Ah… the ongoing battle of man versus weight.
Every single day you hear people complain about their weight. I should change that statement and say you hear WOMEN complain about their weight. Who could blame us though? You go to the gym and there’s a girl next to you running who has no cellulite on her legs. Or, your Zumba instructor has the sickest tricep muscles you have ever seen.
It is one thing when you eat a Five Guys burger as you read a Cosmopolitan magazine and have to read about Kim Kardashian’s fabulous new body. It is a completely different story when those distant, far off beautiful bodies actually exist and you are competing with them on the treadmill.
Not only do you have social pressure to lose weight, but you start to realize how much pressure you put on yourself. It is no longer Dr. Oz or Jillian Michaels instructing you on how to shed pounds; you realize a voice inside your head is pushing you to be happier.
As a 24-year-old, I have learned to scoff and laugh at the models in the magazine. “Eat a hamburger” is what my friends and I say when we see a model wearing size -2 jeans. Everything about that person seems lifeless and unrealistic.
I myself am by no means skinny, and I never have been. I like to pretend that my big thighs are a contribution passed down to me as a gift from my parents. But, I have only myself to blame for putting on more weight in the past few months as I chow down on a lasagna then make sure there is back-up lasagna in the fridge.
I don’t need to be Christina Aguilera. I don’t need to be Kelly Ripa. I don’t need to be Sarah Jessica Parker. I want to be Adrianna York. But, Adrianna York 2.0… the best version of MYSELF.
When I tell my friends, “I need to lose weight,” it is always followed by “What? I am going to slap you, you are crazy, you look fine.” Such good friends I have. And isn’t this always the response friends are uniformedly required to give? It is not like people are going to say, “Yea, you are right, your thighs are looking heavy.”
I understand why they respond like that, but I have realized that I have my own personal threshold that I have crossed. I know what the best version of myself looks like, and it is not like this. I know what I am capable of, and thanks to the timeline on Facebook, I have proof of that.
Now when I respond to my friends, “I know I am not fat, but I know my body and I can be more fit than I am,” they usually stop with the pity party and understand where I am coming from.
It no longer becomes a battle of me versus those skinny models in the magazine. I am not trying to out-skinny anyone by any means. I am now dieting and trying to lose weight, for myself.
It took me awhile to realize that it has never been about looking like a cookie cutter model, so I don’t have to resent them as much as I do. It is about myself being the happiest I can be. And when am I the happiest? When my thighs don’t rub together as I walk, when I can put my jeans on without squatting up and down five times, and when I wake my muscles up at the gym after their long slumber. These are my motivations to getting back to Adrianna York 2.0.
