Body Image

Hello people! Hopefully by now you've all finished your finals and are happily relaxing and taking in the season's candies. Oh? What's that? No candy canes? Here, have some of mine. I always keep a stash around in December. And then buy a few boxes after when they're 50% off. But that's kind of what I wanted to talk about.

So you went home for Thanksgiving a few weeks ago and ate a ton. Then you came back to school and had all these last minute tests and projects and then you had finals and now you're home and everyone has been feeding you and your eating schedule got all sorts of messed up and you were eating fast food every night for dinner, if at all...yeah, I get it. I've been there. Now you're 5 pounds heavier than you were before break and you're looking at all the events planned - family stuff, dinners out with friends, a few parties here and there and, damn it, those candy canes are still calling your name. And you just know 5 more pounds are lurking around the next corner.

One of my good friends was talking about how she hit the gym this morning, even though they're getting 6 inches of snow at her house today. And that's totally awesome! Good for her! But me? Yeah...I'll pass on that. For those of us who don't exactly exercise and rely mostly on eating halfway decently to stay reasonably fit, this is the bad season for our body image. It's not just women; my brother flips out around this time too. After Thanksgiving he complained that he had put on 3 pounds. I scoffed. Because really, what does it matter?

I'm going to make a bit of a fool of myself here, but hopefully it makes a good point. Because this is how I determine if I have good body image. I realized a few years back that I look damn sexy in jeans and a bra. Yep. I do. Doesn't matter what jeans - skinny, boot cut, boyfriend cut, or hey, even my boyfriend's jeans - just like it doesn't matter the bra (even sports bras that squish the boobs!). I think I look fabulous in jeans and a bra. But that exposes my stomach, the one area of my body that I don't totally love. I love my freakishly strong legs and sneakily toned arms and my curvy hips and bouncy butt and even my weirdly shaped toes from ice skating. But my stomach has always been soft and squishy and I dislike it. But even on days when I'm feeling fat or have just eaten a pint of ice cream b/c of some drama or have a busy weird horrible eating week, I can come back, look at myself and be like, "Yep, ya still got it."

So my general holiday hope for you all is that you can find an aspect of yourself that you absolutely love and can always come back home after a bad body image day and check that out and think you're just darn sexy. And feel free to steal my idea b/c I have a feeling it's a fairly universal good look for ladies. If you want to share your idea with me, just let me know! Have a good start to your break!