I came back from Miss America two and half months ago.
My body is different. That's it, that's the whole story. My body is different. It is not that I'm overweight. It is not that I am eating anything and everything in sight. But I'm not at stage-weight. I don't look like I'm about to be on a stage in a swimsuit anymore.
And that is hard.
I know that plenty of girls stay at stage-weight through their time as Miss State. I would wager though that most of them don't also work two jobs while holding a title. And if they do - work, and stay at stage-weight - I truly hope they do it from a place of health and happiness. Because my weight right now? It's not stage-weight, it's just my weight. It's just my body. It's just what I look like now.
It is normal.
And while I would be the first to raise my hand and say that making this transition has been hard and has taken as much confidence as it does to get on the stage in the first place...I'll add that I would be no where near as comfortable with this if it weren't for the people that I have in my life. The people with which I surround myself are some of the kindest (and most forgiving, yes, I know I'm a whiner.)
The people that lift me up, the people that support me, the people that help me remember that I am busy, and I am working hard, and if that means I can't eat chicken and broccoli for every meal that is okay. Those people make this weird transition stage of life easier.
Because let's be honest, this "normal" is still hard to accept.
It's not hard when you remember you get to eat pizza again, and you don't feel guilty for eating a slice of pie. It's hard when you think about it in terms of "this is what I have time for." Listen, I'm still in the gym 5 days a week, but that takes effort, and it's rarely seven days a week. That is hard to accept. I'm still making as much of my own food as I can. But not having time to go to the grocery store and having to ask other people to help me cook because I simply don't have the time, that is hard to accept.
That's a normal that I didn't see coming. I knew I wouldn't live at stage-weight. I knew that part would take a little getting used to.
But the not having time to...maintain some semblance of control over my day-to-day, and having that lack of time be the thing that really forces your body out of "prep," that has been hard. Truly, it forces me to remember that I have three jobs. I work every day. Y'all, I go to the grocery store maybe every two and half weeks. That is hard.
You think that the consequence will be that you feel obligated to look a certain way. You think you know that what about your body is going to concern you once you've won. It's not that I don't wake up and see abs every day. It's that I don't have time to put in the same amount of work now, that I was putting in for the eight months that lead up to the pageant.
It's that this being so busy so often just leaves me feeling so lazy in other parts of my life.
And that's not real. I still bust my butt seven days a week, but even then, I might not have time to get to the grocery store. I still might not have time to go three Pure Barre classes, and run, and get to the gym. That frustration is real. That disappointment is real.
However, six months into this, the understanding - the grace I have to give myself on this one - that is the most real. I'm human.
So sure, losing my leanest body ever, I expected that. I just didn't expect to feel like I'm constantly in a hamster wheel, never quite finishing every single thing on my proverbial plate. I didn't think that that is the feeling that would leave me looking in the mirror, and thinking, well this isn't the body I planned on.
But I've come to a place where I can say, as much as I was prepared to give my post-stage-weight body grace and as much I was prepared to learn to accept how that looks, this is different, and this is hard, but it deserves just as much patience. We all know there's no one path to being happy with the body you're living in. We all know is a fluid place, and some days you just won't be overjoyed by what you see in the mirror. But I think knowing where our sticking points are - knowing why it feels so hard some days, that's where our extra patience is. The extra push to turn away from the mirror today, to accept the body that you see, and make tomorrow a little better.
No comments