losing weight, a journey in which I recently hit a pretty exciting milestone: I’ve shed my twenty-fifth pound since May 2018. I’m definitely proud to have met that goal and am excited to shift my food and fitness plans into the “maintaining” rather than “losing” zone, but I once again surprised myself in how little I cared about seeing that particular number on the scale. I think I’m finally moving towards a place where I genuinely don’t attach an emotional significance to those digits blinking up at me, and they can be just another neutral data point in my life.

I had a scale-related realization recently that I wanted to share. The day after running the half-marathon, I weighed myself, as I usually do most weekday mornings, totally naked [okay, sorry if that’s TMI but I’m more interested in the weight of my body than the weight of my body plus my pajamas]. I stepped on the scale, read the number, and stepped off. I weighed two pounds more than I had the Friday before that weekend. Normally, this might have put me in a bad mood and feeling like I needed to work off my weekend calories or tone down the desserts a little bit [which, let’s be honest, rarely happens]. But then, I looked at myself in the mirror and I didn’t see someone who weighed two pounds more than she did a couple days ago. I saw someone who had run a half marathon the day before, someone whose body transcends the numbers on the scale and whose achievements and capabilities make those numbers irrelevant. That instance so starkly separated my conception of my personal worth and the scale reading that still to this day [and hopefully continuing into the future], my numerical weight just seems so irrelevant. Who cares if it’s up or down or the same or whatever if I’m living the healthy lifestyle that makes me happy and I am able to do the things that I love to do. As someone whose weight fluctuates frequently within a range of a few pounds, it was a really important discovery for me to make.

 I suppose this post has pretty much just been 1500 words of me talking about how great I am, so thank you all for putting up with that. But you know what? I am great. And so are all of you. If you don’t feel that way, think about what is holding you back from that. Is it the negative influence of the scale? Is it a lifestyle change that you want to make but haven’t yet? Whatever it is, commit to that change. Commit to living a life that makes you feel good about yourself and proud of the things that you can do—and do it for yourself, not for anybody else. You deserve to feel this way, to taste the kind of confidence that puts you on top of the world. Give it a try—you might surprise yourself.